One of the most creative games to come out last year, Brütal Legend finally made its way into my PS3. I had heard many conflicting reviews about the game before I tried it for myself: It was either going to be awful or awesome. I was apprehensive about picking up this game for myself because, from what I knew already, I was likely to enjoy the story, but the gameplay was going to be a struggle to get through. But, much to my surprise, it turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience for both myself and a co-pilot of the review process.

 

Presentation

In case you didn’t know already, Brütal Legend is essentially an homage to Heavy Metal music. The story has a similar set up to the Wizard of Oz where the protagonist somehow ends up in a world very different from their own, however there are certain traits and details about the world that seem familiar or are some sort of representation of a person’s mind. In this case, that person happens to love metal music.

The world that our protagonist ends up in is a wild prehistoric landscape filled with landmarks and structures that represent different parts of the heavy metal culture. Mountains are made out of car engines or pistons. There is a long strip of land made out of giant speakers that pulse with interference, sending shockwaves off into a bloody sea. Some trees are made of scaffolding, while others sprout exhaust pips. And pretty much every creature you run into is a warped metallic representation of its real self, such as the explosive porcupines with steel quills. It’s all hard to describe beyond that, the game requires you to witness its artistic style in order to grasp all the effort that went into conceptualizing the world.

In terms of graphical achievement, the game isn’t all that impressive. Textures have very little detail much of the time. The characters look a little too smooth and glossy. There are lots of rounded edges all over the place. The game is not graphically stunning by any means. But, in its defense, it is also a sandbox type of game which requires less detail for the sake of performance through a large, seamless world. The continent you travel is massive and there is no loading screen outside the one when the game starts. Once you are placed in the campaign, there is not a loading screen to be found.

Unfortunately there were plenty of moments where the frame-rate dropped substantially during action sequences or just driving around the massive world. There were also plenty of places in the game where invisible walls would interfere with what seemed like a regular path or even some spots that would get me caught in a glitch.

The nitpicky elements were never enough to make the presentation truly bad though. The graphics may not be impressive, but the game’s lesser detail helped make the look of the characters fit into this unique environment. Many of the people you meet are interesting and extreme imaginings of human beings that are into heavy metal. For instance, most of the characters wear garments that resemble the style of a particular subgenre of the metal culture. There are also many basic units in the game who are “head bangers,” whose necks have become extremely massive from constant head motion. Had the textures on these characters been too realistic, like something out of Uncharted or Crysis, the game might have lost some of its comical charm.

Obviously, since the game is about heavy metal music culture, sound quality is a necessity to the game’s presentation. It needs some appropriate music, and there is quite the array to choose from going back to the early days with Black Sabbath all the way up to recent releases by Dragonforce. The game’s playlist goes through the many decades of music with the different subgenres that sprouted up during that time. Thrash, glam, heavy, death, goth, and classic metal are all in the mix and blasting in your car stereo as you ride through the world. And if you’re like me and you could care less about Whitesnake, the playlist is yours to manipulate and mute the bands you want to ignore.

The voice acting is also rather good. Though Jack Black can be an overwhelming presence in any media he’s in, he does a good job as the voice of Eddie Riggs, our protagonist. There a lot of lines for his character that are delivered in a way that make him stand out without being just the personification of Jack Black. The developers at Double Fine managed to get some famous voices of the heavy metal culture to do the part of some crucial characters. Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford, Lita Ford, and Lemmy Kilmister are some of the famous people that lend their talents to the presentation; some of whom are rendered in a similar representation of their real physical look. They are also joined by several video game veteran voices including Tim Curry, as well as Jennifer Hale, who has voiced far too many characters to count in video games including: Metal Gear Solid and Knights of the Old Republic.

 

Story

The story follows the already mentioned protagonist: Eddie Riggs, a talented roadie for a less-than-talented band. In the opening scene, during a show of the horrible band Cabbage Boy, one of the props falls and seemingly kills our hero. An early end we think till we see him summoned to this prehistoric metal world by a fiery metal god. Once he arrives in the mystical land it becomes apparent that his talents of being a roadie are perfect for slaying demons and raising ancient magical relics. A normal electric guitar here raises monuments of metal and sends lighting from the heavens down upon enemies in a gruesome and glorious fashion.

With these godly talents, Eddie soon finds himself in league with the local human alliance of 3 people determined to free the human race from the demons. Standing in their way is General Lionwhyte, a lackey to the evil villain Doviculus and the epitome of the glamour metal style. Lionwhyte is covered in colorful make-up, pink clothing, and long luscious blond hair that he uses to fly through the air. He is a mockery of himself, making him a villain worth loathing.

So Eddie and the three rebels set out on their quest for freedom by recruiting humans for their army and rescuing them from Lionwhyte’s tyranny. Headbangers, groupies, bouncers, bikers, roadies, and various other exaggerations of people or beasts that are part of heavy metal culture join your ranks and you set out to remove Lionwhyte and eventually defeat Doviculus.

There are some twists along the way pertaining to the main characters that I won’t spoil. The twists themselves fall into familiar categories, yet they are integrated into the story in a way that I was never quite expecting. I was always a little surprised by what happened next.

My main disappointment was how the story progressed, namely in the involvement of Doviculus. About 80% of the plot is spent on recruiting new members to your army and the occasional important battle, which is done really well in all respects. Unfortunately, once you have most of your army, the game speeds to the conclusion with less set up for a climax than I was expecting. So in the case of Doviculus, he shows up in the game rather late and never really makes much of an impact as a villain. Much more time is spent on Lionwhyte and other villains, who take a long time to remove. When it is finally time to hunt down Doviculus, there is no hunting involved, you just have to beat him and that’s the end of the story. It ends up making the story seem shorter than it already was. Much of the rest of the game’s length resides in doing all the side-missions in the world or picking up all the collectables and power-ups.

However short the game was, it was still very amusing. The dialogue of the characters and many of the “one-liners” were hilarious. The writing truly captured different aspects of heavy metal in a creative, as well as, comical way that I hadn’t seen since This is Spinal Tap. Even my friend, who watched me play the game in its entirety and has very little knowledge or involvement in the metal culture, was laughing hysterically at the writing and impressed by the visualization of a heavy metal world.

 

Gameplay

Despite what I’d been told from so many people who had played the game before me, I found the gameplay to be satisfying. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I thought I was in for much worse and found it surprisingly fun. In fact, the least surprising thing for me was that it involved several different gameplay styles.

I’ve already mentioned how the game is a sandbox, but it also is something of an adventure game, as well as something of a real-time strategy game. There isn’t really a category that Brütal Legend can fall into in my opinion because so much of each genre is incorporated into everything. There are plenty of places to explore and drive to like Grand Theft Auto. Eddie Riggs himself wields and axe and guitar to smite his foes personally like an adventure game would use a melee and ranged weapon. And during big battle sequences you command your army on the battlefield, sending them into the front lines to attack or control points. All of these elements of the gameplay I was aware of beforehand and might be why I was not repelled like so many others. Much of the criticism came from people who played the demo and thought the game would be mostly action-adventure style only to find RTS in the main story battles as well as on multiplayer. But like I said, the gameplay wasn’t perfect. There weren’t any big flaws I could point out, just little errors I could nitpick at how it could have been just a little better.

The AI of your units weren’t exactly brilliant, plenty of points in the game I was trying to command them and they would get hung up by some obstacles they should have easily bypassed or at least had a path mapped to them should they get stuck. There were times I had to hold their hands and lead them around the battlefield just to get the job done. Not to mention there were plenty of moments where your avatar, Eddie, seemed either over or under powered. It didn’t seem like there was ever going to be a balance on the battlefield.

When you weren’t in RTS mode there were plenty of side missions for you to do in the world. However, many of the side missions were repeated multiple times to the point that I was quite sick of them by the end. The side missions themselves were just fun enough to do all of them by the end of the game, but much more and I would have called it quits; there just wasn’t much variety to the missions themselves. There were a few vehicle races and the remaining majority was kill the waves of enemies using these methods prescribed for you. Occasionally there were missions that were completely different from the other side quests. But they were only used once throughout the entire game. These little gems were nice to mix things up, but were far too infrequent.

I dabbled a bit in the multiplayer section, though never truly committed my time to it so I’ll be brief about it. The multiplayer is strictly in RTS format and you have the option of playing one of three different armies: the main campaign army Ironheade, the doom and gloom army, and the demon army. Brütal Legend handles its armies very similar to most RTS games where each group has its own sets of advantages and disadvantages.

Ironheade is the most straightforward one to choose from with basic units and simple upgrades. Each unit or group of units is more or less independent and is useful in particular situations. They’re the bread and butter of the game with less micromanaging involved.

The doom and gloom army is a little more complicated. Each unit isn’t extremely strong on its own, but they each give off their own buffs to other groups. For instance, there is a dead bride who can only cast lighting on enemies that hit her within a range, she’s rather week but if she is around the basic detachment of pale soldiers then the soldiers get a boost to their strength. Much of their army is dependent upon one another for boosts and bonuses to their stats, meaning that you want variety in your army, and always a large force.

Finally, there are the demons, which I think are the most unique of the armies. They have what the game calls a hierarchy, which means that in order to create certain units, they must be spawned from superior ones. For example, in order to get a group of the game’s “zerglings” you need a warrior nun to spawn them. She isn’t the most powerful fighter so it’s recommended that you spawn quickly. What’s more is that upgrades for creatures require that you use higher commanding units to spawn the spawning units like a war priest>warrior nun>“zerglings.” It’s confusing on paper, but you quickly figure it out in game. This seems like a big disadvantage except for the fact that since these detachments of your army are all mobile, you can spawn more wherever you want on the map, while other armies are forced to spawn theirs at the base. Placed in the right hands, any one of these armies is a foe to be reckoned with.

And the unique qualities of each aren’t just limited to the units themselves. In multiplayer you still have control over an avatar of the chosen army. Each avatar comes equipped with the usual required “spells” to command your forces as well as some unique ones, specific to their character and the multiplayer campaign. Each avatar also has a team-up ability for most of their army, which often enhances the abilities of your units. Some become more powerful or some more accurate. This allows for a great balance between micro- and macro-management on the battlefield.

I had some trouble connecting to other opponents online, but I attribute that to being late to the Brütal Legend party. Once I was connected I experienced very little lag issues so try it while you still can!

 

Conclusion

            Brütal Legend isn’t perfect. It isn’t one type of game you can nail down into a genre. So if you only like strategy games but not open world, or you only like adventure games but not strategy, etc you may want to steer clear of the game. However, if you like gameplay styles mentioned in this review and you are a fan of heavy metal music then you are missing out if you haven’t picked the game up yet. It’s funny, inappropriate, and creative enough to hold your attention through the campaign and into the multiplayer. It might even introduce you to some new bands you hadn’t heard of before. If you decide to go with Brütal Legend, be sure pick up the axe, rock out, and scream, “DECAPTIATION!”