The Metal LIVES!!!! (kinda)

"A good roadie knows it's his whole job to make someone else look good. Keep someone else safe. Help someone else do what they were put here to do. A good roadie stays out of the spotlight. If he's doing his job right, you don't even know he's there. Once in a while he might step on stage just to fix a prop, to set something right. But then before you even realize he was there, or what he did, he's gone." - Eddie Riggs, Protagonist of Brutal Legend

Tim Schafer is not a man who dabbles, that has become clear. In Psychonauts, he explored the minds of characters with different neurosis's in a way that was both interesting and fun. Despite that game being little more than a cult hit, Schafer went all in again with Brutal Legend, and comes out smelling worse than a rose, but better than the alternative.

Brutal Legend is metal, that much is obvious from the minute you start the game. This works to the games advantage most of the time, like in the design of the world, enemy designs, story, characters, and combat; Other times it seems that the designers were too focused on the metal to polish some parts of the game, like the upgrade system and real time strategy component. The world of Brutal Legend is most definitely metal, from bondage covered demons to giant engines as part of mountains, and this works well with the attitude of the story that metal is all there is. This is great for looking at, but a little problematic to interact with, as the world is not especially full of things to do. Outside of story missions, there are only approximately 40 missions, most of which consist of fighting one wave of enemies and killing them with at least one ally unit still alive. These missions, when taken all together, add maybe three or four hours to the game, and the most time consuming can be done concurrently with the story missions. It seems like the designers recognized this, and placed 120 statues to find around the game world, and then tied personal development to finding them. After every ten statues found, you get an increase of health, health regeneration, ally healing, or flight speed. The problem with this is that some statues are within sight of one another, or follow a distinct path or road, while others are tucked away in places you would only go to in order to find these statues. In the end, I suggest a map if you are going after them, and even then you may miss one like I did.

Combat in Brutal Legend is fairly basic, consisting mainly of two input buttons, one for melee, and one for special attacks, but thematic as melee is handled with an axe, and special attacks are played on a guitar. There are power cords available to play during combat, with various effects from increasing the strength of allies to melting the faces of enemies, but these rely on a timing aspect similar to guitar hero, during which your character can be killed, limiting the usefulness of these attacks. Enemies are sufficient in both number and toughness, never becoming simple cannon fodder, and their designs are perfect for the tone of affection towards metal in the story, as the first enemy set encountered is bondage themed, like most metal album art suggests. However the true skewering of metal occurs with the next set, who are clearly based on hair metal and lead by a glam rock lead singer that can fly using his hair as wings followed by a set based on emo/goth music.

However, the focus on the front half of the game shows in the back half, when the game tries to transition into a action/real time strategy game familiar to anyone who has played either Pikmin or Overlord, except that Brutal Legend requires resources gained from specific buildings and has highly specialized units, which quickly begin to show that they are not worth the expense in most situations. Compounding this is that enemy commanders can strike down your units with a few quick attacks, while you must repeatedly attack their units with help from your units in order to kill them. On top of all of that, order giving is based on range, with all units in a given area around your character blindly following orders, unless the player holds down one button, freezing all allied units in the area, selects a unit group, and gives that group specific orders. However, as this only freezes allied units, most orders will end up worthless as the enemy kills allied units while frozen waiting for orders. Throw in some poor enemy commander intelligence, at least in story mode, and you get a half executed gameplay mode, which sadly makes up almost the entire second half of the story missions. There also are basic escort missions which, while not as bad as the RTS mode, are not the best executed either.

Graphically, this game looks good, mainly because of the consistent style and commitment to the source material, with great work having been done on the characters themselves. However, some of the areas of the world are similar enough to blend together into a background that inspires a "meh" at times. In addition, the copious amount of gray in the environments make find those statues even more difficult, as they are gray as well. Time is marked in the game with a rising and setting sun, and rain at times, however overall the effect feels a little tacked on. The sound is where the game truly shines, with a good soundtrack, great voice work from Jack Black, Tim Curry, Ozzy Ozbourne, and the rest of the solid cast, and great ambient noise, including receiving reports when you pass groups of allies in the world. The only issue I have is that the music rotation of your vehicle is based on your location, meaning that I heard "Leather Rebel" way too much for my taste. You can manually select a different song, but then the rotation returns to the area group.

Extras are highly limited, consisting of finding those statues, finding songs for the vehicle radio, and a multiplayer version of the RTS battles, where a number of the achievements for the games are tied to. Since I did not enjoy the RTS of the main game, adding in competent opponents would likely only increase my frustration with the controls during these battles, and therefore didn't actually attempt the mode. However, I know you can control the different groups in this mode, and that one even plays slightly different from the others, requiring one unit to summon other units, rather than simply building the units like the other groups.

In the end, Brutal Legend is brutal for sure, in some of the ways they meant, and some that they didn't. Worth a rental for the world and story, but not a purchase in my opinion.

Graphics: 7 out of 10

Great style, but too much gray in the environment leads to some losing sight of objectives.

Sound: 9 out of 10

Would be a 10, but the shuffle doesn't work well enough. Also, can someone please ask them to release the full soundtrack somewhere?

Gameplay: 6 out of 10

The RTS sections and one vehicle level really hurt the game here, as the basic gameplay is easily an 8.

Controls: 7 out of 10

Mostly good, but fall on their face in RTS mode, hard.

Replayability: 6 out of 10

There is little reason to replay the story, and the multiplayer, well, your mileage may vary.

Overall: 6 out of 10

Entertaining as hell, but only half of the game is executed well, which severely hurts what could have been a great game.