Lisvender reviews Brutal Legend. Available on PS3 and Xbox 360. Developed by Double Fine. Published by EA
I can’t help but wonder how many gamers are going to pretend they’ve always loved heavy metal music after they play this game.
Remember the hype-roar over Bioshock and its Art Deco design, and its Ayn Rand themes? So original! It seemed like everybody wanted to learn more about these revolutionary concepts once that game came out. We gamers are a sheltered lot. We really need to get out and read more. Video games can’t be our sole window into history. It’s not healthy. Besides, Grim Fandango did the Art Deco thing long before Bioshock, and it’s a better game. By the way, Tim Schafer, who wrote and directed Brutal Legend, also wrote and directed Grim Fandango, which I have to say is the superior game.
After playing Brutal Legend, I don’t think I’ll ever be a heavy metal fan. The game just doesn’t sell it well, and all those revving guitars sound the same after a while. I’m an 80s child, though, so synthesized pop is more my thing, and this game just isn’t meant for me. The fantasy land of Brutal Legend, which exhumes and fetishizes the sound and fury of the “metal experience,” is clearly built to appeal to people who lived during the music’s heyday. I’m not sure it’s sensible, though, for Double Fine to aim for an audience that pines so strongly for the past. Are the forty-somethings who spin their Def Leppard vinyl on their creaky turntables for fun also very likely to play modern video games on Xbox 360s or Playstation 3s?
Eddie Riggs, the hero of Brutal Legend, complains that he wasn’t born in the right time for metal either. This is just before he is flattened by a collapsing stage set, and transported to a mythical world by the metal god Ormagoden. Apparently, Eddie has no family or friends in our world, or else he has a command of incredible coping skills, because his reaction to this dangerous new place is more or less, “Coooooool!” I’m guessing that Eddie is a veteran of a few tours in the Iraq War, because he never questions his unexplained combat skills, nor does he display a hint of fear at the murderous beings marching in his way. At one point he is directly asked if he misses his old home, and he replies with only a dismissive sputter. I realize that Eddie is supposed to be a badass, but I’d find that easier to swallow if he had grown up in this harsh place, rather than just suddenly been thrown into it after years of soft American life.
There are plenty of other problems with the story, but I won’t go into them all. I’m the sort of asshole who picks at the logic in movies like Back to the Future when I should just relax and have fun with them. Brutal Legend’s story is fun, and funny, but Tim Schafer has written stronger, more interesting stuff than this, like the aforementioned Grim Fandango.
Brutal Legend, the game, is different from Brutal Legend, the tale. Instead of focusing on the tastes of a specific type of player, the gameplay goes all over the place, trying to please everyone at once. The game starts by giving you a hand axe, and throwing some enemies in front of you. “Here,” says the game, “enjoy some chop-em-up action not far removed from God of War or Spartan Total Warrior.”
“Fine,” you respond, “let’s chop up some monsters!” You chop up monsters for a few minutes, and then the game gives you a guitar.
“Here,” says the game, “this is your secondary weapon, and it uses elemental powers like lightning and fire, similar to the plasmids in Bioshock.”
“Cool,” says you, “let’s rock out!” You burn enemies with lightning and fire, then tear down a building with an earth-shaking chord, and then a few minutes later, you get a car.
What is the point of this car? I really don’t understand the car. It looks cool, and it uses decent enough physics, but from a practical standpoint, it’s fatuous. In the small-scale missions to come, Eddie can’t use it, and in the large-scale battles he won’t need it. Why is there a car?
The answer is, “Because the game world is big, and you’ll need a car to get from place to place in a reasonable amount of time.”
This is not a good answer, because it raises more questions. Why is the game world so big that getting around on foot isn’t reasonable?
The only answer I can think of is, “Because other games have big worlds too.”
I’m being honest here: I see no reason for Brutal Legend to have a big, open world, other than to fill the game with long stretches of driving and to flesh out a feature list.
What’s worse is that Double Fine went with “big open world” first, then came up with “things to do in big open world” second. There are all these little side missions scattered around the map, but they’re really not that interesting, and there are only three or four styles of them. You have enemy ambushes, which are simple chop-em-up skirmishes, turret battles where you fire on enemies from a raised hydraulic lift, cannon firing missions that require you to set targets for long-range artillery, and races. That’s right, you can’t have a car in a video game unless it’s entered in a race at some point. There are also little things to look for like dragon statues (120 to find!), legend spheres that tell a needless backstory, and binoculars so you can get a good look at some of those fancy landmarks Double Fine’s artists spent so much time laboring over. Look! A mountain shaped like a pair of hands clutching a guitar! Awesome, sort of!
These distractions from the main missions are all optional, so why would anyone bother to roll around the world for several minutes at a time to take them on? For upgrades, of course!
Completing missions earns you “fire tributes,” which are really just money, and which are spent at Motor Forges to buy attacks, guitar strings, special effects for your axe, and weaponry for your car. The shopkeeper, called the Guardian of Metal, is voiced by Ozzy Osbourne, and he’s excellent. I hope he continues to do voice acting for games, because he’s great. The Motor Forges themselves, however, are not great. Why does this game have upgrades? I mean, really? Uncharted 2 doesn’t have upgrades, and that was a pretty good game. The effects of Brutal Legend’s upgrades are hardly noticeable. What’s the point? Why am I using the precious gift of life to drive around a big, empty video game world to complete stupid side missions to collect fire tributes to buy upgrades that don’t do anything?
The big open world in Brutal Legend is filler. It’s a joke. It’s not as ugly, but it’s certainly as unnecessary as No More Heroes’s Santa Destroy. Don’t waste your time with it. Just drive from primary mission to primary mission; it’s the way the game should have been made.
And what is there to say about the primary line of missions in Brutal Legend? It’s action! It’s strategy! It’s stractegy! You’re going to fight some big battles that Eddie can’t win alone, upgrades or no upgrades. The game gives you a stage that acts as your base, and a crowd of friendly characters that acts as your army. Your goal in these battles is to get your dudes to the enemy’s stage and destroy it. You control Eddie, contributing to the battle with his attacks, while issuing commands to your soldiers. It’s like Battalion Wars, only not as logical. In Battalion Wars, it makes sense that units with flamethrowers will be pretty effective against enemy infantry, while units with rocket launchers will be more useful against tanks. In Brutal Legend, you’ve got these headbanger dudes, and chicks who tote rifles ripped from the spines of mutant hogs. There are also guys with big hands, and roadies who heft giant amps on their backs. How do you divide tasks among an army like that? There’s some kind of logic to the system, but the action is too hectic, and the missions too varied to really figure it out and exploit it. Simply overwhelming your enemies with sheer numbers doesn’t always work either. You can throw a horde of guys at a tiny group of enemies, turn to other matters for a minute, and still come back to find your dudes dead. The surest way to win a fight is constantly babysit your soldiers. You need to stay near them, fight alongside them, and buff them incessantly.
You also need to keep an eye on your merchandise booths, which are like the gas refineries in Starcraft. There are these fan geysers in Brutal Legend, see, which spew gaseous fans that somehow act as resources for your war machine. You “spend” fans to make more soldiers. To collect fans, you have to construct merch booths over the geysers by playing a riff on your guitar near the geyser. Once the booth is ready, the fans flow to your stage. Sometimes the computer will sneak its men past your army so it can destroy your booths and cripple your production. All this chaos is manageable because Eddie sprouts a pair of wings when you click the left stick, and he can fly about the battlefield to keep an eye on things.
Note that in order to protect that very important big open world from obsolescence, the game only allows you to fly during these stage battles.
The stage battles are actually pretty fun once you get a grasp on them, so much so that you’ll be disappointed that there are so few of them. The single-player campaign is surprisingly short, even with all the driving, and I think that Double Fine is banking on the game surviving just a little bit longer through a multiplayer following. I’m not the person to ask about multiplayer, though, as I hate playing games online, and I’ve never won a real-time strategy match against another human being.
It’s hard to say exactly what Brutal Legend’s problem is. I suppose you could say that Brutal Legend, like Psychonauts before it, has an inferiority complex. It tries so hard to fit in with the other games, when it should really just concentrate on what makes it unique. Brutal Legend would be so much better as a long, linear series of increasingly challenging stage battles with cutscenes in between, than as what it is: a hodge-podge of mixed missions pinned together with a weak Grand Theft Auto structure. This is a problem with a lot of games these days, and I hope that people will come to look at Brutal Legend as an example of the perils of me-tooism. Grand Theft Auto’s cities are features that grew out of game’s unique action of carjacking, just as Super Mario Bros.’s blocks and enemy designs grew out of Mario’s jumping. Games like No More Heroes, Infamous, and now Brutal Legend, don’t need to copy the mainstream to be great. Fuck the establishment man, and sing your own tune. Isn’t that part of the spirit of heavy metal in the first place?
Controller1.com Rating 1/3
lisvender
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The year of highs and lows. But the lows are more fun to read about. 2009 was the year the phenomenal growth the games industry slowed markedly, Activision sharpened their horns and thousands of games developers spent the year searching for new jobs or making iPhone games.
Wolfenstein: Sequel to the beloved 2000 game proved to disappoint many who where nostalgic for the bygone era of 2000. A good, though flawed, singleplayer campaign wasn’t enough to overcome the terrible multiplayer. Every time someone tried to speak about the game, the answer would be “I heard it sucks.” It didn’t suck completely, only half sucked. Activision also charging the same for PC as the console versions was proof positive that douching five times a day is profitable.
Tom Clancy’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2- Take the most anticipated game of the year. It’s the sequel to a series that did very well as a WWII-based game, but did phenomonally well as a modern-era game with a grounding in current events. Ramp up the hyperbole 1 000 000%, dial down the realism, amp up the absurdity and you have a fun single player marred by a story that’s only told in skippable loading screens. The multiplayer is fantastic, if you can overlook the perk combos, killstreaks than ramp down the enjoyment for many players, plus IW’s inability to take your connection speed into account when searching for hosts. Playing online outside of the US is almost pointless 90% of the time since that’s roughly the amount of time you will be shunted into a game where the host is located under the Stars and Stripes even if you’re across the Pacific. PC is even more of a clusterfuck since it’s inability to handle any lag coupled with the stubborn determination that dedicated servers aren’t needed for the game to be good makes the Game of the year, in a word or two, utter bullshit.
ODST- I liked the single player of Halo 3 ODST. It took a short while for it to get going but the action was great. It was just waaayyy too short. The Multiplayer, mostly being recycled from Halo 3 and its DLC was great, but, if like me you already had the DLC, ODST’s multiplayer wasn’t much of a selling point. There was at least Firefight mode as well to lengthen proceedings. Really, it should have been a downloadable expansion, just as it was originally planned to be, not full priced.
Killzone 2- It didn’t save the PS3 nor did it really give it much of a shot in the arm (that would be the one-two punch of the PS3 Slim and Uncharted 2). It was pretty and played well enough, but its story was generic, characters forced and gameplay so by the numbers that you’re half expecting this logo to appear at boot-up.
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. A sleeper hit of a few years ago is a by the numbers, soulless exercise into pointless prequel. Charmless and boring.
Saboteur: looking a little rough around the gills (see also: LOTR: Conquest). Pandemic’s swansong tells a tale of Irishman with bad accents in a Paris with bad French accents occupied by Nazi’s by bad German accents.
Resident Evil 5: The Black Panthers aren’t around today. But if they were, they would be pissed off. Also, the control scheme that would be called rustic if it were in a real estate listing means only long time fans should apply.
Tony Hawk Ride: What can you say that hasn’t already be said. Activision may have made a lot of money with Tony Hawk over the years. 2009 is not one of those years.
Brutal Legend: So brilliant presentation and an umlaut cannot make up for lousy gameplay. Who knew? It is a pity it turned out that way since I’d love to play this, but I’d love to have had fun doing so.
Eat Led: The Return of Matt Hazard: Well, a joke is enough. The Snake on a Plane of the gaming world were people were willing this to be good. See also: Scribblenauts.
DJ Hero: In the scheme of things. Activision sold a lot of MW2. They didn’t sell a lotof DJ Hero, Tony Hawk Ride, GH5 or Band Hero. Payback’s a bitch
Bionic Commando: Well, even though there were two of these, neither was great. Because BC was never any good.
Ghostbusters: So the presentation was top notch, except the story wasn’t that good, it was a retread of the Ghostbusters movies, the cinematics looked like they were directed by someone who directed live TV drama in the 50’s and the gameplay just wasn’t all that good. I like rinse and repeat only when i’m in the shower. On the couch, it just gets messy.
Overall, it was a really good year, coming after a few years of really good years. Can 2010 top it? Time will tell.
What are your gaming disappointments for 2009?
So, the two hottest games of October are Brutal Legend by Psychonaut’s Double Fine and Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2. I’m not currently playing either of these high quality games.
The question is why?
Well taking Brutal Legend first. I played the demo and I read the reviews. So it looks and sounds amazing and I would kill to play that game just to experience the story. Thing is the gameplay on the demo didn’t excite me very much. I have gotten very bored with brawlers having worked on a couple in my day. The music and visuals are great but the hack and the slash gameplay in the demo didn’t give me any sort of warm gooey, pant-changing feeling. Then in the reviews it apparently becomes a strategy game with units and resource management. Even if it is simple, I think I will pass. Maybe later when it is cheaper and I can justify breezing through it on easy just for the experience, but for now… Next!
Which would mean Uncharted 2. I liked Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune when it came out in 2007. I felt it was the best PS3 title available at that point and until now I still think it, MGS4 and the new Uncharted are the three best reasons to own a PS3 if you like to play games. I have bought Uncharted 2, I still haven’t played it. Mainly because I haven’t had time to play it with work commitments recently, and the other sticking point is I started to replay the original game earlier in the week. Part of me is berating myself for getting Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, a game which disappoints in more ways than a Nintendo Press conference. If I hadn’t have bought that (despite the good word of mouth and the fun I had with the original), I would have finished it time to play the sequel. Part of me still hopes I can blast through the original before sticking part two in.
The trouble with that is, I’m still fairly on through the first game, when it was still a Tomb Raider Clone. I’m only just now reaching the point where the game becomes a Gears of War clone. Maybe I should just put it aside and play the new game. Maybe I will.
Of course, I’ve been playing CoD4 for the last few months on PC. This is a game I have put aside and come back to on many, many occasions. For some reason I get completely frustrated with it and quite for a while. Then I come back to it. There are several silly reasons why I am playing this over WaW on PC right now.
1- The only gaming PC I have available is my work’s PC, a HP quadcore machine with a decent video card (a 260 something something). I typically play for around 30-40 mins after work each night before I go home
2- I have finally managed to get a profile high enough to unlock weapons like the Barret 50.cal sniper rifle. I have had to restart at level 1 without ever restiging several times over the last 2 years (new PC, playing PC and 360, etc)
3- Only a few games are set up to work within my Work’s firewall. CoD 4, L4D, TF2 and WoW are set up since they are popular. WaW needs an online profile to work and there are enough people wanting to play it to bother
4-MW2 is out in a few weeks. I’d love to reach level 55 at least once.
So I’m playing against random kids on the net some days and at others with my colleagues. It’s clear the colleagues are very bored with CoD4. They love the gameplay but the lack of new maps has really added to the fatigue. That said, I expect each of them to have MW2 within a week and hopefully, it will be at least 3 hours before they start complaining about hax.
My plans for the next few month in terms of picking up games looks quite slim. Modern Warfare 2 on PC and 360, Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time. Maybe Borderlands and of course All New Super Mario Brothers on Wii. Fuck Assassin’s Creed 2, Forza 3, Need for Speed and the rest.
Controller1.com is not a news site, its a blog so rather than being your one stop shop for E3 news, we’ll just have some opinion. The show hasn’t opened yet but half the big publishers have already had conferences and briefings so I’m going to change my pants, recap my reactions to the news from MS, Activision, EA Ubisoft and others.
EA
Lego Rock Band and The Beatles Rock Band shows that EA and Harmonix can do the exact thing as Activision/ Neversoft- that is make a game once and then reskin 15 times. Brutal Legend was demoed and I still don’t know what the hell the game is about- apart from Jack Black being involved somehow. Is it a driving game? An action game? Saboteur from Pandemic has been on my radar for a while and hopefully its not just Mercenaries 2.5. Mass Effect 2 looks to have more awesome than an awesome star going supernova. Crysis 2 is coming and its on consoles as well. APB (from the makers of Crackdown) coming early in 2010 should be fun. I might need to get a gaming PC this year.
Dante’s Inferno seems to be another hellish God of War game but Bioware made a splash with the Old Republic trailer that made people who want Ewok porn care for Star Wars again.
Left 4 Dead 2!!! A Valve game where there’s been a yearly update. And it looks like it does everything Dead Rising didn’t do. I am looking forward to this in a way most Valve MP-focused games don’t ‘click’ for me.
Ubisoft
Red Steel 2 looks like Motion plus might actually be a worthwhile pickup for the Wii. But while Assassin’s Creed 2, if it fixes the flaws of the first game might be a great game, its Splinter Cell Conviction that looks to be THE Ubisoft game you buy at full price. The rest, you just wait for a few months to get it for a third of the launch price.
Activision
Wow, another Guitar Hero game. I could pass this year and just stick with Beatles Rock Band. Tony Hawk Ride, with its fancy controller, doesn’t appeal at all. But Modern Warfare 2 looks just as good as anything Infinity Ward have done to date. It will be a HUUUUGE game in 2009. Wolfenstein looks great, despite the fact the trailer tries to hide the fact its a WWII game.
Microsoft
Halo 3: ODST came and went which should be fun, but then Bungie and MS are doing Halo: Reach.
Buy ODST and you get a MP beta invite for Halo: Reach so things look interesting. Forza 3 for you hardcore racing fans will make the 360-owning revheads reaching for the tissues. Considering its likelihood to go up against GT5, it has better be impressive.
MS also showed off their new camera based controller. The thing is, it doesn’t use an actual controller. Natal looks to be goofy, Eyetoy-esque and fun for all the family. There needs to be more info. Peter Molyneux was there to talk about his new project with a boy called Milo. Its a virtual prisoner in a pit so the sadists should be satisfied. I’m still wondering why you would want to with Twitter and Facebook with your 360 but if it lets you do screenshots for sites like this, I’ll be interested. Alan Wake is coming early next year, and I continue to be intrigued but there’s Crackdown 2 from Ruffian games. Not only am I interested, but Cameron won’t be shutting the fuck up about this for the next year.
Oh and there’s a Metal Gear game on 360 featuring Raiden. To me, it sounds like a Ninja Gaiden style game but that’s just pure speculation.
And the show hasn’t even started yet.
