Brutal Legends Review

Here it is! Tim Schafer’s Brutal Legend, where it always should have been – just over three years late. You might be pushing the bar on fashionable lateness there, Tim.

For those of you not familiar with the game (and it suffers from what the industry refers to as chronic Double-Finitus) here’s a quick primer. It’s the story of the criminally under-appreciated (easily a metaphor for Double Fine themselves) roadie Eddie Riggs, essentially a heavily characterised Jack Black, transported by a giant fire-beast to a mythical land inspired by classic rock and metal album covers. Sounds good? You know it does. And it has all of the music to match.

Setting out to free the brutal lands from the clutches of the evil Emperor Doviculus (voiced by Tim Curry) and hordes of wannabe hair-metal head bangers, Eddie utilizes a legendary axe and his trusty guitar, upon which he can play a variety of solos and power-chords. These are all cool and quirky touches like face-melting solos that genuinely melt faces, and other such literal interpretations of rock and metal cliches (The Hindenberg-style zeppelin you can summon is a personal favourite). These are all very flashy and awe-inspiring at first, and then after the initial rush of “Holy shit I’m playing as Jack Black shredding a guitar and dropping exploding zeppelins on emo kids” wears off, some of the game’s unpleasant flaws start to show. In the beginning, you’re teaming up with Brutal Legend’s rock-and-roll royalty cast, fighting alongside Lemmy and having your abilities upgraded by Ozzy Osbourne. The soundtrack kicks ass too, packed with Devildriver, Motorhead, Black Sabbath, KMFDM, and Opeth. There’s a good range of rock and metal here from the past three decades or so, so whether your tastes are classic or contemporary, Brutal Legend will have something for you to slay goths and S&M nuns to.  Fortunately, this is all “fuck yeah” enough to carry you through into the game’s meagre second half. Allow me to elaborate.

The meat of the title is an action adventure/real time strategy hybrid, although the strategy aspect does just come down to gathering up all your buddies into a ball and throwing them at the nearest tower. But early on, the game swings so heavily into the free-roaming action adventure half – that has you riding Eddie’s epic hot rod over crazy jumps and tackling metal spiders that spins bass strings – that it seriously runs out of momentum and becomes a chain of lackluster RTS segments from one metal theme to the next. The game is excellently designed, and the characters are just as quirky and likable as they were in Psychonauts. The other three factions in the game showcase some gloriously individual design, with truly unique character models. The goth faction in particular is something special, weeping brides and titanic trees hosting murders of vicious crows. This is where Tim Schafer’s genius really shines. It’s just a shame the game doesn’t quite stand up to that genius.

The second half of the game is literally a tour across the map clearing ‘Stage Battles’. These RTS sections are fun at first because they seem like a little gimmick rather than something you’d base an entire game around. It’s straightforward RTS textbook kinda stuff, setting up Merch Stalls over vents of lost souls to gain resources which you’ll spend on upgrading the stage and the units you’ll be sending into battle. Eddie uses the same simple commands that he does to command a group of five as he does a group of thirty, which really limits what you’re capable of doing strategically. It’s easy enough at the start but when you’re at the end game and you’re dealing with multiple waves of enemies from different directions it becomes frustrating and time-consuming rather than the rock’n’roll joyride it should be.

In the end, Brutal Legend doesn’t really deliver what it promises, but it remains a good amount of fun. The presence of Rob Halford, the surprisingly intelligible Ozzy, Lemmy, Lita Ford and of course, Jack Black make this an essential title for rockers who enjoy a good game every now and then. You won’t see anything like Brutal Legend again soon, that’s for sure. It’s all tied together with a cracking blend of Double Fine and Jack Black’s trademark humour, and enough good ideas and intentions to keep you playing even when you eventually get tired of the repetitive RTS conflicts.

What Schafer and Double Fine set out to create with the troubled Brutal Legend has become something of a paradox. It doesn’t quite deliver what you expect and becomes deeply flawed towards the end game as, presumably, Schafer ran out of game ideas and Jack Black ran out of jokes, but still remains a true one-in-a-million title. Brutal Legend wasn’t made for everyone. It was made for a very specific group of gamers that find themselves grinding through World of Warcraft dungeons at 2:00AM with AC DC spurring them on, or people who just can’t get their killstreaks going unless they have some Motorhead or Manowar for moral support. Rarely does a game cater so extensively to such a small group of people, and in a way, that kind of makes the repetition towards the end slightly easier to take. The £13.99 price point is just right for Brutal Legend, so if you want to wade into a world of blood, guts, metal and comedy, the time has never been better.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.