I confess that at the office of AGG, we worship Tim Schaefer. So we could not have had higher hopes for Brutal Legend, Double Fine Production’s 2nd game, published by EA, designed by the legendary Tim Shaefer who brought us adventure favorites from the all time classic Day of Tentacle, beyond awesome Monkey Island, to the cinematic masterpiece Grim Fandango. So you can see we approached Brutal Legend with some kind of biased predisposition that it would be a godly art-house piece of work, one that features voice work of Jack Black, Tim Curry, and other competent actors and music legends. It fell just about a mile short of our expectation.
Not that it is a bad game or anything, it is far from it, in fact it is better than the 2005 psychological platformer Psychonauts, which I confess, we didn’t like, but admitted that it should have gotten more attention than it deserved. Brutal Legend feels a lot like Full Throttle, which I like the least among all of Shaefer’s mind-boggling adventures, is an excellent representation of a bleak dystopian futuristic world where biker gangs struggle against the world’s transition into anti-gravitational hovercrafts. Brutal Legend is an alternate world of Full Metal Music heaven where the power of music is the key and salvation to the dissidence between demon and mankind. The game is probably a wet dream comes true for those who belong to that rare morsel of the older gaming generation, which grew up with Heavy Metal and recognize every homage Brutal Legend has paid to the iconography of the art you had worshiped in the past. But to the rest of us, just a regular Shaefer fan who has only heard less than a few full metal track in our lifetime, we can’t help to wonder why it couldn’t have been a better game.
Brutal Legend tries to accomplish too much and at times aspects of the game feel like the biker combat sequence in Full Throttle, that it gets in the way of progress the story. If you’ve played the demo you would have gotten the impression that it is a 3rd person action game not unlike God of War, but in fact for the rest of the campaign you are going to take part in most of the decisive battles in RTS mode, which is a prelude to the multi-player mode of the package which you may, or may not play. RTS mode is a pleasant surprise, that it is fun and makes you wish that was how you played Dynasty Warrior. The difference here is that you are playing a general and you have the ability to fly around the battlefield to direct the combat for your units, and it isn’t the type of RTS on PC that you only need to focus on resource management and building and upgrading units. And of course your avatar’s presence in any skirmish will make a difference just like in Dynasty Warrior, Eddie (the protagonist) kicks ass. And not to forget you can use a different double team attack with every different types of unit, some more useful than others.
The rest of the game is sandbox with decent driving mechanics, like GTA and Red Faction Guerrilla but the mission variety is not there and the side quests gets repetitive quickly. There really isn’t any reason to play the side missions extensively unless you are a compulsive completionest gamer and you want to upgrade and see Eddie’s different power and combos. One thing that bothered us a lot was the questionable decision revolving around not have a mini-map HUD when driving around, and having you rely solely on the beam of light from your destination which you can’t always see, and the cryptic turn signals on your car which is reminiscent of the Getaway — which is the worst GTA clone of its kind.
The main story tells a pretty good plot which doesn’t take itself too seriously with very good acting and even with decent mission variety but it is over too quickly, just shortly over 7 hours even if you managed to experience a handful of side missions. There are a few interesting boss fights but there just isn’t enough of it and I can’t help thinking that I would have rather played most of the decisive battles in close-quarter combats. The guitar playing is really Guitar Hero light, required for some relic uncovering in major plot points, but depending on your playing style you might not use it at all in combat, or occasionally it is useful to buff up your troops.
In conclusion, Brutal Legend is what I would call a bard, a jack-of-all-trade mix and match of genres that doesn’t excel in any one aspect other than the music and the visual style it represents, and for some of us we could probably overlook that for the writing and music and the sensibility they convey. For the rest of us we will always be reminded of its faults — it doesn’t tell a better plot than Grim Fandango, it doesn’t have fun open-world exploration and side missions like Red Faction: Guerrilla, it doesn’t have epic 3rd person combat like God of War, it is not a adrenaline-pumping RTS like Starcraft, and it isn’t even half as funny as Monkey Island and Day of Tentacle. At the end Brutal Legend accomplished what Full Throttle had set out to become, not a bad game but certainly not Tim Shaefer at his top game, and we know he is capable of much more. Criticism aside we do sincerely wish the game to be a commercial success and we hope Shaefer will be making much better games till the end of days. Brutal Legend has simply missed its mark by becoming a legend in our book of innovative and influential games.
Watch what Jack Black has to say about it:
