Today I bring you a game that's quite close to my heart, a game of awesomeness. But to do so Must tell an epic tale...
Long ago (4 years ago) lived a man unlike any other man he knew (probably) A man named Tim "The Schafernater" Schafer the man responsible for Double Fine and such games like Maniac Mansion, Grim Fandango and Psychonauts. One fated day The Schafernater (again, probably) was greeted by an almighty being know was "The God of Metal!" The God of Metal spoke onto the Schafernater and demanded he create a video game that was worthy of his awesome being. He wanted songs, that spread the power of Heavy Metal music to the people in order to spread his influence. The Schafernater got his crack team together, hired voice "talent" in the forms of Ozzy Osbourne and Jack Black and many, many others (Including Tim ****ing Curry. After acquiring other "voice actors" he then scoured (probably) the globe in order to find the most mindbogglingly awesome Metal music and placed it all... on an in-game car radio... And so it was... That BrÜtal ****ing Legend.... Was born. Why the bold umlaut? Because Germans are awesome!
As was the tale...
I actually rented this game almost a week after release (2009 and I ALWAYS regretted not buying the full game. I ended up having to rush certain parts and never really got to experience the entire game... Until recently... I've been meaning to by this game on steam since getting my new computer and I've finally done just that... I've (4 years late) purchased BrÜtal legend. (Yes the Ü will be bold every time I use it.)
At the time, the game was a mixed bag on release with some people feeling the game wasn't long enough and that certain aspects weren't as refined as they could have been whilst others referred to the game as "The Holy Grail" of all games, and a "Love Letter to Heavy Metal music!"
Regardless, there was no PC release. People asked and for 4 years they didn't get... Until now... So! Is the port any good? What are my views on the game in general? Do I "head bang" or "old man dance" on the spot? Let's find out.... Lower the gates!
Oh yeah... and SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!
Chapter 1 - Looky Looky!
BrÜtal Legend's world is set in a ... kinda old times, kinda parallel universe ... thingy place which is totally inspired and lives upon Heavy Metal rock music. There are trees shaped as Stage Scaffolding, there are giant Iron Crosses and other "Rock" inspired scenery. That would have been okay... But then that's not nearly as BrÜtal as it needs to be. So EVERYTHING is hyped up to 11. Giant volcanoes in the distance mountains of skulls and sea walls created of giant speakers stacked onto top of each other. The world is colourful, vibrant and sexy as hell! As are the enemies and characters the player encounters. Everything from Demonic nuns (Yes... Demon Nuns!) Head bangers with shoulder muscles that could crush a bus and Goth Zombies... (Yes... Zombie Goths, not that different from actual Goths really) There's huge variety here and every new area will have the player just wanting to stand still for a moment and absorb everything they're seeing and just say "That is so awesome". Everything is perfectly themed, everything looks awesome. The addition of NO HUD UI allows you to gaze upon the world as you wish with nothing in the way, and you don't need a HUD UI anyway.
In terms of sound... well... It's as awesome as flying through the air in a car with an absurd amount of nitro with the engine roaring like a dragon whilst blurting out Heavy Metal music sounds like. It's pretty brilliant. The music variety in this game is LUDICROUS levels of insane... Like a Grand Theft Auto soundtrack but with only good songs and all of them make you want to nod your head and stomp your feet. The voice acting is spectacular, Jack Black gives (in my opinion, please do remember this is an opinion based review) his best performance, it's a perfect blend of funny one liners and ... his personality. The cameo cast all do an excellent job and honestly there isn't a bad voice acting performance. Sometimes you can pick out one or two... but here.. All good. Battle sounds are pretty good as well, mostly due to the fact the mostly everything is ether drowned out by rock music or actually IS some form of rock music, like a thunder strike caused by playing the guitar.
On PC compared to the Xbox 360 version I played, as you can expect, it's a leap and bound better. It still looks about 4 years old, but who gives a shit when the game looks and sounds this awesome. There are a few glitchy animations here and there which are likely never going to be fixed and I had the frame rate drop off for me a little when crazy shenanigans were happening on screen, but apart from that, this port looks and sounds AWESOME!!!!
OH, but beware gamer... NO GRAPHICS SETTINGS OF ANY KIND!!!!!!!!!!!! If you think your computer can't run the screen shot bellow... It probably can't!
Chapter 1 conclusion - BEAUTIFUL world which looks and sounds awesome. An album cover artist's wet dream!
Chapter 2 - Clicky Clicky
Get some tea.. this is going to be a long one...
So the game implements two/three-ish main game play styles. 3rd Person action combat, which focuses on using combo's with both an axe and an "electric" guitar. 3rd person strategy, very similar to a brilliant little game called Sacrifice where the player orders troops that are nearby to the player rather than commanding via a god-like birds eye view. And driving where you... drive (three-ish cause there's a surprising emphasis on driving around)
Firstly the action combat. left click (default) commands your axe, and holding it can use a more powerful attack while respectively the right click commands the use of the guitar. By varying combinations of the two and unlocking combo's and different moves the player can dispatch most enemies that come before them. As well as this the player can attempt to execute different "solos" which require hitting buttons in a particular order and tempo in a "Guitar Hero" kinda style. There can be from melting the faces of any low level enemies nearby to ...*Clear Throat* CALLING FORTH A GIANT FLAMING LED ZEPPELIN TO DROP ON ONE'S FOES! The combat for about half of the game can be rather entertaining and the solos are always fun to pull off (even though the LED ZEPPELIN! Isn't un-lockable in single player until near the end of the game)However what ends up happing is that the combat on its own becomes stale. You'll have unlocked about 7 different combos but you'll likely only find yourself using two or three over and over and over and over again. The don't do nearly enough damage for them to be entertaining to use and it will take a long time to take down enemies by yourself. In addition to the AWFUL control scheme of left click right click, movement being WASD and the lock on being ***ing Ctrl... you end up just not locking on to enemies... It's rather annoying unless your happen to have tentacles instead of arms.
The strategy elements of the game are slowly drip fed to you throughout and the missions you'll be doing will most of the time be in order to explain the functions of different units in your army such as Roadies who carry large speakers on their backs and are yet invisible to the enemy and Head Bangers which smash things with their heads. About 2 hours into the game you'll start to have your actual first strategy battle. Eddie (the main character) can fly about the battle field and issue commands to units he flies over or alternatively he can do it on foot or at the seat of his car. The basics (and you really couldn't make this up) are that you must protect your main stage from the enemy whilst destroying their and capturing "fan fountains" by placing merchandise booths on top of them. What intern happens is engaging battles that involve you multi-tasking like a boss. This can at times be a little too much and you may struggle balancing hiring troops, while fighting enemy commanders, while fighting enemy troops, while observing the battlefield, while trying to pull off certain solos like the LED ZEPPELIN! While also trying to listen to the awesome music. As if this wasn't enough you can also double team up with EVERY unit in your army to do specific moves, like creating a mosh-pit.
This would all be fine... if it wasn't for the controls. The hotkeys for all these things are scattered everything and often require you to hold down a button while you must click an icon in a CIRCULAR RIDICULE obviously designed with consoles in mind. Example was me trying to build a booth on a fan fountain by pulling off the right combo, while training troops and within seconds fly away to safety. It's just too much without a good control system in place. You find yourself having to slow yourself down, when you just wanna go at the speed of light. For someone who's typically quite slow at build orders, to be slowed down by the controls isn't a great thing.
The driving is kinda borderlands-esk. You can explore the world by driving around it. Pretty standard. You can upgrade your car with different weapons, paint jobs and utilities such as bigger engines and more nitro. Controls are a little iffy, though this can mainly be because of it being a port. Controlling the car would be much better with a thumb stick though you're kinda forced to using WASD. However this doesn't mean that it isn't fun, upgrading the car so it can ALMOST fly while going super fast after a jump is a joy. And combine this with the soundtrack at the same time... It's forgiveable.
There are also tuns of collectables and side quests to complete which increase the total game time considerably. Collectables range from freeing relics and finding out the ancient history of the world you're in. Side quests involve range from two "types" of missions for me. The first is story focused side quests, in helping a certain non-recurring character in an inventive way, like helping a guy keep bassists away from a girl he's trying to chat up by creating a giant mosh-pit. These are the rarest of the two types and are relatively few in number. The second type are side quests where you do the same thing again and again for a certain character or characters. Like doing ambushes with a small force and if you lose the force you fail the mission. And and doing a race against are fast car. These get REALLY repetitive REAL quick. And you'll find yourself only doing these for the reward and for no other reason. This reward, which is for completing any mission or finding a collectable, is Fire Tribute which you can spend on upgrades and cosmetic gear from Ozzy.
The problem with the game-play here is the game tries to be a jack of all trades, master of non. None of the different game-plays are in-depth enough to not become repetitive later on in the game. The action isn't fleshed out enough and is two simplified, the strategy game-play is very simple and with only 7 strategy based missions in the game its not nearly as fleshed out as it should be (yet it's bar far, for me, the most fun gameplay style out of the 3) The driving's controls aren't slick enough for me, and can be abit wonky, but because of the music blaring out at the same time, and with all the funny upgrades you can get you'll still enjoy driving around.
There's also a Multiplayer mode in the game where you take part in strategy battles as one of the 3 factions in the game. These are pretty much giant missions from the main story but are quite fun. The problem is, is that it suffers the same problems as the single player in that it isn't fleshed out enough.
Chapter 2 conclusion, Not refined enough and tries to be too much at once. Still fun though. Controls are not suited for the PC at all however it's bearable. Too short and quite repetitive.
Multiplayer is alright.. but could be better
Chapter 3 - Fluffy Fluffy
In BrÜal Legend you play Eddie Riggs (Jack Black) a rock and roll Roadie who feels that he was born too late in a world that doesn't care. Luckily for him when a piece of set falls on him and crushes him like a bug he is transported to a world of Heavy Metal. There he meets Ophelia (Jennifer Hale), the classic rock and roll chick love interest, and Lars (Zach Hanks) who the rebel against an evil demonic army lead by Emperor Doviculus (Tim ****ing Curry) and his lacky General Lionwhyte (Rob Halford) who is enslaving the people of Blade Henge. Along the way he meets, The Guardian of Metal (Ozzy Osbourne) a spiritual healer and Kill Master Lemmy (Lemmy).
Eddie offers himself forth as the person to put on an awesome show and take it on tour to free the world. The story is full of twists, turns and betrayal and is full of some of the most awesome lines in video game history like; "Now I bet you wished you'd worn a bib 'cause now you've got face all over your shirt!" and "Everytime you come back here, there's another ****ing scratch on that beautiful car" Spoken by Ozzy Himself.
The voice acting here is BRILLIANT! and every character is loveable.
The game is also bloody hilarious throughout and I'd actually go as far as calling this game a "comedy game" everything is rock and rolled themed and it gleams out all forms of exaggeration at the same time. You never feel like it's insulting Heavy Metal, just telling you that it's awesome because of X Y and Z.
In terms of actual story length... it's definitely a short one. Lasting only about 12 hours-ish being longer if you complete ALL the sides quests. Probably the biggest shame is the fact that the game is unlikely going to receive a sequel, considering the fact the story leaves on a kind of cliff hanger "I'll be back" kinda way.
As last time I will go through my favourite character/s and explain why I liked them so much so...
Emperor Doviculus.
Leader of the demonic armies and total bad ass. Voiced by frigging Tim Curry! He's everything you like in a bad guy and perfectly bends people to his will. You can also play as him in the Multiplayer which is awesome and the voice acting is bloody stellar! Did I mention Tim ****ing Curry?!
Chapter 3 conclusion - Too short, but still really, really good. Shame there will unlikely be a sequel.
Chapter 4 - Yay or Nay?
This game is a mixed bag. On one side, the game play is not as good as it should have been, it's quite repetitive and is too short. The game tries to be a jack of all trades but ends up being a master of none. On the other hand, You have a spectacular love letter to Heavy Metal bursting with charm and humour that not only makes the player feel frigging awesome but despite the game play not being brilliant, you never regret the time you spend with it.
It's an odd subject considering I always defend the line of "Games are to play, not to watch" but BrÜtal Legend is a perfect example of how this line of thinking can be wrong. This isn't the type of game to replay again and again because you want to unlock the different combo's or want to be able to be really good at online. Instead you replay this game cause you want to experience all the jokes and the story again. I've now completed this game twice... and you know what... I'm likely going to do so again.
This game's Theme, Music and Story throws the Gameplay over it's shoulder and carries it to the promised land of rock, places it down at the side of a beach, hands it a beer and says to it "don't worry buddy, we'll take it from here just sit back. Listen to some rock music and I'll be back in a jiffy"
An example of playing a game, in order to enjoy the things that don't have anything to do with the game play... Not that's terrible, but it's no where near as good as it could have been.
Final Thoughts? If you like rock music, enjoy having a laugh or two or just want an okay game to tide you over for a little while then pick it up. The PC version is available on Steam for £14.99 or your regional equivalent and although the controls are suited for the Xbox 360, Id still pick it up on PC just because it looks a thousand time's better. Just be sure to look into checking that you can run it before hand. Don't expect the best game ever, but expect to have a good time none the less!
My name's been ThespianHunter, Tim ****ing Curry!... And I'll catch you next time.
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
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