Brutal Legend
Review
Rock on!
by Preston Dozsa
reviewed on PC
Loveable Characters (cntd)
There’s General Lionwhyte, a straight up parody of the glam metal genre that became popular in the late 80’s (and voice by Rob Halford, lead singer of Judas Priest). And then there’s Tim Curry as Emperor Doviculus. Shame that he is only in the latter half of the game, and only in sporadic appearances, because his portrayal had me laughing at his every appearance. Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy and other heavy metal stars voice some of the other characters in game, and their appearances are used to their full potential.
Not all Shines in the Land of Metal
But the characters and world design in Brutal Legend betray the remainder of the game. Not because of any faults, mind you, but because the rest of the game does not hold up to them. I’ve already mentioned the buggy, which feels like it was tacked on without proper development. But it is only the tip of what is a rather large iceberg.
The basic gameplay, that of the hack n’ slash variety, serves its purpose and is quite fun to play with in sporadic sections. You have a massive battle axe that is used for melee attacks, and a guitar that shoots lightning and pyrotechnics as your ranged weapon. It’s incredibly fun to wade into a group of enemies and hack a few limbs off or melt their faces with an epic guitar solo. But it’s not the focus of the game, and as such feels like it’s not quite at its full potential. If Brutal Legend was an action game, I suppose that the gameplay would have been more complex and sophisticated along those lines.
Yet it is not an action game, because the game features battles that are essentially a mini real time strategy game. Units are built from a stage, resources are collected from fans and you order units around using a very simplistic set of controls. Move, follow, attack and defend are what all of the commands boil down to, and it is incredibly difficult to command multiple sections of your army because only units within a certain range can hear your orders. It’s entirely possible to command and use individual squads of units, but it is far too difficult to split your forces up to cover two or more areas. This causes each mission to boil down to hurling your units at the enemy until eventually they die. It’s not complex enough to fully be a real time strategy, which I truly believe it would be an excellent example if it was the primary focus. Yet it’s not, because Brutal Legend is trying to be as many different games as it possibly can.
Rock On!
Despite the negative points, Brutal Legend is still fun to play. Even though each separate gameplay element leaves much to be desired, they are still engaging to play with. Multiplayer in particular forces more complex strategies in the real time strategy aspect, even though the controls are still overly simplistic. And the basic beat ‘em up gameplay still manages to be entertaining despite its lack of complexity. It is a wonder that even though it lacks focus, Brutal Legend still makes me want to play it.
For all the moments of greatness that Brutal Legend has, it is brought down by a lack of unified gameplay structure. I still can’t help but like it, despite myself. So screw it. Let’s sit back, take a swig of beer and shout “ROCK ON!”
7.5
fun score
Pros
Beautiful world, great characters and humour, amazing music, fun
Cons
Poorly implemented gameplay, horrid car, lacks focus
