Brutal Legend Review

One I didn't give 5 to.

Brutal Legend

            Brutal Legend is a game given to us by Double Fine Productions courtesy of Tim Schafer whose resume is dotted by masterpieces like the monkey island series, and the massively underrated “Psychonauts”. The game features lead man Eddie Riggs, played but Jack Black, in a fantasy world of.... Who am I kidding if you don’t know what I’m talking about that isn’t going to help. Brutal Legend is a heavy metal love affair where anything that looks like it belongs on an album cover has been put in the game. Battle nuns, demon monks, a sea made up of tears, you name it, it’s in there.

            As I said before the main character Eddie Riggs (played by Jack Black who has exploded onto the metal scene through Tenacious D fame) is pulled into the world by Ormagöden and soon joins up the resistant forces rebelling against an evil empire run by Doviculus (a demon played by Tim Curry). Eddie helps the group gather up an army which he dubs “Iron Heade” adding the e at the end to “make it more bada**”. The army consists of the various members of bands inner workings. Like: Headbangers, groupies, bouncers, roadies, bassists, and a road crew. Using all these people plus the power Eddie gets from his guitar Clementine, Iron Heade starts an all out war with the empire.

            On paper this may seem like one of the greatest games ever, everything about it just screams AWESOME! And for a while it is. The music is authentic heavy metal, not that garbage that modern bands call heavy metal as the opening cinematic points out, and it’s fantastic. For once I didn’t need to plug my ipod into my xbox because the in game music was just as good as anything I had on there. It features bands like Motorhead, Megadeth, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, King Diamond, and many many others. Unsurprisingly these songs fit perfectly into a video game and really add to the whole experience.

            As for the voice talent Schafer’s choices couldn’t have been more perfect. Jack Black adds real flair to his character that I don’t think anyone else could have. Everyone else is a veritable cornucopia of heavy metal God’s like, Lemmy (Motorhead), Rob Halford (Judas Priest), and Ozzy Ozbourne (do I really need to tell you?). As well phenomenal voice acting by Jennifer Hale who, in my opinion, is the greatest female voice actor out there today, and Tim Curry, who is just plain awesome. And yes Tenacious D’s second half Kyle does make an appearance.

            Also in true Schafer form the game is hilarious, within 5 minutes you WILL be laughing. If at nothing else then at Jack over enthusiasm for his character, if you aren’t yelling “decapitation!” you may want to check your pulse because I’m fairly certain you’re dead.

            However, try as I may to butter up this game as much as possible I need to get down to its major flaw. Inconsistency. The first half of the game is fantastic, the story is interesting, the missions are unique and fun, even the side mission are some of the most creative I’ve ever seen. From bringing beer to a party before it gets cold to hunting android deer with a machine gun and a flame thrower, attached to your car. And the gameplay is a fun hack in slash type thing. Unfortunately about halfway through, maybe a little bit sooner, you’re introduced to this games true nature. It’s an RTS, and not even a very good RTS at that. The controls really give you very little strategic options other than “kill that” but even that doesn’t work very well because you still don’t have some of the most basic RTS features to work with. Like rounding up all you’re troops. Even my beloved side missions got reduced to an unending series of races and car defence battles.  And finally the story, though surprisingly strong, isn’t quite strong enough to make up for the rest of the shortcomings.

            I’d love to be able to say go out and buy this game right now, but I just can’t. The fact that the second half is awful is just made worse by the fact the first half was good. On top of all that is the final nail in the coffin. This game is short, really short. It took me about 9 hours even doing all the side missions. As a matter of fact I was able to beat everything except the very final battle in one sitting. So the bottom line here is if you were interested in what I said, or are a true heavy metal fan you may want to check this out, but I can’t recommend anything more than a rent. If not, you can afford to skip it.

3/5