There are very few companies in gaming that I personally love as much as Double Fine Productions. Tim Schafer, the company’s founder, is quite possibly the most creative man working right now, coming up with great concepts on a consistent basis and being the head designer on many of my favorite games, including Grim Fandango, Broken Age, and the ever-popular Psychonauts. He really has a talent for just coming up with the most amazing, bizarre ideas and finding a way to turn it into one of the most fun games ever produced. So whenever I get the chance to play through another brilliant concept from the mind of Mr. Schafer, I jump at it. You could imagine my excitement when the cookie drew one of the few games of his that I’ve never touched, Brutal Legend. Even though I’m admittedly not a metalhead at all, I was excited to take that imagery and see it come to life in an amazing dystopian adventure hack and slash. And Jack Black being in the lead wasn’t hurting things either, of course. What I got was a little different than what I expected, but we’ll get to that later on. In the meantime, this is Brutal Legend.
Brutal Legend puts you into the shoes of Eddie Riggs (Jack Black), the best roadie in the world for the worst metal band in the world. He goes on this whole thing about the importance of being a roadie, being the man who does all the hard work and gets none of the credit but loves it anyway because that’s what a roadie does. According to him ‘a good roadie knows his whole job is to make someone else look good, keep someone else safe, help someone else do what they were put here to do’. Additionally, ‘if he’s doing his job right, you don’t know he’s even there. Once in a while, he might step on stage just to fix a problem, to set something right. But then before you realize he was there or what he did, he’s gone.’ Pay attention to that, it’s kind of a thing with Eddie. Anyways, while doing his job one day for the awful band that Eddie works for who definitely aren’t a pastiche of second-wave emo rock, he gets injured and bleeds out onto his belt buckle and accidentally unleashes an ancient chrome-skinned beast who proceeds to kill everything and ravage the landscape. Eddie, fortunately, is mysteriously spared by the beast and proceeds to pass out, where he awakens in the distant past, where everything resembles a metal cover. This School of Rock sequel ended up really weird.
This isn’t the end to Eddie’s troubles of course. The world he has awaken in has been taken over by the forces of hell, mankind lives almost exclusively in a slave position under the rule of General Lionwhyte, a representation of glam metal that we’re going to get back to later, and the resistance is basically just three people hanging out around a giant sword and trying to survive. Eddie, of course, does get a magic axe (as in the weapon) out of it the deems him the chosen one who will either free or destroy the land. Not that the land could get any more destroyed, but you know. As well he gets a magic axe (as in the guitar) to shred on and do a variety of things from raising the ancient artifacts of this civilization to summoning the undead legions of metal fans to literally melting people’s faces off. He decides to use these, as well as a roadster he makes out of some parts he finds lying around, to aid the resistance, who he discovers might be in need of a man with Eddie’s particular talents to serve as the resistance’s right-hand man. It’s now up to Eddie to do all the groundwork for the resistance and march upon the various villain factions you’ll meet along the way. None of whom are the devil voiced by Dave Grohl which is super disappointing.
The story of this game admittedly isn’t very deep. It’s your standard chosen one narrative but drenched in leather and denim and starring Jack Black. But honestly, at least for the beginning of it all, that was enough to keep me going. Maybe it was my trust in Double Fine or maybe it was my reading of other reviews saying that the story was one of the major strong points of this whole thing, but I was actually pretty open to all of this despite my distaste for metal. Unfortunately, as I went further along in the game, that pretty quickly fell apart. The entire first half of the story relies on you being a devout metalhead and without that it just falls flat. The first half villain is basically just someone to rage against as a manifestation of the commercialism of metal and I just can’t muster the energy to care about that. And without that, all he is is a not especially intimidating or interesting villain. And this issue repeats with the rest of the narrative. The really major villain, the demon emperor Doviculus, only appears three times and his only character trait is being Tim Curry as a demon. The second half of the story is based around a conflict that is started by the main character just being stupid and unlikable. And at its core, it is just a dystopian revolution story but this time it’s metal and this might just be me living in a post-dystopian YA novel boom world but I don’t find that especially interesting. But, I could have also just been done with the story because, to spoil the verdict, I think this is an especially bad game.
I’m going to fire off a few positives right now because I’m not going to have very many kind things to say about this so might as well get these out of the way first. The voice acting in this game is fantastic. The biggest and most important part of this is obviously Jack Black, who gives one of the best performances of his career in this thing. Eddie is honestly not an especially deep character, most of his dialogue is catchphrases, snark and talking about how awesome it is to be a roadie, but Black brings this character to life and makes him very endearing. Add to that the presence of industry staples such as Jennifer Hale, Kath Soucie and, of course, the always wonderful Tim Curry, playing the game’s love interest Ophelia, second in command and eventual leader of the resistance Lita and Doviculus respectively, to make the vocals all that more endearing. And that’s not even mentioning the presence of metal legends like Rob Halford of Judas Priest, the late Lemmy the Lurch of Motorhead and, of course, Ozzy Osbourne. The cast ties this game together and breathes more life into these characters than they really deserve.
Speaking of those characters, I rag on them a little but they’re pretty solid too. The main cast is composed of a lot of trope-y characters but they work very well for the kind of story this is, kind of a modern-day Norse myth sort of thing. Lars Halford is a great leader archetype who unfortunately doesn’t last, Ophelia starts out being a fairly generic love interest but evolves into probably the game’s most complex character, Lita starts out a little rough around the edges but learns throughout the game to trust people regardless of their past and Magnus is just a fun sidekick character that ends up having the most fun lines. As well the massive supporting cast of generic NPCs are all pretty one-note, but they’re fun to interact with. The only characters who don’t really click in my opinion are General Lionwhyte and Doviculus, but that’s mostly because the latter isn’t in the game very often and is just a generic bad guy who spouts exposition mostly and Lionwhyte… we’ll get to him.
The aesthetic for this game is really its strongest point. The entire thing looks like a metal album come to life, with a lot of chrome and fire and destruction. It’s a strange combination of beauty in grit and grime and ugly that surprisingly works. It’s a world I wouldn’t mind going back and exploring if not for other factors. As well, the game has a really nice artistic sensibility. They don’t strive for realism really in this game and that’s to its benefit. The game still looks gorgeous despite being several years old. I especially love the character design on a lot of the generic NPC characters. They start out fairly normal, just average concepts you would see in a metal concert taken to the nth degree, i.e. headbangers with massive muscular necks and giant flat faces or bouncers with massive fists and muscular arms. But once the Sea of Black Tears starts being present as a faction, we get a lot of cool goth metal designs that I personally think are the strongest in the game. Of course, the jungle-dwelling KISS Amazons are also rather nice. This game is so cool visually.
The soundtrack to Brutal Legend is just not my thing, but I have to imagine if you’re into the metal, you’ll really dig it. There are 20 songs composed specifically for this game that all sound like awesome metal riffs with screaming vocals, as well as an additional 107 licensed metal songs that can be unlocked and listened to while driving the overworld. The sheer amount and variety of metal in this game is astonishing, with legends like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Motorhead to bands like Anthrax, Mastodon and a band which is definitely not a joke to me, Megadeth. There are even a couple actual comedy bands in here, with Tenacious D contributing a couple songs to the soundtrack because, you know, their lead singer is the star of the show, and Dethklok of all people making an appearance. Even Through the Fire and the Flames is here, so you can relive your embarrassment from ten years ago and the time you attempted to play it on expert in Guitar Hero III to impress your friends only to fail out of the opening section. It feels like they really did their homework to make the most awesome metal soundtrack possible for all the people who are into that sort of thing. Me personally I just played with the game on mute most of the time while blasting some low down acoustic neo-folk music like the hipster I am. Though there is definitely an appeal to riding around the game's world blasting Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue.
So, here’s where we get into the multitude of problems I have with this game. Now, everything I’ve currently said about the game is all well and good, but what good is a game if you can’t play it. You know, assuming it’s meant to be played in the first place, it’s not like this is a visual novel or anything. This is unfortunately where Brutal Legend falls apart. There are basically three faces of Brutal Legend, all ranging from ‘meh’ to ‘unplayable’. There’s Brutal Legend as the hack-and-slash action brawler, Brutal Legend as the big one on one real-time strategy game and Brutal Legend as the big exploration and mission heavy sandbox game. I’m going to tackle them one at a time in detail to hopefully explain why, in spite of all the praise I’ve had thus far, I think this game is just really truly awful. You know originally I was planning on this being a fun, easy review with a lot of Tenacious D jokes and a general theme of ‘it’s not for me but I can still recommend it’.
Brutal Legend as a hack-and-slash action game is easily it’s best face. The gameplay is almost designed exclusively for this. There are loads of combos to learn, several stages to just power through and beat up enemies and really, if this is what Brutal Legend was primarily based around, I probably would’ve gotten on with it a lot more. That’s unfortunately not saying much. While Brutal Legend is a good beat ‘em up in concept, execution ruins it hard. The combat in this game is not especially satisfying or rewarding or, you know, fun. Eddie’s axe, the Separator, doesn’t really feel like there’s any weight or substance to it, so every slash feels more or less the same and leaves the player cold. Even with the option of gore added into it, which you can turn on or off at the beginning of the game, it doesn’t feel fun to slash your way through enemies. Take this combat versus something like, say, Bayonetta. Bayonetta’s attacks have that weight to them, that power. You enjoy fighting because it feels intense and fun. Brutal Legend is just completely missing this. And let’s not even talk about Eddie’s useless ranged attacks with his guitar, Clementine.
Brutal Legend’s overworld has a lot of space and not a lot to fill it. Sure, there’s missions you can do and objects you can find, but the missions are all ‘take out this group of enemies’ or ‘compete in this race’ or the occasional ‘stop some of your army from charming the ladies other members of your army are trying to romance.’ It’s not engaging work and is more an unfortunate extension of the game’s failures as a beat ‘em up. The objects you can find, meanwhile, are all visually impressive but only give you the most minor of rewards in the long run. Everything in this game gives you this hybrid money-experience to be used to upgrade Eddie and his vehicle, the Deuce. Which is great if you like how this game plays and can find the shop to do it, something that becomes increasingly and unnecessarily difficult to do as the game progresses.
Also, there’s the Deuce itself which, look, I don’t like vehicles or vehicle sections in games that otherwise don’t have them and aren’t designed for them. At best they’re distracting and at worst they’re less a stage and more the reason you’re about to make a hole in the nearest available wall. And the Deuce is probably the worst vehicle in this kind of game I’ve ever seen. It’s too fast, too loose and too often required to progress in the game for you to not pull your hair out at some point. It has a brake, but as far as I can tell it’s not for drifting, it’s for stopping you immediately regardless of whether or not you’re holding the gas and then immediately kicking yourself into reverse. At some point, I started calling the Deuce ‘the Pinball’, because that’s closer to how it felt. Not really controlling it, just bouncing back and forth between obstacles until I could get a straightaway. And of course, it’s basically required to navigate the overworld reliably because it’s way too huge to cover on foot without taking an eternity. Pick your poison, either way it has its thorns and it’s everything but a good time. I'm terrible.
But I saved the worst for last. When I was first playing Brutal Legend I was so sure that Brutal Legend as the open world game was going to be the worst shade just for the Deuce alone. But I just couldn’t, the true face of Brutal Legend just built up so much ill will from me I had to put it last. Brutal Legend, despite being designed like an exceptionally mediocre hack-and-slash beat ‘em up, decides that it is, instead, a third person, over-the-shoulder, army vs. army real-time strategy game. And it is horrid. There are still positives to it, admittedly. This is really where that Double Fine charm kicks in the most. See, much like most RTS games and most strategy games in general, unless your name is Fire Emblem, Brutal Legend requires resources in order to construct the units at the base, as well as a way to harness those resources. But Brutal Legend decides to play it as a giant battle of the bands, with your resources being fans, your ability to harness those resources being giant, towering merchandise booths and the base being a massive stage. And fans allow you to summon various units, the aforementioned metal stereotypes taken to the nth degree, such as your standard melee units being headbangers, your standard ranged units being groupies and so on. It’s a clever use of the concept that justifies its theme and setting.
Then you can see why it’s such a downright shame, such an awful waste, that these sections are actively trying not to be fun. First off, the game doesn’t ever give you a proper tutorial or understanding on how these sections work. This is something Tim Schafer has even lamented after the game’s release, especially since this gameplay is at the core of the multiplayer and the game doesn’t give you anything to go off other than ‘build merch booths, build units, charge, die, figure out what you did wrong, charge again’. Defense is a dirty word to this game too, at least in the single player. There’s no point in playing even the least bit defensively because the crux of the RTS segments is so built around offense that it’s better to just charge on the enemy base than it is to protect your own. And then the one time after you’ve established the flow of these segments where you have to play defensively, you’re basically just still playing offensively and there are no negative repercussions other than you losing units.
Which is problem number two. Resource management is an important part of strategy games and Brutal Legend is no different. The problem arises when there’s only one resource that you’re amassing fairly slowly and the game often needs you to drastically change your entire army layout between points in the fight. Take, for instance, the Lionwhyte boss fight at the halfway point of the game. The majority of this level is played very standardly, with you making units to march upon all the fan geysers, killing the monsters covering them and then taking them for yourself. But then, once you’ve accomplished that, you need to suddenly build an entire force of more expensive units to take down Lionwhyte’s two guard towers so you can march the full force of your army onto his base and destroy it. And each of these units you need to make also requires you to upgrade your base twice. So to just build one of these sets of units, you need a total of 900 fans as well as the time to upgrade your base twice and conquer the stage while also building other units so you can do so. And it takes forever to get 900 fans even with that. If I have the stage fully conquered and I’m doing a good job of upholding my dominance, I’ll get roughly 12 fans every half second. I need 900. So throw on an extra 37.5 seconds to my stage time just waiting to amass the necessary resources only for it to come down to whether or not RNGesus is kind that day and these units that I spent so long waiting to build can safely get across the battlefield to do the thing I need them to do. And there's also a 40 unit limit at any given time, which doesn't sound too bad until you realize your standard units actually count for four units rather than just the one.
And then there's problem number three, the fact that, with all of this RTS nonsense going on, the game still expects you to be on the ground hacking and slashing your way through the hordes of enemies. You have to play double duty as warrior and commander, because quite frankly your units are all idiots who will always opt to gang up on a single enemy rather than spread themselves out and take out the bunch at once, leading to a quick defeat and more unnecessary fan cost. And, yes, the game does give you options to command your troops. Unfortunately, your options don't amount to anything more complex than 'head in direction', 'head towards tower', 'head towards enemy' and 'stop'. That’s it. And it’s always the full brunt of your army, or whatever section of it is available in a specific radius, and it’s always one of these four options. The game does give you the ability to give individual units or groups of units orders to act out. Which is all fine and good, but often times the units are in some manner of chaotic mess and highlighting them for individual orders ends up as too much of a headache. And you’re basically left completely open for attack by enemy units or the enemy commander while you're trying to highlight individual units. Side tangent, I really hate that modern gaming, especially the western gaming market, have just decided having a HUD is bad. I get nothing from the screen changing color as I get hit. Screen turns to red, I could have ten hits left or I could have one. Also, since this isn’t meaty enough to get a whole paragraph, the game never tells you the base is capable of defending itself in some way. Or healing itself. You have to either find that out by seeking it out in the in-game lore journal or by just happening upon it by chance.
But you know what, fine. The gameplay isn’t great, but hey, all games don’t need great gameplay if the other elements are strong enough to carry it. I mean, I’m a Kingdom Hearts fan, I totally get loving a game despite it not being very fun to play. So, let’s tackle Brutal Legend’s failures at being as cool as it wants to be. And this starts, much like with most things that fail at being as cool as they want to be, with Through the Fire and the Flames. General Lionwhyte’s defeat at the halfway point in the game marks a massive tonal and narrative shift, as you’d expect. The game turns from being about fighting the commercialization of metal as represented by an absurd caricature of hair metal that doesn’t actually resemble any hair metaller to being an extremely lore heavy sword and sorcery story about fighting goth metal ghosts and BDSM demons. And to represent this shift, the game decides to end Lionwhyte’s chapter with an escape sequence. Set to Through the Fire and the Flames. And, hoo boy did this game miss it’s chance to be awesome here. First off, the Deuce doesn’t play any better here than it does anywhere else, leading to a lot of crashing, a lot of deaths and a lot of replaying the most obnoxiously self-important guitar bits in metal history. Secondly, if you can get the Deuce to comply, the whole thing takes about two minutes to complete. Meaning you’ll just be getting to the first chorus before the song awkwardly cuts out and you’ll never get to the impressive solo that comprises the back half of the song. And this is where the game truly loses me, when it tries too hard and fails even harder at doing the one thing it is otherwise really good at, being cool. I would, for once, be perfectly fine with the game giving me a glorified cutscene just to use its intended setup to the best possible effect.
But even that isn’t enough to make my have the burning distaste for this game that I do. I have mentioned twice now that there’s a problem with Lionwhyte that I would get to later, and this is the time. So, Lionwhyte is a representation of the commercialization of metal, and quite honestly, fair shake. As someone who is generally open to my favorite genres finding success, I am still a little wary of the integration of popular culture into said genres because of how the tastes of someone uneducated in the genre can distort what I love about it. I can only imagine with a subculture as huge as metalheads that this is a serious issue they deal with. My problem comes with how they chose to portray this commercialization. There are dozens of metal bands you can blame for this. KISS, for instance, is almost entirely a commercial brand rather than being a band and has been for almost its entire lifespan. Or you could go after Van Halen, who basically started hair metal and could be easily blamed for the commercialization of metal. Or you could go after Bon Jovi, who lead second wave hair metal to popularity and it could be argued is responsible for the subsequent decline. Or maybe even ACDC or Aerosmith, acts that blew up as metal/rock crossover and then opted to abandon the genre when the public consciousness changed. With all these options and many more that I can't mention for the sake of time or won't mention for the sake of not angering even more metal fans, it makes me wonder why they went with David Bowie.
Now, I’m no David Bowie expert, my entire experience with him is Labyrinth, a movie I don’t particularly care for, Space Oddity, a song that I absolutely love, Under Pressure, where for years I thought that was just a straight Queen song and the musicless video for his and Mick Jagger’s cover of the classic Martha and the Vandellas R&B hit Dancing in the Street. Even still, going to go out on a limb here and say he isn’t metal, has never been metal and, if he hadn’t tragically passed away, never would’ve been metal. So why choose him. Theory A is just that Rob Halford could do a really good Bowie and they had him so, you know, why not. And, yeah, it’s a really good impression. Theory B, however, which I find far more likely, is that they opted for an easy target that wouldn’t offend anyone’s metal sensibilities because metal fans are about their metal bands for life and you don’t want to start a war in your target demographic. Which would be fair enough, except I don’t feel like they fully realized the consequences of this decision from their own thematic standpoint.
See, by representing the commercialization of metal with someone who is very much not metal, it seems to me, as an outsider who doesn’t get this at all, that you’re taking a stance and saying that metal is better than everything else. Which is totally your opinion and I get it, I could go on forever about how Paramore is the greatest band of all time. But by making it such a definitive theme in your creation, it comes across rather as you not saying that it’s your opinion that metal is better based on personal taste, but rather that it’s a definitive truth. Metal is just better, according to Brutal Legend. It’s important and powerful and true art and its subgenres and competitors are all nothing more than abominations on the truth. And this is the same arrogant, self-important attitude that made me almost walk out of La La Land when Ryan Gosling starts ranting about how jazz is objectively the greatest genre but only if it’s played the way he likes it. It’s an attitude that stagnates art and creates militant fanbases and I just can’t jam with it. You like metal, that’s cool, go crazy. But it’s not better or worse than anything else. Yes, even ska. Though I might just be reading too much into it and this could just be a necessary device for the narrative and not a reflection of the thoughts and feelings of Tim Schafer or the other fine members of Double Fine that worked on this. But I feel like it’s still important to bring up because I remember what it’s like being impressionable and going on with ideologies that are told to you in a factual manner just because they seem legit. Heck, that's the crux of the reason I never got into Star Wars, this being told that I should like something because it's this great, important thing and my opinions, which are otherwise a big 'eh', being shifted to be more negative as a result.
I’m sorry that this one didn’t turn out as fun as my others. Who would’ve thought that Brutal Legend was my breaking point. I can’t recommend Brutal Legend. I see a lot of good in this, and I want to recommend it just based on that. But I’ve never wanted to stop playing something as much as I did with Brutal Legend. I’m so disappointed too because it’s a huge passion project of one of my favorite devs and I just didn’t click with it at all. But Brutal Legend is, in my opinion, just an especially terrible game and I’d rather not promote it regardless of the reason. Play Psychonauts or Grim Fandango and you’ll likely see why I love Schafer so much. I hope you enjoyed this look at Brutal Legend and next time around we’ll be going into the future with Azure Striker Gunvolt. See ya guys then.
Brutal Legend puts you into the shoes of Eddie Riggs (Jack Black), the best roadie in the world for the worst metal band in the world. He goes on this whole thing about the importance of being a roadie, being the man who does all the hard work and gets none of the credit but loves it anyway because that’s what a roadie does. According to him ‘a good roadie knows his whole job is to make someone else look good, keep someone else safe, help someone else do what they were put here to do’. Additionally, ‘if he’s doing his job right, you don’t know he’s even there. Once in a while, he might step on stage just to fix a problem, to set something right. But then before you realize he was there or what he did, he’s gone.’ Pay attention to that, it’s kind of a thing with Eddie. Anyways, while doing his job one day for the awful band that Eddie works for who definitely aren’t a pastiche of second-wave emo rock, he gets injured and bleeds out onto his belt buckle and accidentally unleashes an ancient chrome-skinned beast who proceeds to kill everything and ravage the landscape. Eddie, fortunately, is mysteriously spared by the beast and proceeds to pass out, where he awakens in the distant past, where everything resembles a metal cover. This School of Rock sequel ended up really weird.
This isn’t the end to Eddie’s troubles of course. The world he has awaken in has been taken over by the forces of hell, mankind lives almost exclusively in a slave position under the rule of General Lionwhyte, a representation of glam metal that we’re going to get back to later, and the resistance is basically just three people hanging out around a giant sword and trying to survive. Eddie, of course, does get a magic axe (as in the weapon) out of it the deems him the chosen one who will either free or destroy the land. Not that the land could get any more destroyed, but you know. As well he gets a magic axe (as in the guitar) to shred on and do a variety of things from raising the ancient artifacts of this civilization to summoning the undead legions of metal fans to literally melting people’s faces off. He decides to use these, as well as a roadster he makes out of some parts he finds lying around, to aid the resistance, who he discovers might be in need of a man with Eddie’s particular talents to serve as the resistance’s right-hand man. It’s now up to Eddie to do all the groundwork for the resistance and march upon the various villain factions you’ll meet along the way. None of whom are the devil voiced by Dave Grohl which is super disappointing.
The story of this game admittedly isn’t very deep. It’s your standard chosen one narrative but drenched in leather and denim and starring Jack Black. But honestly, at least for the beginning of it all, that was enough to keep me going. Maybe it was my trust in Double Fine or maybe it was my reading of other reviews saying that the story was one of the major strong points of this whole thing, but I was actually pretty open to all of this despite my distaste for metal. Unfortunately, as I went further along in the game, that pretty quickly fell apart. The entire first half of the story relies on you being a devout metalhead and without that it just falls flat. The first half villain is basically just someone to rage against as a manifestation of the commercialism of metal and I just can’t muster the energy to care about that. And without that, all he is is a not especially intimidating or interesting villain. And this issue repeats with the rest of the narrative. The really major villain, the demon emperor Doviculus, only appears three times and his only character trait is being Tim Curry as a demon. The second half of the story is based around a conflict that is started by the main character just being stupid and unlikable. And at its core, it is just a dystopian revolution story but this time it’s metal and this might just be me living in a post-dystopian YA novel boom world but I don’t find that especially interesting. But, I could have also just been done with the story because, to spoil the verdict, I think this is an especially bad game.
I’m going to fire off a few positives right now because I’m not going to have very many kind things to say about this so might as well get these out of the way first. The voice acting in this game is fantastic. The biggest and most important part of this is obviously Jack Black, who gives one of the best performances of his career in this thing. Eddie is honestly not an especially deep character, most of his dialogue is catchphrases, snark and talking about how awesome it is to be a roadie, but Black brings this character to life and makes him very endearing. Add to that the presence of industry staples such as Jennifer Hale, Kath Soucie and, of course, the always wonderful Tim Curry, playing the game’s love interest Ophelia, second in command and eventual leader of the resistance Lita and Doviculus respectively, to make the vocals all that more endearing. And that’s not even mentioning the presence of metal legends like Rob Halford of Judas Priest, the late Lemmy the Lurch of Motorhead and, of course, Ozzy Osbourne. The cast ties this game together and breathes more life into these characters than they really deserve.
Speaking of those characters, I rag on them a little but they’re pretty solid too. The main cast is composed of a lot of trope-y characters but they work very well for the kind of story this is, kind of a modern-day Norse myth sort of thing. Lars Halford is a great leader archetype who unfortunately doesn’t last, Ophelia starts out being a fairly generic love interest but evolves into probably the game’s most complex character, Lita starts out a little rough around the edges but learns throughout the game to trust people regardless of their past and Magnus is just a fun sidekick character that ends up having the most fun lines. As well the massive supporting cast of generic NPCs are all pretty one-note, but they’re fun to interact with. The only characters who don’t really click in my opinion are General Lionwhyte and Doviculus, but that’s mostly because the latter isn’t in the game very often and is just a generic bad guy who spouts exposition mostly and Lionwhyte… we’ll get to him.
The aesthetic for this game is really its strongest point. The entire thing looks like a metal album come to life, with a lot of chrome and fire and destruction. It’s a strange combination of beauty in grit and grime and ugly that surprisingly works. It’s a world I wouldn’t mind going back and exploring if not for other factors. As well, the game has a really nice artistic sensibility. They don’t strive for realism really in this game and that’s to its benefit. The game still looks gorgeous despite being several years old. I especially love the character design on a lot of the generic NPC characters. They start out fairly normal, just average concepts you would see in a metal concert taken to the nth degree, i.e. headbangers with massive muscular necks and giant flat faces or bouncers with massive fists and muscular arms. But once the Sea of Black Tears starts being present as a faction, we get a lot of cool goth metal designs that I personally think are the strongest in the game. Of course, the jungle-dwelling KISS Amazons are also rather nice. This game is so cool visually.
The soundtrack to Brutal Legend is just not my thing, but I have to imagine if you’re into the metal, you’ll really dig it. There are 20 songs composed specifically for this game that all sound like awesome metal riffs with screaming vocals, as well as an additional 107 licensed metal songs that can be unlocked and listened to while driving the overworld. The sheer amount and variety of metal in this game is astonishing, with legends like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Motorhead to bands like Anthrax, Mastodon and a band which is definitely not a joke to me, Megadeth. There are even a couple actual comedy bands in here, with Tenacious D contributing a couple songs to the soundtrack because, you know, their lead singer is the star of the show, and Dethklok of all people making an appearance. Even Through the Fire and the Flames is here, so you can relive your embarrassment from ten years ago and the time you attempted to play it on expert in Guitar Hero III to impress your friends only to fail out of the opening section. It feels like they really did their homework to make the most awesome metal soundtrack possible for all the people who are into that sort of thing. Me personally I just played with the game on mute most of the time while blasting some low down acoustic neo-folk music like the hipster I am. Though there is definitely an appeal to riding around the game's world blasting Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue.
So, here’s where we get into the multitude of problems I have with this game. Now, everything I’ve currently said about the game is all well and good, but what good is a game if you can’t play it. You know, assuming it’s meant to be played in the first place, it’s not like this is a visual novel or anything. This is unfortunately where Brutal Legend falls apart. There are basically three faces of Brutal Legend, all ranging from ‘meh’ to ‘unplayable’. There’s Brutal Legend as the hack-and-slash action brawler, Brutal Legend as the big one on one real-time strategy game and Brutal Legend as the big exploration and mission heavy sandbox game. I’m going to tackle them one at a time in detail to hopefully explain why, in spite of all the praise I’ve had thus far, I think this game is just really truly awful. You know originally I was planning on this being a fun, easy review with a lot of Tenacious D jokes and a general theme of ‘it’s not for me but I can still recommend it’.
Brutal Legend as a hack-and-slash action game is easily it’s best face. The gameplay is almost designed exclusively for this. There are loads of combos to learn, several stages to just power through and beat up enemies and really, if this is what Brutal Legend was primarily based around, I probably would’ve gotten on with it a lot more. That’s unfortunately not saying much. While Brutal Legend is a good beat ‘em up in concept, execution ruins it hard. The combat in this game is not especially satisfying or rewarding or, you know, fun. Eddie’s axe, the Separator, doesn’t really feel like there’s any weight or substance to it, so every slash feels more or less the same and leaves the player cold. Even with the option of gore added into it, which you can turn on or off at the beginning of the game, it doesn’t feel fun to slash your way through enemies. Take this combat versus something like, say, Bayonetta. Bayonetta’s attacks have that weight to them, that power. You enjoy fighting because it feels intense and fun. Brutal Legend is just completely missing this. And let’s not even talk about Eddie’s useless ranged attacks with his guitar, Clementine.
Brutal Legend’s overworld has a lot of space and not a lot to fill it. Sure, there’s missions you can do and objects you can find, but the missions are all ‘take out this group of enemies’ or ‘compete in this race’ or the occasional ‘stop some of your army from charming the ladies other members of your army are trying to romance.’ It’s not engaging work and is more an unfortunate extension of the game’s failures as a beat ‘em up. The objects you can find, meanwhile, are all visually impressive but only give you the most minor of rewards in the long run. Everything in this game gives you this hybrid money-experience to be used to upgrade Eddie and his vehicle, the Deuce. Which is great if you like how this game plays and can find the shop to do it, something that becomes increasingly and unnecessarily difficult to do as the game progresses.
Also, there’s the Deuce itself which, look, I don’t like vehicles or vehicle sections in games that otherwise don’t have them and aren’t designed for them. At best they’re distracting and at worst they’re less a stage and more the reason you’re about to make a hole in the nearest available wall. And the Deuce is probably the worst vehicle in this kind of game I’ve ever seen. It’s too fast, too loose and too often required to progress in the game for you to not pull your hair out at some point. It has a brake, but as far as I can tell it’s not for drifting, it’s for stopping you immediately regardless of whether or not you’re holding the gas and then immediately kicking yourself into reverse. At some point, I started calling the Deuce ‘the Pinball’, because that’s closer to how it felt. Not really controlling it, just bouncing back and forth between obstacles until I could get a straightaway. And of course, it’s basically required to navigate the overworld reliably because it’s way too huge to cover on foot without taking an eternity. Pick your poison, either way it has its thorns and it’s everything but a good time. I'm terrible.
But I saved the worst for last. When I was first playing Brutal Legend I was so sure that Brutal Legend as the open world game was going to be the worst shade just for the Deuce alone. But I just couldn’t, the true face of Brutal Legend just built up so much ill will from me I had to put it last. Brutal Legend, despite being designed like an exceptionally mediocre hack-and-slash beat ‘em up, decides that it is, instead, a third person, over-the-shoulder, army vs. army real-time strategy game. And it is horrid. There are still positives to it, admittedly. This is really where that Double Fine charm kicks in the most. See, much like most RTS games and most strategy games in general, unless your name is Fire Emblem, Brutal Legend requires resources in order to construct the units at the base, as well as a way to harness those resources. But Brutal Legend decides to play it as a giant battle of the bands, with your resources being fans, your ability to harness those resources being giant, towering merchandise booths and the base being a massive stage. And fans allow you to summon various units, the aforementioned metal stereotypes taken to the nth degree, such as your standard melee units being headbangers, your standard ranged units being groupies and so on. It’s a clever use of the concept that justifies its theme and setting.
Then you can see why it’s such a downright shame, such an awful waste, that these sections are actively trying not to be fun. First off, the game doesn’t ever give you a proper tutorial or understanding on how these sections work. This is something Tim Schafer has even lamented after the game’s release, especially since this gameplay is at the core of the multiplayer and the game doesn’t give you anything to go off other than ‘build merch booths, build units, charge, die, figure out what you did wrong, charge again’. Defense is a dirty word to this game too, at least in the single player. There’s no point in playing even the least bit defensively because the crux of the RTS segments is so built around offense that it’s better to just charge on the enemy base than it is to protect your own. And then the one time after you’ve established the flow of these segments where you have to play defensively, you’re basically just still playing offensively and there are no negative repercussions other than you losing units.
Which is problem number two. Resource management is an important part of strategy games and Brutal Legend is no different. The problem arises when there’s only one resource that you’re amassing fairly slowly and the game often needs you to drastically change your entire army layout between points in the fight. Take, for instance, the Lionwhyte boss fight at the halfway point of the game. The majority of this level is played very standardly, with you making units to march upon all the fan geysers, killing the monsters covering them and then taking them for yourself. But then, once you’ve accomplished that, you need to suddenly build an entire force of more expensive units to take down Lionwhyte’s two guard towers so you can march the full force of your army onto his base and destroy it. And each of these units you need to make also requires you to upgrade your base twice. So to just build one of these sets of units, you need a total of 900 fans as well as the time to upgrade your base twice and conquer the stage while also building other units so you can do so. And it takes forever to get 900 fans even with that. If I have the stage fully conquered and I’m doing a good job of upholding my dominance, I’ll get roughly 12 fans every half second. I need 900. So throw on an extra 37.5 seconds to my stage time just waiting to amass the necessary resources only for it to come down to whether or not RNGesus is kind that day and these units that I spent so long waiting to build can safely get across the battlefield to do the thing I need them to do. And there's also a 40 unit limit at any given time, which doesn't sound too bad until you realize your standard units actually count for four units rather than just the one.
And then there's problem number three, the fact that, with all of this RTS nonsense going on, the game still expects you to be on the ground hacking and slashing your way through the hordes of enemies. You have to play double duty as warrior and commander, because quite frankly your units are all idiots who will always opt to gang up on a single enemy rather than spread themselves out and take out the bunch at once, leading to a quick defeat and more unnecessary fan cost. And, yes, the game does give you options to command your troops. Unfortunately, your options don't amount to anything more complex than 'head in direction', 'head towards tower', 'head towards enemy' and 'stop'. That’s it. And it’s always the full brunt of your army, or whatever section of it is available in a specific radius, and it’s always one of these four options. The game does give you the ability to give individual units or groups of units orders to act out. Which is all fine and good, but often times the units are in some manner of chaotic mess and highlighting them for individual orders ends up as too much of a headache. And you’re basically left completely open for attack by enemy units or the enemy commander while you're trying to highlight individual units. Side tangent, I really hate that modern gaming, especially the western gaming market, have just decided having a HUD is bad. I get nothing from the screen changing color as I get hit. Screen turns to red, I could have ten hits left or I could have one. Also, since this isn’t meaty enough to get a whole paragraph, the game never tells you the base is capable of defending itself in some way. Or healing itself. You have to either find that out by seeking it out in the in-game lore journal or by just happening upon it by chance.
But you know what, fine. The gameplay isn’t great, but hey, all games don’t need great gameplay if the other elements are strong enough to carry it. I mean, I’m a Kingdom Hearts fan, I totally get loving a game despite it not being very fun to play. So, let’s tackle Brutal Legend’s failures at being as cool as it wants to be. And this starts, much like with most things that fail at being as cool as they want to be, with Through the Fire and the Flames. General Lionwhyte’s defeat at the halfway point in the game marks a massive tonal and narrative shift, as you’d expect. The game turns from being about fighting the commercialization of metal as represented by an absurd caricature of hair metal that doesn’t actually resemble any hair metaller to being an extremely lore heavy sword and sorcery story about fighting goth metal ghosts and BDSM demons. And to represent this shift, the game decides to end Lionwhyte’s chapter with an escape sequence. Set to Through the Fire and the Flames. And, hoo boy did this game miss it’s chance to be awesome here. First off, the Deuce doesn’t play any better here than it does anywhere else, leading to a lot of crashing, a lot of deaths and a lot of replaying the most obnoxiously self-important guitar bits in metal history. Secondly, if you can get the Deuce to comply, the whole thing takes about two minutes to complete. Meaning you’ll just be getting to the first chorus before the song awkwardly cuts out and you’ll never get to the impressive solo that comprises the back half of the song. And this is where the game truly loses me, when it tries too hard and fails even harder at doing the one thing it is otherwise really good at, being cool. I would, for once, be perfectly fine with the game giving me a glorified cutscene just to use its intended setup to the best possible effect.
But even that isn’t enough to make my have the burning distaste for this game that I do. I have mentioned twice now that there’s a problem with Lionwhyte that I would get to later, and this is the time. So, Lionwhyte is a representation of the commercialization of metal, and quite honestly, fair shake. As someone who is generally open to my favorite genres finding success, I am still a little wary of the integration of popular culture into said genres because of how the tastes of someone uneducated in the genre can distort what I love about it. I can only imagine with a subculture as huge as metalheads that this is a serious issue they deal with. My problem comes with how they chose to portray this commercialization. There are dozens of metal bands you can blame for this. KISS, for instance, is almost entirely a commercial brand rather than being a band and has been for almost its entire lifespan. Or you could go after Van Halen, who basically started hair metal and could be easily blamed for the commercialization of metal. Or you could go after Bon Jovi, who lead second wave hair metal to popularity and it could be argued is responsible for the subsequent decline. Or maybe even ACDC or Aerosmith, acts that blew up as metal/rock crossover and then opted to abandon the genre when the public consciousness changed. With all these options and many more that I can't mention for the sake of time or won't mention for the sake of not angering even more metal fans, it makes me wonder why they went with David Bowie.
Now, I’m no David Bowie expert, my entire experience with him is Labyrinth, a movie I don’t particularly care for, Space Oddity, a song that I absolutely love, Under Pressure, where for years I thought that was just a straight Queen song and the musicless video for his and Mick Jagger’s cover of the classic Martha and the Vandellas R&B hit Dancing in the Street. Even still, going to go out on a limb here and say he isn’t metal, has never been metal and, if he hadn’t tragically passed away, never would’ve been metal. So why choose him. Theory A is just that Rob Halford could do a really good Bowie and they had him so, you know, why not. And, yeah, it’s a really good impression. Theory B, however, which I find far more likely, is that they opted for an easy target that wouldn’t offend anyone’s metal sensibilities because metal fans are about their metal bands for life and you don’t want to start a war in your target demographic. Which would be fair enough, except I don’t feel like they fully realized the consequences of this decision from their own thematic standpoint.
See, by representing the commercialization of metal with someone who is very much not metal, it seems to me, as an outsider who doesn’t get this at all, that you’re taking a stance and saying that metal is better than everything else. Which is totally your opinion and I get it, I could go on forever about how Paramore is the greatest band of all time. But by making it such a definitive theme in your creation, it comes across rather as you not saying that it’s your opinion that metal is better based on personal taste, but rather that it’s a definitive truth. Metal is just better, according to Brutal Legend. It’s important and powerful and true art and its subgenres and competitors are all nothing more than abominations on the truth. And this is the same arrogant, self-important attitude that made me almost walk out of La La Land when Ryan Gosling starts ranting about how jazz is objectively the greatest genre but only if it’s played the way he likes it. It’s an attitude that stagnates art and creates militant fanbases and I just can’t jam with it. You like metal, that’s cool, go crazy. But it’s not better or worse than anything else. Yes, even ska. Though I might just be reading too much into it and this could just be a necessary device for the narrative and not a reflection of the thoughts and feelings of Tim Schafer or the other fine members of Double Fine that worked on this. But I feel like it’s still important to bring up because I remember what it’s like being impressionable and going on with ideologies that are told to you in a factual manner just because they seem legit. Heck, that's the crux of the reason I never got into Star Wars, this being told that I should like something because it's this great, important thing and my opinions, which are otherwise a big 'eh', being shifted to be more negative as a result.
I’m sorry that this one didn’t turn out as fun as my others. Who would’ve thought that Brutal Legend was my breaking point. I can’t recommend Brutal Legend. I see a lot of good in this, and I want to recommend it just based on that. But I’ve never wanted to stop playing something as much as I did with Brutal Legend. I’m so disappointed too because it’s a huge passion project of one of my favorite devs and I just didn’t click with it at all. But Brutal Legend is, in my opinion, just an especially terrible game and I’d rather not promote it regardless of the reason. Play Psychonauts or Grim Fandango and you’ll likely see why I love Schafer so much. I hope you enjoyed this look at Brutal Legend and next time around we’ll be going into the future with Azure Striker Gunvolt. See ya guys then.
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