Double Fiiiiiiiiine!!!

Title: Brütal Legend.
Developer: Double Fine
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Available on: PS3 and XBox360

I’ve been waiting for this game to come out since the moment it was announced. I’ve  played Grim Fandango and Phsychonauts before this, and I really enjoyed those Games. (For those of you who don’t know, these are both games by Tim Schafer, and they’re AWESOME! I didn’t have a console at that time, so I thought I’d have to wait and see if it would come to the PC at some point.  BUT! Now I have a PS3!  So that’s all good!

Story

The game is about a roadie named Eddie Rigs, who gets warped into a supposedly distant past, into the Age of Metal. The humans who live in this world are being oppressed and live in a dark an hostile world full of demons and creatures straight from the cover of a metal album. Eddy finds out that metal music has enormous powers in this world, and he knows what the people need to tap into the power of metal, and free themselves. He becomes their roadie!

The Metal World

Eddie Blasting away on Clementine

Like Tim Schafer said in many of his interviews, double fine tried to make the world in such a way that every shot and angle taken by the camera could come right off the cover of an heavy metal album. And I have to say they succeeded. The game captures a really good metal atmosphere, and it looks like they tried to think of anything EPIC and AWESOME in the metal sense and put it in the game world! There’s huge dragon heads, mountains, gigantic swords, cogs, guitars, fire breathing monsters and hogs with motorcycle wheels. And the good news is, that you can ride almost any metallic beast you find in this world. And some of them, are F**KING awesome 😀

It really pays off to take the time and just drive around in your overpowered car, and explore the country side. As with a lot of games these days, I have one tip for people playing this game: LOOK UP from time to time. When in any given area, just stand still for a while and look around. There’s some really nice and epic scenery here!

It’s great how they made different elements from heavy metal, live concerts, and everything around it, part of the world. The idea of a metal world is ridiculous from a rational point of view, but the way the world is setup, and how everything works, makes total sense some how 🙂

Characters

I think the characters in this game are what you can expect from Tim Schafer. (For those of you who haven’t played Phsychonauts and/or Grim Fandango GO GET IT NOW!!!) Every notable character in the game world has something to say, a personality, and a background. A lot of characters are voiced by or sometimes even modelled like some of the great metal singers of the heavy metal industry, likeOzzy Osbourne, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, and Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead. Eddy is voiced by Jack Black, which I think he did very well. It’s not some tagged on celebrity voice acting. It’s really well done and the voice acting in general for this game is superb.

The character animations reminded me strongly of Physchonauts actually 🙂 It’s not mocap, but it suits the art style and atmosphere well, and the facial animations and expressions are right up there with the best of m. (It surprises me how bad some expressions are in games these days! (I’m looking at you Bethesda!))

I will not go into detail about what character you meet where, and what they are like, since I think you’ll better find that out for yourself as you get taken in by the games great story line.

Game play

You'll be doing a lot of this 😉

In the game you have 3 “weapons”. You can use a guitar (which has some powers in this world) as a ranged weapon, and an Axe for melee damage. You can use the two to make combos as well, and you switch between them instantly (each has a separate button). Then there’s “The Deuce” or druid plough  which is your car, and can be upgraded with multiple levels of Nitro, engine, weapons, and armour, from machine guns to guided missiles. (The guided missiles don’t work as well as I hoped, but are great fun in the “Riding the Death Rack” mini game :-))

The main story missions play out as RTS-like battles, where you use 4 simple commands to move your army around, and are right in on the action. You fight along side your troups and can team up with them for special attacks that can be VERY powerful if used in the right situations. You can use guitar solos in and outside of battle, to summon creatures, buff your troops, or cast massive area of effect attacks (The Face-melter solo is an important, as well as entertaining, combat move to use in the right situation :-))

If you only follow the main story line and don’t go out to explore, the game can be rather short aside from the fact that you miss out on a lot of great level designs, unlock-able upgrades for your car, axe, guitar and great metal music. As you play along, and see more of the world, you can also unlock concept art to view from the game menu as a bonus.

RTS-like stage battles

The game also features a multi-player mode where you can play online against friends or other players. You can pick your favourite army out of 3, and play on one of the specially made multiplayer maps with different themes in terms of landscapes.

I really enjoyed the game. Most of the time I spend driving around exploring the country, trying to find special items/locations to look at and just take in the atmosphere of this big Metal World to the tune of a LOT of great metal music . People say the side missions are not deep enough, but in my perspective, there are no side missions. The little things you get to do in the game world do not have any real story to it..They are more like in-world minigames, and can be quite fun too. I used to just pick up the controler and play the game for like 1 hour or 2  every evening… In which blasting through this metal world, meeting some funny characters, and the occasional slaughtering of demons, made for a very relaxing,  metal experience with just great atmosphere. And whenever I felt like it, I continued on the main story line, which, albeit short, is really well told like you  would expect from any Schafer game.

just started on the multi player portion of the game. I’m now only practising still.. getting to know the armies, getting to know the maps and such. I don’t know yet if I will be playing multi player a lot, since the RTS element, albeit fun, does feel a bit heavy and slow. Simple character controls are a good thing, especially with a controller, but sometimes it’s also still a bit hard for me to get everyone where I want them to be. Practice makes perfect I guess 😉

Conclusion

In short it’s a game that got me with it’s atmosphere, great story, and easy to pick up controls.  If you don’t like exploring, this will be a short game, and you might miss the great architecture and level design. If you like driving around and epic landscape in a flaming car on metal music, then do pick this game up 🙂 There are some ‘Epic’ moments to be had 🙂

Score: 8/10