David Sanders
David SandersI’ve posted five reviews of different games through Steam’s review system. One among them was posted in 2014, and it stood out to me due to its brevity. The review in question stated the following in its entirety: “Metal. All of the metal. Ten out of ten.”.
A sentiment like that could only mean one thing: I had reviewed one of my favorite games ported to Steam from the PlayStation 3 era, namely Brütal Legend. The game took its time arriving on my gaming platform of choice; it was released on Steam in February 2013 rather than when the game initially launched on consoles in October 2009. Despite the rather lengthy delay, I was quite glad to see what I consider to be the most hilariously metal game in existence make it to PC.
I know I mentioned that I gave the game a perfect ten out of ten score in the review I posted on Steam, but that was more intended as an attempt at humor. That “review” was also written while I was significantly less experienced with Brütal Legend. While I still consider the game to be solid on its own merits, I honestly don’t believe it’s worthy of a perfect score. It could easily have been a candidate for game of the year when it first released as far as I’m concerned, if not for a few rather glaring aspects of its gameplay that didn’t seem to sit well with many reviewers.
I feel I should discuss what I dislike about Brütal Legend before I explain in detail what I love about it. The main gripe I have with the game is the existence of real-time strategy segments within it. The game is primarily focused on the action and adventure aspects that take place within its large, open world, which I feel serves to make these RTS segments feel extremely out of place and, often, downright unnecessary.
For those unfamiliar with the segments to which I’m referring, let me explain exactly what these segments are and why they played a significant part in significantly negatively affecting much of my enjoyment of Brütal Legend. Your character, Eddie Riggs, and the road crew you assemble out of the various denizens of the game world must defend a stage from attack for a time after your crew finishes its construction. To accomplish this, you must accumulate and spend a contested resource (“fans”, which you acquire by constructing “merch booths”) in order to summon combat units of various types.
These summoned units must then be ordered while in combat. Units within a certain range of Eddie can be ordered to attack enemies directly, defend certain areas, follow Eddie, and so on. As you progress through the game’s main story campaign, you unlock access to more unit types. For example, units called “headbangers” essentially serve as your main melee infantry; so-called “Razor Girls” serve as ranged infantry, bass guitarists are medics, etc.
As I alluded to earlier, I feel that these segments of the game feel very out of place and odd given the game’s status as an “action-adventure” title. Thankfully, Eddie has his own weapons and combat abilities. Thus, he can directly participate in battle alongside his army and isn’t forced to just passively fly above the battlefield summoning units and issuing orders. If not for the fact that Eddie can hold his own in combat when necessary, these segments would probably be significantly more out-of-place due to how much slower they might feel.
Brütal Legend’s developers, Double Fine Productions, stretched the RTS gameplay elements into a full-fledged multiplayer mode. I don’t feel that such a mode based around an unpopular gameplay mechanic was necessary by any stretch of the imagination. However, I will admit that I would imagine going head-to-head against a friend in Brütal Legend’s multiplayer mode might at least be more fun than the stage battles through which you’re forced to play throughout the course of the single-player campaign. The game does, at least support peer-to-peer online multiplayer as opposed to local-only. It also has achievements which require players to rack up certain numbers of wins within that mode.
The main reason the forced RTS segments significantly and negatively affected my enjoyment of Brütal Legend is that, as I said, they feel forced, unnecessary, and as if they’re in the wrong game. Of course, the fact that I’ve never been particularly skilled at real-time strategy games is definitely a factor that comes into play in this specific situation. What I perceive the true issue to be, though, is that Brütal Legend’s RTS stage battles aren’t particularly difficult, with the exception of one near the end of the campaign which I found to be so difficult that it actually caused me to stop playing the game entirely.
Instead, they just feel like busywork meant to pad out the length of the campaign, and I personally vehemently dislike that. If the single-player campaign had artificially been made longer, but with more elements commonly found in games that refer to themselves as “action-adventure,” I’m sure I would have been completely fine with that. It’s entirely possible that I’m not as well-versed in video game history as I should be, but Brütal Legend is currently the only game I can think of that interrupts its action-packed adventuring with forced strategy elements at somewhat regular intervals.
To me, it feels as though the RTS segments are a chore I must complete in order to be rewarded with more action. I don’t feel as though any aspect of a game should be describable as a “chore” or even a “job” at worst. I personally play video games as a temporary escape from the pressure of my responsibilities, as I have no doubt many people do. I don’t play them for the sake of wanting to do “work” within my chosen method of escape. That’s the driving force behind why I’ve discussed this particular topic for as long as I have.
However, with all of that said, I feel I can now begin to discuss why I love Brütal Legend as much as I do despite the fact that it contains what I consider to be unnecessary busywork within its campaign. There are three main aspects of Brütal Legend which endear it to me: its plot, its soundtrack, and its gameplay mechanics outside of the aforementioned dreaded real-time strategy segments. I’ll do my best to discuss my fondness for all three of those aspects equally, yet concisely.
I’ll begin with Brütal Legend’s plot. You play as a man by the name of Eddie Riggs (voiced by Jack Black), whom the game bills as “the world’s best roadie for the world’s worst heavy metal band.” Eddie can capably fix and build anything, even having perfectly rebuilt his custom guitar that was smashed to pieces by a careless band member. That is, Eddie can fix anything except what he perceives as his band’s terrible attempts at music.
During one of his band’s performances, Eddie has to spring into action to save a band member from falling to his certain death. In doing so, Eddie is crushed by a falling piece of the stage. As his blood drips into his belt buckle, which turns out to be a magical artifact, Eddie is transported by what comes to be known as the “Fire Beast” to a land which I’ll refer to as “the heavy metal world” for simplicity’s sake.
After some time, Eddie regains consciousness and finds himself in the heavy metal world. He almost immediately obtains a battleaxe, which he wields effectively and naturally despite his claims that he has “never touched an axe before.” In addition to said battleaxe, Eddie realizes that his custom guitar (nicknamed Clementine) has magical powers in the heavy metal world; thus, the guitar can also be used for combat and spell-casting purposes.
After a short time, Eddie meets a woman named Ophelia. Ophelia explains to Eddie that she’s a member of the human resistance movement against the despotic ruler of the heavy metal world, Emperor Doviculus, as well as his right-hand man, General Lionwhyte (voiced by Judas Priest lead vocalist Rob Halford). Ophelia admits that as of the time she first met Eddie, the resistance movement consists entirely of herself and her two allies, siblings Lars and Lita Halford.
Thus, Eddie realizes that the army lacks troops, leadership other than Lars, and logistics. He declines a position as the leader of the resistance movement, as he believes “a good roadie stays out of the spotlight;” however, he subsequently pledges to use his roadie knowledge to provide everything the army needs in order to strengthen the resistance movement and free the world from Doviculus’ grasp.
I would go more in-depth about the game’s plot, but I’ll avoid doing so for the sake of keeping this article as concise as possible. Instead, I’d like to discuss my love for Brütal Legend’s soundtrack and non-RTS gameplay mechanics. First, l need to take a moment to clarify which soundtrack I’ll be discussing within this article in order to eliminate any possible ambiguity.
Brütal Legend does indeed have its own original soundtrack composed by Peter McConnell, which I consider to be great in its own right; but that isn’t the soundtrack I’ll be discussing. I will instead discuss the game’s 107-track, 75-band set list of heavy metal tracks, as I feel that discussing that version of the soundtrack is more my forte than anything composed specifically for the game. Now that I’ve gotten that disclaimer out of the way, let the discussion of the metal begin.
Personally, I find the selection of songs picked out by Brütal Legend’s developers to be perfect for the game. I feel that the selection offers the perfect mix of more classic songs by bands that are more well-known, such as Judas Priest, Megadeth, and several others, incorporated with material from more recent bands that could potentially have needed the exposure they received from being featured in a game like Brütal Legend.
There are several songs and bands on the game’s track list with which I was completely unfamiliar upon my first encounter with them. This led me to investigate the bands in question further and discover more of their music. In the vast majority of cases, I’m quite glad I allowed myself to fall down that particular metaphorical rabbit hole, as doing so has significantly broadened my musical horizons.
In addition to the selection of music for the in-game soundtrack, I cannot express enough how much I love the fact that certain artists responsible for said music appear in Brütal Legend to some extent. For example, Black Sabbath lead vocalist Ozzy Osbourne plays a pivotal role in the game; he lends his voice and likeness to the Guardian of Metal, who provides the player with various types of purchasable upgrades to enhance their gameplay experience.
Speaking of the game’s selection of music and the fact that the player can upgrade certain gameplay aspects by visiting the Guardian of Metal, the first upgrade automatically granted to the player is an upgrade for their car called the “Mouth of Metal.” The Mouth of Metal is essentially a radio which allows the player to listen at their leisure to any songs from the heavy metal soundtrack that they’ve unlocked by obtaining collectibles and progressing through the campaign, so long as the player is in or near their car.
Once you acquire your car (referred to by the game as both “The Deuce” and “The Druid Plow”), the world truly opens up. Unless you’re on a story mission which doesn’t allow it, you can cast a spell (by playing a guitar solo) which allows you to summon your car at any point. This is exceptionally useful for getting between missions more quickly, doing side missions, or just driving around, exploring and listening to music with no real objective in mind, as I often find myself doing.
If you consider yourself an explorer when it comes to open-world games like Brütal Legend as I do, you’ll find that its expansive world has quite a lot to offer, which I consider to be a great aspect of the game. There are several different types of optional collectible items which, when collected, serve such purposes as unlocking more of the game’s metal soundtrack, providing information about the history of the heavy metal world, and many other things.
There are also many ways to acquire “Fire Tributes,” the currency exchanged for upgrades with the Guardian of Metal, by “pleasing the Gods of Metal.” This can be done by, for example, jumping your car off of a particularly high cliff, acquiring the aforementioned collectibles, completing missions, or many other things you might think “Gods of Metal” might enjoy.
To conclude, I’d like to reiterate something I said earlier. I feel that Brütal Legend is quite a solid game in its own right; it just doesn’t seem to always know which direction it wants to go, or what type of game it wants to be. Sadly I think that’s a detriment to the game overall. I don’t feel it’s worthy of the perfect score I jokingly awarded it in my Steam review, but by no means do I think it’s not an enjoyable game in its own right.
If you enjoy heavy metal music and action-adventure games, Brütal Legend is a very enjoyable game which manages to seamlessly combine those two things. If you can deal with, or even possibly enjoy, its forced real-time strategy segments, it’s a great game on its own merits. However, if you’re put off by what I’ve said in this review and don’t think it’s exactly the game for you, I cannot fault you for that. Ultimately, the decision falls to you: will you brave the depths of real-time strategy oblivion and save the heavy metal world, or just go drive around in your hot rod listening to metal instead?
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🔥735Brütal Legend
Pros
- Excellent Heavy Metal Soundtrack
- Easy to Become Immersed in the Open World
- Large, Open-World
Cons
- RTS Segments Feel Very Forced and Odd
- Retail Price is a bit High
