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Tim Schafer’s latest contribution to gaming was highly anticipated, as much because of its creator as it was because of its subject matter. Given, anticipation is nothing new for fans of Schafer, a man who, including 2009’s Brütal Legend, has released a grand total of two games in the last twelve years, but in the four since Psychonauts, a lot had been made of Brütal Legend’s potential, and we were all very right to be extremely excited.
On paper, Brütal Legend was a part action-adventure, part open-world, part real-time strategy game created by Tim Schafer, starring Jack Black as a veteran roadie who suddenly finds himself in a strange heavy metal-inspired world, leading an army of demon-slaying Headbangers against evil Glam and Goth factions in a battle to save humanity, replete with voice acting from Halford, Ozzy, Lemmy and Lita, and a 100+ song soundtrack featuring music by Sabbath, Priest, Motörhead, Ozzy, King Diamond, Slayer, Testament and many more.
There’s no way that isn’t the best game ever. Right?
Wrong. Unfortunately, Brütal Legend turned out to be one of those games that’s absolutely fantastic in every ancillary way, yet so tragically disappointing where it counts.
Everything that you could ingest before the game was released — the trailers (including the fantastic “Mob Rules” debut teaser), the concept art, the screenshots, which voice actors were cast, the extensive soundtrack, all of it — remained true to its potential. The writing and the voice acting and the environments and the music and the atmosphere of the game are, simply put, brilliant. Every little thing, from the names of the various characters and creatures, to the landscapes and all of the savvy little touches they added to the world, to the surprisingly unstiff performances by Halford, Lemmy and Ozzy (and the usual quality from Tim Curry, David Cross, Brian Posehn and Kyle Gass), speaking comedic dialogue as well-written as anything we’re ever going to get out of a videogame, made all the more hilarious by incredibly expressive facial animations, many of which say more than the dialogue could ever say (and they’re allowed to do just that on countless occasions). Even the subtle little transitions from in-game dialogue to on-screen prompts. So many intelligent decisions, so many clever injections, so many amazing elements … how in the hell did they manage to fuck this game up?
Well, we play games to play games. And sadly, this game plays like shit. Let’s review.
The game starts you out with on-foot melee combat, offering you a giant axe to chop fools in half when in close, and a face-melting guitar to shock and/or set bitches on fire from a distance. Amazingly enough, neither of them are any fun to use; they don’t feel good, nor do they feel effective, and with very few attack options up their sleeves, they devolve into one-combo ponies that get real old, real fast. Sadly, you’re stuck with this same axe-and-guitar combo for the duration of the game, with very little in the way of upgrades and nothing that makes them any more interesting to use or look at.
So, since something as simple as wandering the land, slaying demons with your giant axe feels like a chore, one is compelled to hop back in the car and just run shit over. But even then you’re faced with terribly tuned, jerky controls and a lumpy, annoying-to-drive-on ground that essentially removes all fun from the experience, save for the minimal gratification you derive from accidentally splattering something across your grill-plow.
Then you’ve got the RTS-style “Stage Battles” that are littered throughout the story and often function as boss fights. Now, I’m no great fan of the genre, and find its inclusion in this game more than odd, but if Tim Schafer thinks it somehow fits into the context of the game described above, then hey, might as well give it a shot. Unfortunately, as with everything else in the game, the concept and the design far outweigh the execution, and while I enjoyed and appreciated everything surrounding the act of playing Stage Battles, literally having to do it felt like a chore. I would much rather get back to hacking and slashing. Then again, what little of that there was wasn’t any fun either.
Then it dawned on me. “Wait a minute … does this mean that there’s no game here that I’d rather get back to? What am I playing? Why am I playing this, if I’m not having fun?”
Frankly, the disappointment I felt as that realization set in about a quarter of the way into this game was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. To have enjoyed so much of it for so many hours, yet derived so little pleasure from actually playing the game … what the hell is that? And what do you do about it? Do you just say “fuck it” and stop playing? What about the elements you enjoy? What about the hours you’ve already invested? What’s yet to be seen? Will it be worth enduring the many hours of gameplay that remain to simply ingest the other aspects of the game that you find worthwhile?
Obviously, there is no one answer for every game, nor every gamer. But my answer to that question in this scenario was a resoundingly flaccid “okay fine”, and I proceeded to literally grin and bear it through to the end of the game – which, it turned out, jarringly occurred in what felt like the middle of the second act. If I hadn’t been so ready to stop playing, I might have held it against the game, but honestly, I was so happy to be free of the self-imposed obligation that I just wrote it off. It should also be noted that, being the shameless achievement whore that I am, I of course spent the next few days grudgingly mopping up as many as I could stomach before I finally ejected the disc and cast it away, back into the fiery abyss is that is bad game hell.
But you know what? After all was said and done, and even looking back now, I still enjoyed Brütal Legend, literally in spite of the fact that it wasn’t any fun to play. But is it a good game? Well … it isn’t … but it is.
On one hand, Brütal Legend is an epic disappointment for me, being both a huge fan of videogames and a lifelong fan of the metal genre, but to be completely honest, only one of those parts of me was actually disappointed. The gamer in me was incredibly bummed that these two worlds didn’t enjoy a successful marriage. It seemed so perfect, like it couldn’t possibly fail. But it did, and I’m left with nothing but dreams of a game that could have been.
On the other hand, the metal fan in me wasn’t disappointed in the least. Brütal Legend is in fact a success in that regard, paying clever tribute to heavy metal with a degree of love and attention to detail never before enjoyed in any medium, let alone a somewhat mainstream product featuring significant contributions from well-known stalwarts of the genre. The writing, the art direction, the animation, the music, the voice acting. All are at a level of excellence rarely seen in any game, let alone one as metal as this.
So what if it sucks to play? So do Suda 51 games (oh yes I did), yet I love them all to death. Can’t Brütal Legend be a part of that exclusive club? Well, using my own logic, you’d think my answer to that would be “yes”, but for some odd reason, I just can’t bring myself to say it.
Regardless, Brütal Legend certainly deserves an A for Effort.
This promoted blog was written for our April Monthly Musing assignment, “E For Effort.” You too could get promoted if you write something about games you hate but respect over on the Community Blogs.
Published: Apr 23, 2010 06:30 pm