If Brütal Legend's gameplay were as focused and engaging as its highly polished heavy metal story, the videogame would be a force to be reckoned with.
This Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game, released Tuesday, has one of the strongest story lines I've ever experienced in a videogame. Based purely on Brütal Legend's premise -- a heavy metal roadie played by Jack Black is transported into a world based on the imagery of metal album covers -- I expected nothing more than farcical comedy from the game. What I got was an impeccably crafted, surprisingly human tale of love and death that had me playing and playing to find out what happened next.
The thing is, after a while, the story was the only reason I was still playing. While Brütal Legend is set in a cohesive, tightly written universe, the gameplay never settles down into a coherent experience. The game mixes elements of many genres, with none pulled off particularly well, and delivers an astoundingly complex design instead of a simple one that would have sufficed and better served the engrossing story.
That story is brought to life by many familiar faces: Brütal Legend is the single most–celebrity-driven videogame in human history. While many Hollywood actors have played videogame characters over the years, none has committed himself to the bit so much as comic actor-musician Black (pictured above, left). He's been hyping the game for the past year as intensely if he had a starring role in a new film. The brutal world he inhabits is filled with characters that look like and are played by actual legends of metal: Ozzy Osbourne, Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister, Judas Priest's Rob Halford, et al.
That said, the name that should be most closely associated with Brütal Legend is that of director Tim Schafer. (Helpfully, his name is on the box.) Schafer's games, like 2004's Psychonauts, have always benefited from funny, engaging stories, establishing the LucasArts alum as gaming's premier comedian. After Brütal Legend, he should be considered one of the best storytellers in gaming, period.
But back to that hybrid gameplay. Black plays Eddie Riggs, a roadie in a land of warring rockers where metal is the revered, ancient music of the gods. After teaming up with a band of rebels fighting under the oppressive thumb and massive hairdo of glam rocker General Lionwhyte (Halford), he soon discovers that the real threat to the world is the evil, leather-clad monster Doviculus (Tim Curry).
Sound silly? It is, and Black plays his part to maximum comedic effect. But the story's not just one big joke about heavy metal: Before you know it, things have gotten serious. When things went south for our heroes toward the end of Brütal Legend's second act, I was surprised to find that I truly felt bad about it -- I'd become emotionally invested in these characters to an extent that I rarely do with games.
Brütal Legend's gameplay is hard to describe. The back of the box doesn't even try. All it says, in a bullet point to that effect, is "Vanquish foes with axe and electrified guitar."
This is exactly what you do -- in the game's first seven minutes. After that, you're thrown into your trusty hot rod, the Druid Plow, in which you'll run over some evil druids and then fight a giant nasty boss monster by driving in circles around it and running over its tongue.
After this opening segment, you'd think you were in for a goofy God of War–style action game -- and you would be completely wrong. A few hours later, what you're playing is almost entirely a real-time strategy game. You're flying over a map, battling for control points and resources, using them to generate attack units, and sending your fighters off to engage the enemy: In short, it's a rock-themed Command & Conquer.
What's interesting is that Brütal Legend doesn't drop all this on you at once. It starts out with bite-size portions: You get a group of headbangers to help you fight your first couple of boss battles, and you can command them to attack, retreat or defend. Simple stuff, and the emphasis is still largely on attacking enemies solo with Eddie's giant ax and magic flamethrower-guitar.
But before you know it, you're doing much more managerial work. The on-foot dungeons and one-on-one boss battles disappear, and the rest of the game's big story beats are played out strategically. You can still jump down on foot and start hacking away at enemies, but there will be so many of them that you'll die quickly. Your job, instead, is to shuffle like crazy through a host of menus: Send your units to control a tower. Play a guitar solo to buff up your warriors. Load in more units from another menu. Level up your base so you can bring in better units. All I could think was, "This is not what I bargained for."
Between main missions, you can drive around the massive, beautiful open world and take on side quests, which mostly fall into three categories: Chop up a few enemies, shoot a few enemies, or drag-race a tank-top–wearing demon named Fletus. These start out mildly interesting, but as the game continues and the challenges barely change, they get boring. (I still played every one, to give myself a break from the strategy battles and also because the side missions let you buy more car and weapon upgrades from Ozzy, pictured above).
About 80 percent of the way through the game, I'd reached my breaking point. I'd started out mostly enjoying the combat and the light strategy, but the game had largely abandoned that by this point. I'd grown bored with the repetitive side quests and I was stuck on a strategy battle in which the computer kept overrunning me. I realized that I no longer had any desire to learn the intricacies of the battle system and overcome the enemy.
I was not having fun.
But I really, really wanted to finish the story. So I did something I almost never do: I turned the difficulty setting down, which had the fortuitous result of making the computer opponents stupid enough for me to beat. It still wasn't easy, but I finished -- and yes, the ending was great. I just wish it had felt less like work to get there.
Brütal Legend does a lot of things wonderfully: It's a technically adept, graphically beautiful game with a surprisingly good story and a great soundtrack. The hybrid gameplay just doesn't meet these high standards.
WIRED Highly entertaining story, some stellar voice performances, great graphics and soundtrack.
TIRED Schizophrenic gameplay, many repetitive missions.
$60, Electronic Arts
Rating:
Read Game|Life’s game ratings guide.
See Also:
- Review: Psychonauts Run the Laugh Track
- Eyes On: Jack Black Destroys Demons With Power of Rock in Brütal Legend
- Activision Spikes Brütal Legend, Ghostbusters
- Brütal Legend Finds a Home At Electronic Arts
- Double Fine Unveils Tim Schafer Flash Game
- Tim Schafer Nixes Notions of Psychonauts, Grim Fandango Sequels