By: Henry Arrambide
The world of heavy metal and what is and isn’t metal and who is true and what is metal and false and kvlt yadda yadda yadda is just too complicated. Screw that whole debate. So when it comes to talking about Brutal Legend, let’s not focus on what’s in the soundtrack and whether or not it’s trve metal or false or that Jack Black annoys you or Dio was kicked out and replaced by Tim Curry. This is a goddamn game, play it.
Having that cleared up, Brutal Legend does the Heavy Metal shtick justice. You don’t get a super tongue in cheek parody of metal music and culture, or a super serious take. The story actually grabs you, takes you for a ride, has fun, and then it’s over. The music is placed tastefully, and it pulls you in. Whether you think Cradle of Filth and Quiet Riot are poser bands doesn’t matter, they fit the atmosphere. The voice acting is excellent, the characters are animated with expressions that actually emote – no uncanny valley here, the game definitely had some care put into it.
Now, for what you can actually control. You play for the first oh, 10%-15% of the game alone, hacking around, fighting Spider Queens and Big Fisted bosses. It’s hack and slash, no complicated combo’s or real difficulty curve. Fun stuff, fighting the Metal Queen, riding Razor Boars, listening to Brocas Helm, cutting up Cultists with your axe. Then the RTS elements kick in. You get a stage, you harvest fans, you build units, and then you destroy the enemy stage. Every RTS battle is like this. They are quite epic, being the big setpieces that move the story – this is where Brutal Legend’s soundtrack really shines. Try not to storm your way to victory as Rob Halford wails about how you have one shot at glory. Try not saving the world from the Painkiller. Throughout the campaign you acquire new units with their own special moves, team ups (you can land in the battlefield and tag team enemies with different units, very fun), and costs, and the campaign forces you into using each one at least once. The actual battles are quite fun, your character sprouts wings, flies over the fields making commands in a setting similar to a traditional RTS, and then you get to drop down into battle and join your troops. This is the meat of the game, and it’s a good “My First RTS” type affair. Commanding armies of headbangers as you survey the lands on demon wings and lead the horde to victory, pretty metal. Not to mention when you drop in, you’re probably going to land and pull off a kick ass solo in the heat of battle to rally the troops and power your army before joining your brethren in battle against the demons of hell. It’s fun, and the RTS stuff never gets tiring. Makes for good multiplayer.
The problem with Brutal Legend is, that’s about it.
The non-RTS missions basically serve as learning the new units. At the start of the game, you storm mines and free headbangers. They become the first unit you can purchase. Next non-RTS mission, you help harvest Razorfire Boars, creating the Razor Girl unit. These kinds of missions are mixed in with the RTS battles, all the way to the end. Literally, before the final RTS mission gauntlet, you recruit the final unit in your arsenal. I wish that the game had at least three or four more battles where you were free to reign and defeat the enemy however you wished – but usually, you end up with RTS missions where the latest member of your army tends to be key for victory.
If all you do is the campaign, be ready for a fun as hell five or six hours. Sure, the game gives you sidequests to do between missions, but there’s only five or so types of quests, repeated twenty times over. Fun at first, tiring later. You can lead a small squad to victory in an ambush (never lasting more than two minutes max – not even enough time for the music to get good), you can get on rails and defend a key hill or road on the world (once again, boiling down to taking out a small enemy squad lasting only two or three minutes), you can help a Mortar defend a key point – very familiar sounding, isn’t it? Aside from those quests, there’s always hunting wildlife (boiling down to Run Over Fifteen of Animal X, Ten Animal Y, and so on), and Racing. The races only happen four or five times, one accompanying each area of the map – it stays fun and tasteful, unlike the others which sprout up like weeds – 5 or more per area.
Racing also does something helpful – shows you the map. You see, outside of the main plotline, there are two major zones of the map you never explore, and the other three zones you sort of just drive through – the game gives you a vehicle at the beginning, a summon vehicle solo quickly after, and expects you to just drive from point A to point B. The main campaign is fun, engaging, and plotted really well – too well. There never is a time when it feels appropriate to go do sidequests without breaking the pace of the game. And when you do go questing, it’s just the same repetitive missions you’ve been playing from the start of the game. Racing at least shows you around, reminds you there’s cool stuff in the world.
The game world is littered with monuments, bound serpent statues, legends of yore, hidden music, and jumps, all of which add so much to the game. Seeing the monuments and the legends adds a whole lot more backstory to the world, it’s just a shame that the game never makes you stumble upon one. The jumps are just fun distractions and the hidden tracks give you some excellent music to listen to (Mastodon, Emperor, Megadeth…some of the best stuff on the soundtrack is hidden in the most obscure corners of the world), but there’s just so much in the world that you know the developers wanted you to explore. Not just explore to kill time either – every collectible contributes somehow to your character (playing on Brutal would have been a lot tougher if I just plowed through the campaign), and the Legends and Monuments are really something. They wanted you to explore and see the world they created because it really is something to look at – so why fill it with the most repetitive of sidequests and the shortest of campaigns? They even allow you a post-campaign save so you can finish collecting everything, but by that time you don’t need any of it. Sure you can still look for the Legends, Jumps, and Races, but everything else – especially the 120 Bound serpents, loses interests simply because you don’t need it and they weren’t interesting to begin with.
So rent the game, play it, have fun. Don’t rush through it. It’s tempting to do so, seeing as the game IS fun, the story IS engaging, and you can’t find an easy stopping point – but slow down, savor the game, see the sights and learn the legends. Play on Brutal Difficulty, the game isn’t too hard to begin with, but if you do get stuck on Brutal, it encourages you to go out into the world and find serpents, learn solo’s (a particularly awesome Led Zepplin inspired one shows up near the end), and the difficulty will force you to actually use everything in your arsenal rather than facemelting and power sliding everything.
In the world of film critique, the term mise en scène refers to all the aspects of production and how they pull together to create a final product’s atmosphere. For the lack of a pre-existing term in the gaming world, Brutal Legend definitely has mise en scène. It’s just that there happens to be some extra, fun, unused stuff slapped around the edges.
Play it. It will stick with you for sure.
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