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dkirschner's Brutal Legend (PS3)
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| [November 27, 2015 07:54:04 PM]
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This game is unexpectedly brilliant while being (un)expectedly (I'm not sure which!) mediocre at the same time. I'm a huge metalhead, although I lean away from traditional metal, which is what a lot of the game is. Despite all the Saxon and Accept and Motorhead and whatnot, this game wins for having a metal soundtrack.
Anyway, music aside, I'd long heard of Brutal Legend, but always thought it would be too cheesy for my tastes. I ended up getting a copy for free and decided what the heck. Tried to play it on my PC, but it is a terrible port, so I ended up shelling out $5 anyway and bought it on PS3 because I was intrigued by the first half hour.
Another name for Brutal Legend would be Jack Black: The Videogame. If you like Jack Black and you like metal, I don't see how you couldn't like this. If you like fantasy stories, that's even more of a bonus. The main character is basically Jack Black playing himself. Much of his dialogue sounds straight out of School of Rock.
Jack Black gets sucked into hell through an accident wrapped up in one of the game's many funny commentaries on lame metal music. He falls in with a resistance movement trying to save humanity (hell's humanity, not Earth's--hell people are unaware of anywhere else). That's the outline of the story. There are some good twists and turns, but it all ends predictably enough, even given the wacky setting and metal theme.
The other place this game shines is the art. The world is super cool looking, and serious thanks to all the character designers and artists. All the minions in the armies you fight look so neat and have such cool takes on different themes. For example, one army, the "Drowning Doom" are basically goth/emo people. There is a crying bride who summons thunderstorms, hearses with giant organ pipes that act as ranged weapons, goth/emo looking kids with shovels who walk around in a pack (but, as the notes say, have a burning need to express their individuality), and so on. There are lots of different enemies.
That's all the good stuff. The not so good stuff: combat, getting around the world, the RTS elements. Combat is really basic hack-n-slash type stuff. Think Devil May Cry or Bayonetta but like the crappy B version. That third-person combat was alright I guess, but the RTS stuff dragged. In these big "stage battles," you can fly around and command groups of different units. It's basically tower control. You need to control towers to get "fans," which are your currency for unit construction. The more fans you have, the faster you can pump out an army. I will note that your army's cap is 40 at the beginning of the game...and 40 at the end. It is lame that there is never any change. Although you do get some new units throughout, it feels like the same battle every time because there's not a lot of growth over time in what you can do.
Exploring around the world (which looks neat) is unfortunately a drag, and rather pointless too. You have a car that isn't a lot of fun to control (avoid race side quests, the other car will touch you and send you flying off cliffs, and if you touch an object it is like slamming into a concrete wall). There are no checkpoints or fast travel stations or anything, so if you want to go anywhere, you drive. There are also a ton of "secrets" scattered about the world. These take several forms. The upgrade stations (featuring Ozzy) are useful and I liked unlocking back story from another type. Then there are some vistas where you just...look at something through binoculars, and there are these dragon statues which, for every 10 you find (of like 120), you get some bonus health, regen, strength, etc. I found 5. Really pointless!
I never did any side quests either until I had some trouble on a mission about 2/3 of the way into the game. I figured out that doing these 3-minute side quests give you as much experience as a big main mission does. Ok. More bang for your time buck with side quests, but they are boring and repetitive. I figured I would go do some to save some experience so I could actually learn new special moves and upgrade some of Jack Black's gear. I did this, upgraded a little bit, and although I won the next battle, it wasn't because my stuff had not been upgraded. I never upgraded again. You can play straight through the main story without touching side quests or upgrading hardly anything. I suppose then that there is a lot of "extra content" if people really like driving around. But I didn't, so straight through the creative story I went. Short-ish game overall. I clocked 6.5 hours in the end, but probably 8 with a few deaths.
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dkirschner's Brutal Legend (PS3)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 25 November, 2015
GameLog closed on: Thursday 26 November, 2015 |
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