Review | Brütal Legend
As it is, it’s more a chance to play the other side and see the depth of the inventiveness Double Fine applied to the units coupled with a series of thematically relevant solos for each different ‘avatar’. The effects make sense; the Tainted Coil is all about the curses and on-the-fly unit creation, spawning huge hulking monsters with gimp masks that explode on contact with the enemy. Ironheade sticks to a more steam-roller offence, building up a large force before moving out and decimating everything in its path. As with most RTS games, it’s all about learning your side and knowing how to counter the others. Not to mention the maps are all creative, both visually and strategically, much a mirror to the landscape of the single-player game itself.
The environments you play in are gorgeous, supplied with an even higher level of visual fidelity now that the excellent Double Fine art team has been given the technology to really make their worlds come to life. Hundred-foot high stone swords rise out of the ground in Bladehenge like blasphemous fingers pointing angrily at the heavens, all led by a huge pair of hands rising out of the earth to play a massive granite guitar. Similarly, the jungle environment (obligatory) is filled with Aztec skulls and impaled heads, panthers running rampant and shooting lasers from their eyes. I mean, of course they shoot lasers from their eyes.
Each new unit type is a little more metal than the last, with some really clever satire going on. Roadies are never in the limelight, so of course they have stealth abilities, not to mention being able to carry many times their body weight in speakers. Headbangers bang their heads all day, so they have huge neck muscles, and can form a mosh pit on command. And, of course, bassists can heal everyone. Because that’s just how awesome bassists are. Not to mention bassists always get the best girls, and the coolest bikes. (I may or may not play bass.)
Of course, it’s near impossible to make a game about metal and music without having the music there in a big way. The tracklist for the game rivals any dedicated music title, and the ability to riff off a quick guitar solo at will for incredible effect hammers home the idea of the music really being larger than you, a force to tap into rather than something you can control. The facemelter riff, for example, does exactly what it says, killing huge swathes of enemies around you by literally melting their faces off. It creates a crazy risk-reward structure where you’ll run headlong into the biggest group of enemies you can find and desperately try and pull off the solo before they beat you to death.
One summons a small group of animals to fight by your side. Another conjures your car out of thin air, while others are useful only in the stage fights, to create rally points and structures. Through some thin idea of music inspiring people to do things, you can really change a lot just by whipping out the guitar and pulling off a few notes, in a heavy metal version of the Zelda Ocarina.
The problem with cool ideas is that they’re only so much air unless they’re applied in a clever and interesting way, and while the different units are useful for different things, some of it seems kind of arbitrary, not to mention the events of the story and how the whole thing progresses. There’s little rhyme or reason as to where you’re going or why, at least in the last two thirds of the game. Similarly, the lack of any sort of health indicator until you’re suddenly near death and the whole screen is obscured by a bright red mist can create some frustrating difficulty spikes, not least because the feedback of gauging how much health an enemy attack takes off in relation to different enemy types can aid you in creating tactics to fight them.
The real problems arise when you realise that yeah, you’ve done all the cool stuff, and that Double Fine have done all the cool stuff… so what’s left?
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