first game review

Brutal legend for my first review comment if you like it and if you dont it all helps ta K

Right well basic story is pretty solid, no huge gaping holes. Jack Blacks character is transported to another world, a world that in my opinion is full of Judas Priest album cover style scenery, in light of my musical preferences I think this was a good idea. He then discovers a world swath in demons and metal wannabies, and being the true rock god that he is (note sarcasm) proceeds to take them all on with his axe and lightening shooting guitar. The game starts well, classic hack and slash throughout the introduction with sporadic cut scenes.

After the introduction you’re introduced to the love interest and the double team skill, which is the ability to increase combat damage by jumping on, throwing or riding an NPC, the double team isn’t useful except for the parts in the game where it’s necessary to progress with the story. Although riding on the same motorbike as Lemmy was fun. You’re also introduced to the ‘Deuce’, the car made from parts of a god. The car missions are quite good even though the car handles like a sick pig and hitting anything larger than a blade of grass makes the car flip over, much like a confused turtle, that’s not to say the car isn’t a good laugh to drive it can just be annoying at times.

You then go on to free convert or find the rest of the units for the strategy parts of the game later, this is when your introduced to the first boss Lion white, voiced by Rob Halford from Judas Priest, then Eddie makes the mistake of pissing off the love interest and gives birth to the second boss, who raises an army of depressed followers as her units, she’s then killed (mercifully before she depresses anyone else) by the big boss. The last cut scene with the demon kings death is quite awesome in fact I’d say it’s the most I laughed throughout the game.

Dialogue is pretty consistent with most of Jack Blacks comedy films, mainly its Jack Black just doing basically what he always does, cut scenes are very nicely animated no glaringly obvious mistakes or glitches they come across as polished compared to other games such as (and I know this is out dated it’s just the last instance I can remember) Oblivion, the elder scrolls scenes where hands disappeared through walls etc. There are mini cut scenes where combat slows down and body parts fly off at different angles with lots of blood splatter, which should keep the blood thirsty happy as it’s always fun to decapitate a battle nun in slow motion.

The graphics on the game are what is to be expected from giants European Art’s, smooth yet cartoon like easily on a par with such games like borderlands, cut scenes similarly so and Eddie(Jack)does make the games constant cut scenes tolerable through use of funny.

The combat engine looks thought it’s based on the same one as Viking and the games do share quite a lot of features, such as the slow motion killing and general feel, the difference with brutal legend however is the addition of a car called the Deuce, a car that is more like a steam roller that hammers through enemies like a hot axe through demon. There is also the ability to use your guitar to complete solo’s that act as a multipurpose tool from raising motor forges for upgrades, to killing your foe’s, and although this is useful if surrounded by enemies it was spoiled by the fact that one hit and you stop the solo, which can leave you surrounded by baddies that want to get a close look at your insides.

The game upgrade system is based on the classic RPG format of collect so much of something then trade it in for better weapons and armour, in this case you have to collect fire tribute and trade it to Ozzy Osbourne (the guardian of metal) who has superb lines like ‘you have disturbed the guardian of metal’s nap’. This system would be improved with a little more variety in Brutal Legends as side missions are in short supply having only 4 types and among those most just invole killing a group of enemies this becomes repetitive after the first 3 times, as does the exploration and discovery aspects of the game. Mostly I found that completing the main quest gave me enough points to get the upgrades I wanted, which makes the side quests only relevant to the GamerScore whores out there (you know who you are).

The game styles itself as a open world metal universe, and in fairness there are large areas of the game that are quite large such as the area around blade henge (the rebels hideout) but apart from this the rest of the game is set in what is effectively large corridors. The game starts as a hack and slash RPG then changes completely, it’s as if the original game developers suffered fatal heart attacks and were replaced by chipmunks the game goes from hack and slash to a strategy game through the use of stage battles, where you must harvest ghost like fans to give command point enough to summon minions to send to fight the other guys minions, again this becomes repetitive as there isn’t really any difference between fights apart from the look of the enemies.

The music used in the game is simply a laundry list of rock Ozzy, Motorhead & Megadeth are just a few with more songs hidden in game this was one of the times I relished exploring the extents of the map, while the game slides off just after the start by becoming a strategy game with RPG elements, overall it’s a good game to play theres more comedy than you can shake a hairy stick at and the game play and RPG aspects are good and make the game better out of 10 id give brutal legend a 6-7.