Brutal-ly Honest: A quick review of Brutal Legend demo for the X-box 360

Brutal-ly Honest: A quick review of Brutal Legend demo for the X-box 360.

Tim Schafer began his gaming industry fame at the start of the late 80’s with the video game, Maniac Mansion. In the 90’s he had successfully worked on a sequel to Manic Mansion and worked on the Monkey Island series. In 2005, Schafer, as creative director, developed Psychonauts a tale of a gifted boy who develops his psychic powers and runs away to join a summer camp to become a Psychonaut. Tim Schafer resurfaces again in 2009 with a game called Brutal Legend, a rock and roll action-adventure game which takes funny man, musician, and actor Jack Black’s voice and throws it into this twisted world.

I took the advice of this game from a friend of mine and promised him that I would take a look into this game. I’m not a real fan of demos since it usually just displays one level of walking and shooting and then some advertisements for the game and you’re done with the demo. This is not the case for Brutal Legend. The demo gives the player a generous amount of gameplay along with some amazing comedic parts done by the protagonist Eddie Riggs as he walks in the depths of “hell”.

Upon loading the game, we are treated to a weird start menu of a guy unveiling the Brutal Legend record on a table. For me, this is the greatest start menu ever. It’s so common that games today have the typical serious start menu with bland, emotional colors, but Brutal Legend has such unique, bright menu that it makes me feel good about myself (well if black is your favorite color); makes me feel like I’m going to read, or listen, to this legendary tale of awesomeness. Most selections are blocked off due to the demo, we are given the “Start Game” and “Options” selections, blocked selections include “Credits”, “Continue”, “Multiplayer”, and “Extras”.

I started it up on normal and the mountain of skulls transitions into a massive rock stage as we are pulled into the storybook. We are treated to Black’s character Eddie Riggs, a roadie helping out a young “rock” band with their gig. He fixes and builds literally everything; he created the stage and help fix guitars. As the band plays “rock”, and I do use the term “rock” loosely, he helps save the stupid guitarist from falling off the set itself. Sadly, this leads to Eddie’s death as the stage comes alive and kills the “rock” band while the crowd eats up the super awesome special effects. However, we see that Eddie is alive and wakes up on the set now filled with bones and some monks chanting for their master. Riggs is mistaken and grabs an ancient axe and his rocking guitar and decides to kick some ass for the rock gods. On his journey, he meets a super hot rock babe who doesn’t know how to French kiss, creates the hot rod Druid Plow, and defeats a bone worm. All in all, a very enjoyable story with some amazing music to boot provided by such names as Ozzy Ozbourne, Megadeth, KMFDM, and many others including Black’s band Tenacious D.

Gameplay is on the same level as God of War for the Playstation. You press the “a” button for one attack, press the “x” button and quickly press the “a” button again to perform a three hit combo. Riggs will have a variety of weapons as well as attacks as the game progresses. The targeting and avoid system is a little odd since I am use to the right analog stick being the dodge away from an attack stick from God of War. In Legend, it is used to fix the camera movement and when locked onto an enemy, it will dodge away from attacks. This, for me, will take some time getting use to since I was spoiled by the great controls of God of War.

The graphics are cartoonish but tweaked with a surreal amount of seriousness. The color pallets aren’t dreary like a vast majority of games that are available today. Once you escape the stage and use your Earthshaker ability, you will see some bright colors pop out against the darker colors, especially when looking at the pile of skulls with the bright orange backdrop. The in-game engine animation cutscenes look very smooth and seems to work with loading times, assuming if it’s on a disc rather than on the hard drive of an X-box 360 or Playstation 3.

I had a very enjoyable time playing the Brutal Legend demo twice. This is going to be the game in which Schafer will be known for and undoubtedly will make a lot more sales than Psychonauts. Schafer has learned to hit the core audience of gamers that understand the business of true rock n roll mixed in with his comedic content is an absolute win for the industry. I am certainly awaiting the final product and a sequel to the game if it allows for a nice cliffhanger at the end. Tim, I never had so much fun with a game in a long time, thank you for providing a game with a fresh, less serious, look into the industry. Then again, Elmo’s Letter Adventure has bright colors too.