Brutal Legend kicks off with fire and flames, but sadly it looses a bit of heat on the way.
The good : Artistic graphics up to the roof, clever dialog and sharp voice acting, well designed RTS ideas.
The bad : Oddly paced, short single player campaign, framerate hickups, repetitive side-missions.
People who talks about Brutal Legend also talks about its creator, Tim Schafer. His past work agenda is quite impressive, not only with 2005's psychonauts, but also with masterpieces like Monkey Island 1 and 2, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango.
The world of Brutal Legend is a big tribute to metal and rock music. Landscapes are barbaric, filled with metal-esque monuments, giant swords, and fiery skies with solar eclipses , thunders and meteors. Everything from any character design to the vehicles looks amazing and it's always a pleasure to look at. If only the framerate could keep up with it. Often during your many driving sequences through the world, you'll be infested with framerate strutters.
The gameplay itself is a mixed bag and most of it evolves around RTS elements. You'll be able to issue commands, spawn units and get income from fan geysers.
Sadly, I'd have to admit that Tim's ideas of modern gameplay aren't up to the task anymore. Simply because Brutal Legend features a very crude beat-em-up system, that not only shows age, but isn't particularly satisfying either. The driving is kinda off, even if the Deuce ( Eddie's car ) looks outstandingly cool. The RTS portion of the game is brilliant, but since it's only 30% of the missions, it's not enough to carry the whole experience. Unless you're buying the game for MP.
It's a real bummer that the begining of the game really doesn't reflect the whole game. You'd think that you're in for cool beat-em-up missions mixed with some driving chases, but really, appart from a level or two, you'll be fighting three boss in the game, two of them are whitin the first 30 minutes of gameplay. Pacing, please? Cause that's a big disapointement right there.
That said, I've had a blast playing it. I just constantly hoped to have some on-foot solo missions around a very specific level just like any other action games, but sadly, it never happened.
Some design choices in the game are quite dumb. For instance, there's no health bar except a very, VERY annoyingly loud heart pumping noise and a red filter that'll tell you when you're wounded. That's super irritating, and I don't know how developers can think that it is better than a good old healthbar. Some enemies in the free-roam will require a ridiculously huge ammount of button mashing to kill, and most of the time, they'll kill you, leaving a big raised eyebrow on your face.
You also can't teleport in the world, wich is a bit odd since the later part of the world requires you to drive for a very long time before you reach your destination, and often, in a very linear corridor ( especially during the drowning part ) wich gets pretty tiresome after a while. Chances are, at some point, you'll want to upgrade your stuff, but there aint gonna be any forge around ( since you have to find and summon hem using not-always-so obvious clues ) and you'll be driving for quite a distance before getting to the last forge you popped. If you die on the way, you'll spawn 5minutes away from your current position.
The game can be beaten under five hours if you do only the main missions, so it's crucial for your entertainement that you clear up as many side-missions as you can along the way if you hope to make it for a good 10 hours of fun in the single player portion of the game.
You'll be able to upgrade your character with many different uprades that changes the nature of your character's weapons and equipement. One thing that particularly bothered me is that you'll never learn solos, or ''powers'' on your own. You'll have to roam the world of Brutal Legend hoping to find them. And it's very easy to drive by one and miss it, wondering when it'll ever appear. And once you find it, it may just be of no use to you, because you may have finished the game already.
Once the game is beaten, you're invited back in the world of Brutal Legend for you to drive around and finish up whatever task you didn't complete, or find the useless collectibles all around the world. Oddly enough, you can't participate in quick stage battles inside your own singleplayer world, wich is very stupid because DoubleFIne crafted a collectible system that upgrades most of your RTS-related abilities only in the single player experience. And you'll most likely have only a fourth of these upgrades when you'll beat the last level.
Unless driving around to explore every single nook and cranny of the huge map BEFORE hiting the main missions is your thing. But chances are that it's not the case.
Stage battles can still be played offline via the Multiplayer menu, and while it offers and amazing and very fun experience, it's a huge bummer that you can't actually use the stuff you've unlocked, and that has little to no purpose in the situation, during your campaign. I would have loved to boot up AI stage battles using my hard-earned bonuses from the collectibles hidden in the world. But no.
Other than that, there's nothing to unlock. By unlock, I don't mean useless and concept arts that no one ever cares about, but I meant new difficulty settings, new weapons, new stuff or anything like that. There's nothing. Except concept arts and songs.
Brutal Legend is a very unique game that bears amazing ideas, that unfortunatly looked a lot better on paper than in execution. Even with all its problems, Brutal Legend is one of those game we'll remember for years to come because it is so cleverly unique both in its gameplay and artistic side. Did I loved my experience with the game? Absolutely, even with all its flaws.
It's obviously a great beginning in the genre, and it would be a crime for Double Fine and Tim Schafer to not exploit this world even more. Grim Fandango and Full Throttle, even Psychonauts are all games that deserved mighty sequels, and i seriously hope that this time, Brutal Legend will allow us another ride in its beautiful world. This time Double Fine, check out the other free-roaming games around, and some of the most modern beat-em-ups, and learn from your mistakes.