I picked up a copy of Brutal Legend on Black Friday, when Best Buy had it for $39.99. I had been hesitant to pay the full $59.99 price tag after all of the talk that I had heard about the real-time strategy portions of the game. For years I’ve had problems with RTS games. I’ve just never done well with them. (It’s odd, because my day-to-day life is an exercise in multitasking, but I can’t handle the level of multitasking that RTS games require. Silly, but true.)
But at that sale price, I figured it was at least worth a shot. Especially since I had been looking forward to it so much since I had first heard about the game. Black Friday was nuts, but I did manage to get all of the stuff that I went out for. Brutal Legend turned out to be the closest call on that count though. I got one of the last Xbox 360 copies that my local Best Buy had, at least from what I could see in the bin. I had to dig pretty far down into the bin to find it.
I just popped the game in for the first time about a week ago. (I was trying to finish up the Ghostbusters game before I really started Brutal Legend.) And it turns out that Brutal Legend is, indeed, awesome. I had a mental image of a heavy metal Ocarina of Time, and that was basically what the game delivered.
The solos actually work better than the songs from Ocarina of Time, and actually have more of a Guitar Hero influence–you call up the solo and it displays it on the screen and you just have to tap the buttons at the right time. It works better than having to remember a pile of random button sequences, at least for me.
I’m still having trouble steering the car, though at least now I’m trying to steer with the correct thumbstick. I don’t know what kind of mental block I had the day that I played the demo, but I don’t have the same level of trouble that I did before. I’m still having problems, but they’re the usual problems that I always have in racing-type games. I oversteer. I always oversteer.
I did make it far enough into the game to get to the very first stage battle, which is the first time that the RTS elements come into the game. All told, it’s not that bad. I won the mission pretty handily, which is more than I usually do when I’m playing real-time strategy games. At least for me, the simplified orders system that Brutal Legend uses works pretty well. It lets you get down and dirty in the action, and just yell to your troops to go beat on whatever needs pounding. Nothing complicated. And it’s introduced in a really good way.
All told, I’m glad that I finally got this game. It is every bit as awesome as I had hoped, and that’s a rare thing to find.
Related posts:
- Brutal Legend Gameplay Demo
- Brutal Legend sponsoring Dethklok and Mastodon Tour
- Still playing Brutal Legend
- New Brutal Legend Screenshots and Trailer!
- So I finished Brutal Legend…
Tags: Brutal Legend, xbox 360