I finally finished Brutal Legend this past weekend. It’s taken me awhile to finish the game, even though I didn’t find the main story mode to be particularly difficult or long. (Having the Xbox decide to develop the Red Ring of Death does tend to put a crimp in my gaming schedule.) Honestly, I could have done with a longer story mode. I didn’t find anything to be all that great about the multiplayer mode, especially since none of my friends have Brutal Legend. If a few of my friends were interested in playing some stage battles, I might get more mileage out of it. But as it stands, the multiplayer mode holds no real interest. (Most of my friends would rather play Halo Wars.)
The rest of my follow-up is after the jump. Consider yourself warned: there are spoilers after this point, so if you’re haven’t beat the game yourself and don’t want the end spoiled STOP NOW.
….that should be sufficient spoiler space, even for a big monitor…
Like I said above, I found the story mode to be a tad short. I just feel that there were so many more things that they could have explored in the world created for the game. Maybe the problem is that the game as a whole was too easy; I was able to blow through it far too fast. (I should have cranked the difficulty up I guess.) I suspect that part of the problem was the hybrid nature of the game; it can’t make up its mind whether it’s a RTS game or an action game, and it winds up being both, and dumbing both down a lot. Neither mode has a lot of subtleties to it. The stage battles can get a little more interesting, but compared to other real-time strategy games that I’ve played, it’s pretty simple.
That being said, I did enjoy the stage battles, but that’s mostly because I am epic fail at playing true real-time strategy games. As I’ve said before, I just don’t seem to have the multitasking ability necessary to keep up with those games. I’m always too slow at playing them. The simpler systems in Brutal Legend operated at a level much more in keeping with my abilities.
Overall, I found this game to be incredibly gorgeous from a graphical perspective. I am easily impressed on this count, mostly because I hadn’t really gotten any up-to-date game consoles in a long time. (Really. The last two consoles that I had before the Xbox 360 were a Nintendo 64 and a Wii, neither of which is particularly impressive from a graphical perspective these days.) But even so, from a design perspective, this game impresses me. It certainly holds true to an artistic style that just screams HEAVY METAL. What’s astounding is the number of variations on that theme that they came up with–more that I had ever realized were possible. (The Drowning Doom ventured a little far from the heavy metal and are edging over into Tim Burton-esqe Goth territory, but that’s a relatively minor quibble. Drowned Ophelia looked totally awesome. That’s next year’s Halloween costume there.)
I was playing with the blood/dismemberment and swearing filters turned off. I have to play back through again with them turned on, just because I want to see how they manage the end of the game without any blood or dismemberment. I figure that they would have to keep the whole thing with the heart dissolving, even though that’s kind of gross (and dismemberment-y) because of the plot point that it made.
All told, I’m glad I bought this game. It’s been one of the most fun games that I’ve played in a long time. (The Ghostbusters game for the Xbox is probably a close second when it comes to pure fun.)
Related posts:
- Brutal Legend
- New Brutal Legend Screenshots and Trailer!
- Brutal Legend comes out today
- Brutal Legend is Awesome
- Brutal Legend Demo Coming Soon
Tags: Brutal Legend, cover art, xbox 360