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Brutal Legend is Awesome

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

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.
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Brutal Legend comes out today

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Just a reminder: Brutal Legend comes out today, for those of us who weren’t at Gamestop at midnight.

(No, yours truly was not among them. One, I needed sleep last night. Two, I don’t have $60 to drop on a game at the moment. Household repairs have a way of derailing the ‘entertainment’ section of the budget. I will start posting more about my experiences with the game when I can afford to get it.)

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Brutal Legend Demo Reactions

Monday, October 5th, 2009

I finally got my hands on the Brutal Legend demo yesterday. (I only have a Xbox Live Silver account right now, so I had to wait.)

The opening sequence was awesome. I had already seen it in one of the gameplay demo videos that had been posted over the last several months. However, being able to watch it on my TV instead of on a grainy web video on my monitor was awesome. I also turned on the blood and gore and turned off the swear filter, just to see what was filtered out of the demo video. As far as I can tell, the swear filter is going to end up being more of a matter of a personal mood–the game is actually funnier with it on. The blood and gore is going to end up being dependent on my mood too–seeing the heads pop off of the members of Kabbage Boy was funny, but slightly gratuitous.

The basic single-player battle system seemed to work well for a hack and slash player like myself. I always have trouble avoiding hitting my allies in other games–big battles in Oblivion, for instance, were always a problem for me. However, the AI on the allies in this game seem to be good at staying out of my way. The controls were simple and relatively intuitive, especially for the guitar-based magical attacks.

I did have some trouble controlling the car, but I believe I may have been attempting to steer with the wrong thumbstick for some reason. I’ll have to play the demo through again to see if that is the case. It may take me awhile to get the hang of driving, but the problem that I had seemed to be all from mishandling of the controller and not the game itself. As long as I had the thumbsticks under control, the car itself, along with its steering and acceleration system, was also simple enough to handle.

Unfortunately, the demo didn’t answer the biggest question that I had–the prominence of the real-time strategy elements of the game. I never really enjoyed RTS games, mostly because I never really got to be good at them. This still leaves some questions for me as to whether I really want to purchase this game. If there is a stronger RTS element to the game itself, I most likely won’t enjoy it as much.

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Guitar Hero 5: Hair Metal Strikes Back

Friday, September 11th, 2009

If you’ve been following the news about Guitar Hero 5, you know that all anyone can talk about is the fact that they made Kurt Cobain into a playable character. This leads to the inevitable: making him sing ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’. (The videos of it all seem to be getting removed; the one featured in the article at Blabbermouth.net got taken down. A search of Youtube should turn one up though.)

Dead people as playable characters is a tad bit creepy, as has been pointed out on other sites. That seems to be another trend; Cobain is in Guitar Hero 5, and all of the Beatles, alive and dead, are in the Beatles edition of Rock Band. That being said, Cobain is a lot creepier than the deceased Beatles. I think it’s because Cobain looked like a zombie when he was alive. Making him a playable character in a regular GH game, where he can be plopped into all sorts of random scenarios (like singing ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’) just makes the zombie comparison a natural.

The Beatles in Rock Band don’t seem to have the same ‘ick’ factor. Maybe it’s because I’m far fonder of the Beatles. But Harmonix was far more respectful of John, Paul, George and Ringo when they created their game. Placing the Rock Band versions of the Beatles into the detailed recreations of real venues or into the period-accurate “dreamscapes” while playing their own music prevents the disconnected ‘eww, zombie!’ reaction. The characters are always in a proper context, and it’s more like playing along with the Beatles than manipulating their corpses.

And yes, I may be forced to purchase the Beatles edition of Rock Band. My parents found out about it.

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Tom Petty Tracks for Rock Band

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

According to the Examiner.com, two tracks from Tom Petty were added to the Rock Band store yesterday. (My Xbox still isn’t talking to Xbox Live though, so I won’t be getting them today at least. I’m pretty sure it’s the router that’s the problem.)

In terms of the challenge of playing these songs, they probably made solid choices. Both “I Won’t Back Down” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream” have decent guitar parts. “Runnin’ Down a Dream” has a drum track that I know I won’t be able to follow, and the guitar work in the solo is pretty impressive. “I Won’t Back Down” will probably be more of a fun party track.

Unfortunately, I would have preferred different tracks–personally, I think singing “Free Fallin’” and “Refugee: would rule. Unfortunately neither is actually a very complicated song, so no matter how much I would enjoy singing them, I don’t think they’re going to make either available as a download.

I’ll post again with my review of the tracks–when I can get them to download.

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Brutal Legend Demo Coming Soon

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Gamespy reports that there is a Brutal Legend demo coming in September.

I can’t wait for this. One, this is going to be the first time that I’ll actually be able to get my hands on a playable version of the game in any way, shape or form.  Two, having a demo is going to let me decide whether to ask for a preorder on this for my birthday or whether I should buy it for myself.

(Plus, if I ask for it for my birthday, the telemarketing calls from Gamestop will go to my folks’ number and not mine, and after years of my brother’s gaming habits, they already get them.  I don’t need a computer calling me up to tell me about the midnight party for the release of the next expansion pack for World of Warcraft.)

Also, check out the screenshots posted over at Gamespy.  They’ve got some new ones that I missed while I was distracted by work and the new Bon Jovi release.  There’s one really cool one that shows Eddie with demon arms playing the guitar.  There’s also a good shot of Doviculus–the guy looks like he’s about ten feet tall.  That’s something that seems to be missed in a lot of games; the scale often seems out of whack, or isn’t used properly.   Big villains should be just that–big. Ocarina of Time got it right at the end when Ganon rises up out of the rubble and you realize that taking down Ganondorf was just the warm up act and this round was going to hurt.   Doviculus looks like he’s got a little bit of that going on.  He looks like he’s just big enough to be ominous.  Every other video that I’ve seen of the game looks like it was properly designed, so I have no doubts that scale will be used properly here too.

Now I just need to figure out why my Xbox stopped communicating with Xbox Live so I can actually download the demo and play it.  Looks like I should get started–I only have a few days left before the beginning of September to get it working.

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Brutal Legend Track List Released

Monday, August 10th, 2009

The track listing for Brutal Legend has been released. You can read the entire list at Metal News.

It appears to be an interesting mix of music, including a decent selection of Ozzy’s work, both with and without the rest of Black Sabbath. There’s also a fair amount of Judas Priest included in the list. The number of Priest and Sabbath songs is pretty much what I expected, when you consider the sizable roles that both Ozzy and Rob Halford play in the game. It’s not surprising that they would both allow their music to be used in the game, since they’re already so involved.

Lita Ford got a song included as well. However, like Ozzy and Halford, she was already involved with providing voice talent for the game. So including Lita’s work isn’t a surprise either.

What’s more surprising is the number of hair metal songs on the list. There’s a fairly large number of Motley Crue songs, as well as songs by Whitesnake, Quiet Riot, Ratt and Skid Row, all of which could be considered hair metal. (Skid Row and Motley Crue probably get a pass on being hair metal for this game, since most of their work tends to be quite heavy by regular hair metal standards.)

And of course, Tenacious D’s The Metal is included. I would have been highly disappointed if this song had been excluded. Not only is it Jack Black’s group, it was pretty much a readily made theme song for the game.

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Brutal Legend sponsoring Dethklok and Mastodon Tour

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Brutal Legend will be sponsoring Dethklok and Mastodon’s upcoming tour, according to WorthPlaying.

They even plan on having game stations at the concerts so that the fans can try out the game right at the show. In some ways, this may not help expand the reach of the game very much. Most of the metal fans (at least the ones I know) usually tend to be gamers already. They’re all stoked for the release of Brutal Legend already.

However, the deal does come with advertising spots on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, thanks to the Dethklok/Metalocalypse connection. Adult Swim reaches a large audience of gamers, some of whom might not have been introduced to Brutal Legend otherwise. If they at least check it out, they might find out (like those of us who have been watching the trailers and demos) that there is more to this game than metal, and that will help the game do well.

I haven’t heard anything to indicate this, but maybe this partnership will mean that some Dethklok content will make it into Brutal Legend. It would be awesome if they gave out codes for an in-game Dethklok goodie at the concerts, kind of like the Tenacious D guitar that you get for pre-ordering.

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LEGO Rock Band: Where does it end?

Monday, July 27th, 2009

I’ve already griped about how Harmonix and Activision are milking their respective Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises by adding silly gimmick or band-centered games. (You can read about them in the posts on E3 and the one specifically about band games. Lately it seems that Harmonix is even worse than Activision about this kind of thing.

Evidently Harmonix went to the trouble of at least adding something that passes for meat to the Beatles edition of Rock Band. (You can read about the harmony vocals feature at the official site.) Unfortunately, I don’t see the three-part harmony vocals feature getting much use. I don’t know about other people, but I have a hard enough time getting anybody to take vocals on Rock Band when I organize a multiplayer game. That’s even with using the No Fail mode from Rock Band 2. (If I’m not the one doing lead vocals, that’s pretty much a necessity.) Getting three people to do vocals, two of which won’t be the melody? In my group of friends, fat chance of that happening. It’s a cool feature, but not a selling point any more than the drum trainer in Rock Band 2 was a selling point or the ability to create your own tracks was in Rock Band World Tour.

GameFocus has an article with a list of the released track titles for LEGO Rock Band. These include You Give Love A Bad Name. Effectively, this means that Bad Name will never be made available as DLC for Rock Band 2. If people really want any of the songs on this game, they’re going to have to buy the game. The problem is that buying games to get a few tracks gets really expensive. The only track in the whole list over at GameFocus that I really want is Bad Name. If they were available as DLC for Rock Band, I might buy Final Countdown too.

Ultimately what will sell any of these games will be how badly people want the songs in the game. For those of us who have already bought plenty of these games, we would rather have these songs as downloadable content for the games we already own. Pretty pictures of the Beatles or LEGO bricks don’t add much to the gameplay as far as I’m concerned. I’d rather have Bad Name and the Beatles tracks as downloads for Rock Band 2. I certainly won’t be buying either of these games, and I won’t be asking for them as gifts.

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More Brutal Legend Gameplay

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Destructoid has another Brutal Legend gameplay demo video.

You might be well-advised to skip this (and the video) if you’re at all spoiler-conscious. This video does give away a lot, even more than the last one. I’m actually kind of sorry I watched it, and usually I’m not big on avoiding spoilers.

The post continues, with spoilers and all, after the jump.
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