Dear Internet,
"Brutal
Legend" is over as far as I am concerned.
I have completed the main story and the game was unable to make me want
to play it any longer than that. There
is still multiplayer mode that I have not played, which allows players to play
one another in the tower defense mode.
On top of that there are sidequests that reward the player with points
for upgrades, statues to raise, tablets to find which unlock music, and various
other things that are hidden away. None
of these are essential or needed. I was
able to get through the whole story without any upgrades except for a few that
I purchased for the ax and guitar. There
are six guitar solo moves hidden throughout the land that are special moves
that aid in battle. I found and needed
one. I played about for side quests out
of the 30 or so and saw that they were mostly repeats with only location or
enemy changes, so I chose not to do them.
There
is a lot to do in "Brutal Legend," I will admit, but none of them are
needed to get through the main quest.
Worse than that, the game was unable to make me want to play though
them. This is coming from a guy that is
trying to get 100% in "Lego City: Undercover," a game with well over
300 collectable unlockables. To a certain extent this might be due to the
fact that I am playing "Lego City" for my own enjoyment with no entry
being required for it while "Brutal Legend" is preventing me from continuing
through the backlog. However there is a
glaring problem. The various things that
"Brutal Legend" has ready for the player to collect are not needed
one bit. Maybe playing on the highest
difficulty would make the player search out these various goodies to help aid
them, but even on mid-difficulty I breezed through the majority of the
game. The only time I had to repeat the
same battle over and over again was with the second to last fight, and that was
more because the game decided to throw a new enemy type into my arsenal and one
in the enemy's and asked me to quickly understand the mechanic of the new type
mid-battle. The game forgot a simple
lesson in game design: you do not teach in the middle of a test. The other times when I failed a mission was
when I got thrown into a new situation with little to no explanation, but I got
over those much quicker once I got the mechanic down, so that is more par for
the course.
Last I
wrote to you, I spoke very highly of the various elements that the game while
touching upon a few less than stellar points.
I said there were some things that I wanted to wait to say, and now I
can say the. For one thing, that open
world that is supposed to be filled with various things to collect feels really
empty. To a certain extent it is like
looking for a needle in a haystack. The
world is huge, but rather pointlessly so.
Since the player has access to a car at any one time, traversing it can
be quick, albeit annoying since there is no minimap and navigating to a
waypoint by means of turn signals feels a bit broken. There is no point in walking anywhere since
you cannot jump which can leave you stuck in a hole until you summon your car
three seconds later. The only way I can
detail as to why the world feels pointlessly big is comparing it to "Lego
City." In "Lego City" not
only is there a huge world, but there is a sense of exploration. There are hidden nooks and crannies
everywhere that are waiting to reward the player when they find them. The game encourages the player to get out of
the vehicle to find the items scattered everywhere. "Brutal Legend" does the complete
opposite. It highlights all the
sidequests and has little to no walking exploration. Having enemies scattered everywhere makes
speed bumps that push the player away from getting out of their car to look
around. There is no stress in finding
the various collectables. At least in
"Lego City" it admits that collectables are completely cosmetic, but
creates a sense of excitement in the player by making the player wonder what
exactly they are going to receive.
Tim
Shafer games are herald as the epitome of wit and comedy. I played "Psychonauts," which was
the game that Shafer and his studio designed right before this game. It was funny, but never in a way that made me
laugh out loud consistently. It made me
smirk constantly more than laugh uncontrollably. That more likely has something to do with the
fact that a video game can make the same joke as a movie, but requires the
player to regain their concentration quicker than a movie lest the player lose the
game. The player needs to make the joke
less funny or they risk having to repeat the level by losing their
concentration. I digress because
"Brutal Legend" has to follow this--somewhat overblown in my opinion--legacy
of Shafer being the epitome of comedy. There
is some really witty writing at the beginning of the game. The whole segment of Eddie rescuing the
headbangers from a mine got me laughing.
After about the three hour mark, there was next to nothing for the remaining
of the game. A few jokes were scattered
here and there, but they definitely dropped in both quality and frequency. The game turns dramatic and serious very quickly
despite it being rather ludicrous and filled with holes. By the end, there are a few switcheroos
pulled that could not make me care at all.
They are pushed in there at the last minute to try and add some sort of
backstory, yet the story as a whole lacks telling the player about those key
aspects before shaking them up, so none of it really matters. You cannot pull the rug from under a person
if they were not standing there in the first place. Apparently, there are a few ways to learn
about the world from either talking to the various characters or finding those
collectables I mentioned. If the game
expected me to pick up on excess information scattered outside of the main
story when it was actually central information, then the game pulled a silly
trick. You do not put central information
anywhere but at the center of the game.
I am still trying to figure out how Eddie knew what the Black Tears was
or when it was explicitly told to the player what they were.
Another
thing about that giant open world that I am not going to slice into the above
paragraph since I am getting lazy, the car handles terribly. I was constantly sliding around like a
sugar-hyped four year old in a bouncy castle.
It reminded me sometimes of the rover in "Mass Effect." At least that game had an excuse as to why
the vehicle behaved like it was rolling around on the moon. In "Brutal Legend," the vehicle has
next to no weight to it except when it goes crashing into an enemy. I found myself crashing into walls constantly
and being forced to slowly slog away because the crash would cause the vehicle
to point at an awkward angle half way up a rock. The driving was never satisfying or all that
fun. It was just a means to get to the
next mission, and something to be put up with.
There were sidequest that were races, but I completely avoided them because
of how I did not like driving that car.
Overall,
"Brutal Legend" finishes as being mediocre and uninspiring. The novelty of having a game's artistic aesthetic
based around different types of rock is unique, but it quickly grows old when
the game plays all its cards so quickly.
The whole premise of a real time strategy game where the player takes on
the role of one of the soldiers never quite works. The biggest problem I had with the game was
not the controls as others have said, but the fact that the viewpoint from
Eddie constantly restricted my perception of the playing field, hindering my
understanding of how I should go about each match. The game's biggest draw might be the huge
soundtrack, but since a number of them are not available until the player finds
them or progresses in the story, it limits what the player can listen to
awkwardly. Unlike the Tony Hawk games that
I mentioned earlier which handled a soundtrack management perfectly by letting
the player choose exactly which songs would cycle throughout, "Brutal
Legend" often teases the player by never finishing a favorite song. I have yet to hear "Through the Fire and
Flames" completely because it only plays when I drive the car, and I get
anywhere I need to go in under two minutes.
"Brutal Legend" is not legendary in the scope of the story,
which comes across like a teenage angst drama, or gameplay, which is not all
that brutal either.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
P.S. Tomorrow is "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H. G. Wells.
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