Brütal Legend

[mithriltabby]

When I heard that Tim Schafer, who designed Full Throttle, was creating a fantasy adventure game set in the world of 1980’s heavy metal album covers, I was curious. My appreciation of heavy metal has mostly been limited to Spın̈al Tap; the closest I normally get to metal is Ozric Tentacles. But I had such fun with Full Throttle, I let obsessivewoman know that I was interested in Brütal Legend for Yule, and she made sure it was under the tree when the solstice rolled around... and I was pleasantly surprised to find that (at least while I’m playing the game) I’m actually enjoying heavy metal, and have some appreciation for the culture.

The creative team must have had a blast coming up with the game. The world is designed, right down to its mythology and biology, to create amazing vistas and badass beasts. If Pantheacon this year has people talking about the Metal Gods and the Great Beast Ormagöden and the four elements of blood, fire, noise, and metal, this is where they’re getting all that from. The game is worth a tour just to see all the artistic creativity that went into it; they even provide 32 in-game “landmark viewers” so you can appreciate all the spectacles.

The gameplay is decent; I’m not good enough at button-mashing combo moves to do well in toe-to-toe fights with the bigger opponents, but once the Druid Plow (the hero’s mystical all-terrain hot rod) gets outfitted with armor and offensive weaponry, you can go nearly anywhere in it, running over and shooting the opposition. (Everyone is immune to friendly fire. The spellcasting system uses Guitar Hero-type controls, and one of the best battle spells causes a flaming zeppelin to crash into your current location; it gives you enough time to get away, but you can’t hurt your allies by dropping it into a melee.) The tactical battle system can get frustrating, as there aren’t any opportunities to practice against the AI without it being an important plot point; it took me quite a number of tries to win the penultimate battle.

The game includes settings that allow you to have cuss words bleeped out, and to turn off gore, so you can crank down the shock value if you want to protect innocent young minds. The story is entirely linear, with some optional side quests, and promotes wholesome moral values like loyalty to your friends and rebellion against oppression; the protagonist is, first and foremost, a roadie, and deliberately avoids letting himself get cast as a hero. Two factions of villains are associated with hair metal and gothic metal, so aficionados of the styles being parodied might be offended.

One thing I would like to see in an online update would be a way to show people the mythology sequences and the landmarks; it takes a lot of time in-game to drive around between all those sites, which is inconvenient if you just want to show people the art.