Game Name: Brütal Legend
Game Genre: Action-Adventure, RTS
Developed by: Double Fine Productions
Published by: EA, Double Fine Productions
Released in: October 13, 2009
Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
Played in: MC Windows
Written by: Yiğit DORUK
Date: 12/09/2020
To enjoy an interactive-medium, I believe that the material should do at least one of its’ thing/job great. I did not expect every game to be great in every aspect, it is often enough for me to enjoy a game that only focuses on one aspect, and make other game elements mediocre or bad. However, if a game comes up with/promising/accomplishes more than one element and makes all of its promises utterly bad, I could not find any choice other than dropping/quitting. Brütal Legend was one of the games that stuck in my head for a while and I wanted to experience this product from Double Fine. Because of my love and interest in Metal music, when I first saw the game I was impressed by the general aesthetics and humor. You can control Jack Black (which I love) and it is filled with metal, from top to toe: What did you expect more?!?! This is my first thoughts before I start the game, I thought that even it is going to be an average game I could enjoy it because of those reasons. But it turns out Brütal Legend was just going to be a huge disappointment for me…
Brütal Legend Trailer
Our main character, Eddie, is JACK BLACK!
When I realized that I could not stand playing this game anymore and quit, I looked up the Wikipedia page to see what genre is this game defined in. According to the Wikipedia page, Brütal Legend is a “third-person action-adventure game incorporating real-time strategy elements.” But that is a huge misconception. I did not look at review or detailed gameplay videos before I started playing, but I knew that should be the case: a fun action game fused with a bit of hack-n-slash elements. When I first encountered “real-time strategy elements”, I was shocked. However, I knew that those moments would not be continuous, or would it be? The biggest downside for me is the amount of real-time strategy moments, and I think that developers added those moments just to increase the potential playtime. The game is filled with meaningless design choices: a boring open world with arbitrary side quests, a two-dimensional combat system with control problems, and an empty strategy system with no-depth in it. Instead of focusing on one of those game layers to flesh out and improve, they decided to achieve too many things at one time and thus would turn into a game that could not achieve anything in any subject. I believe developers should cut the open-world system completely to focus on creating cleverly designed “real-time strategy” moments. Because it looks like those strategy elements are just there to increase the playtime and just that. Even if they cut the “side elements” (strategy is the thing that takes your time most, but anyway), the main aspect of this game, which is the action system, is just plain in a bad way. Players could easily get most of the combos very early stage of the game and the game does not introduce fresh combat options or any interesting upgrades. I could easily say that whatever you do in the first 3 hours of the game, you will likely do the same things when you are finishing the game. Combos or upgrades are not exciting or game-changer by any means, even if you get those you could not feel that you need to use those combos because of the amount of “RTS” moments involved in the gameplay. Control schemes also avoid players to block and avoid enemy attacks simultaneously, players could only dodge when they are locked on an enemy, but they can not use the block button while doing so because block only works when you are not locking an enemy. I am still struggling to find why they came up with this “interesting” control scheme but I think it is just a huge design mistake which I could not stand for this kind of action game. On top of that, you could not navigate easily while you are traveling in the open-world or going through levels. I could not find anything to be impressive in terms of level design, but from time to time the layout of the levels feels that they are just not suitable for an action/adventure game nor a real-time strategy game. To just illustrate again, I believe that the lack of variety in action system cause developers to fill those gaps with creating a strategy mechanics but it is really obvious that they were not designed specifically for that purpose and it feels like an afterthought.
Fighting with more than one enemy is pain in the a**!
Result...
Car controls are decent and you can listen metal!
Why add different command options when you don't have any strategic depth?
Our story starts with our main hero, Eddie, suddenly teleported into a different realm in the middle of a concert. He finds out an evil creature has been invaded the lands and force everyone to be his slave, he met with a rebel group to teach the power of music and help them to defeat the villain. That is the premise of the story, it is not complex, yet it is a bit cliche but it does not matter because I think no one expects a fully-fleshed story from this game. While the story is not the brightest tool in a shed, I believe the narration style of this game could probably the few aspects that I enjoyed, and was one of the main reasons why I could stand for 7,3 hours before I completely quit. You will encounter some of the most iconic people in metal music and some of the world-building elements can be interesting sometimes. While the dialogs can be a bit cringy sometimes, the humor of narration, thanks to Jack Black, really shines through the game. As I mentioned, some details within this world are fun. Seeing that playing a decent solo could bring your car, buff your allies, awakens an ancient relic, or grant you superpowers is sure a nice thing to see. The world filled with metal music, fun references to metal bands, an interesting building made up of amps or guitars, statues of famous rock stars can add some value to an otherwise-not-interesting story.
I couldn't say the same thing to the whole game Lemmy :(