![]() Also on hand to help out (once recruited) are projectile specialist female groupies and devastating, speaker-carrying roadies.Ĭombat is split into a few distinct styles, although it’s here that the game hits its only major flaw: it’s just not that good. The headbangers are my personal favourites having been used as manual labourers, crushing rock with their heads (thanks to their massively overdeveloped and muscular necks and foreheads), these guys are dumb, but their one-liners are often hilarious. ![]() Early parts of the game therefore see you going on quests in the large open world to recruit the various essential parts of a touring crew. Without any way to combat the evil menace, Eddie takes it upon himself to put together a army the only way he knows how. Lord Doviculus and General Lionwhyte serve as the big bad guys of the piece (even if Lionwhyte’s glam metal appearance isn’t overly menacing), having taken young men and women to serve as slaves. Eddie is by far the most interesting and entertaining of the four, and will go down as one of the best new video game characters of this generation. You’ve got main character Eddie (the meat-headed, big chested, lovable brute), Ophelia, Lars (the long-haired blond, pretty boy leader) and Lita (essentially a female version of Lars). After an action-packed opening in which you meet Ophelia (slightly emo rock chick), you soon meet the rest of the core cast. This is a fantastical world, the kind you might see in a film by Tim Burton or a children’s fantasy movie from the 80s, with large expanses of lush fields, volcanoes, towering icons of metal, freakish creatures and some unbelievable characters. It’s not the end of the road for Eddie, though, with his blood activating a pendant worn around his neck, sending him into another world where metal is the only way of life. With the show saved Eddie slips back into the shadows, but the crumbling stage collapses on top of the heroic roadie, knocking him out and spilling his blood. Touring with a popular pop metal band (who aren’t much in Eddie’s eyes), the lead singer gets into trouble and it’s Eddie who comes to his aid, catching him from what would have been a deadly fall. Eddie’s only goal is to let the band put on an amazing show for the fans, and it’s here where the story of Brutal Legend begins. It’s a roadie’s job to make the band he’s touring with look and sound great while remaining in the background. It’s undoubtedly a lovingly created game that deserves to be played, but too many of the fundamental gameplay mechanics don’t feel right.Įddie Riggs (voiced brilliantly by Hollywood A-lister Jack Black) is a roadie not just any roadie, but the best roadie the world has ever seen. Yet playing Brutal Legend left me wishing it was better. Take almost every part of Brutal Legend on its own and you’d be looking at an often hilarious script, incredible audio, fantastic art design and some of the best ideas you’ll ever come across. The phrase ‘Better than the sum of its parts’ came to mind when playing this third-person metal epic, but after thinking about it some more in the days leading up to writing this review, that’s not really fair. As such Brutal Legend had been expected to be the next big thing in the ‘different to anything else’ genre – an area that Schafer specialises in. Brutal Legend is the latest game from development studio Double Fine, the team headed by adventure game legend Tim Schafer and behind 2005’s superb platforming adventure game Psychonauts.
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