Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Brutal Stuff Legends Are Made Of
OK, so the game's been out for two days now, but this is practically my first bit of spare time not playing it. I'm not much of a serious gamer. As a matter of fact, most games, I guess like most of everything else are shit. But since games are so expensive to make, they take a lot less risks. So most games are derivative and bland. But this game, I almost never want to stop playing.
I'm talking about Tim Schafer's latest brain spawn Brutal Legend. For people who don't know much about him, Tim Schafer is a creative genius. I have played just about all of his games. From Secret of Monkey Island, to The Day of The Tentacle, to Full Throttle, to Psychonauts, to Brutal Legend. Whenever a game of his comes out, it's an event.
What makes him such a legend? None of his games really reinvent the wheel in terms of gameplay or technological aspects. He's not a Shigeru Miyamoto or even a Yuji Naka. What he does do, however is come up with games that have interesting and well-developed stories, immersive worlds, and unique main characters. Very refreshing when you look at the characters of most games; soldiers, warriors, and sometimes ninjas/martial arts experts.
Brutal Legend has all of the above ingredients of what make Tim Schafer games such treats. It stars Jack Black as Eddie Riggs, a roadie who gets into a stage accident. His blood drips into his cursed belt buckle, and he gets transported into a hellish but "bad-assed" heavy metal world. Look at the surreal heavy metal album covers of the 70s and 80s with spiders made out of motorcycle engines, mountains made of skulls, panthers who shoot lasers out of their eyes, trees with flesh and teeth, etc. and you'll have a good idea of what kind of world Eddie has found himself in. It's populated by characters modeled after and voiced by heavy metal musicians such as Ozzy Osbourne as the guardian of metal, Lemmy Killmister as a doctor whose music heals people, Lita Ford as a warrior princess of sorts, Kyle Gass (Jack Black's partner in Tenacious D) as a bouncer, and some others I have yet to meet. The main villain, a sadomasochist demon is voiced by Tim Curry of The Rocky Horror Picture Show fame. I'm sure there are others I met in the game, but couldn't identify, but I admit, I'm not the most versed guy when it comes to music of any sort. I have what I like, and that's it. That said, I really like the music in the game. 90% of it I've never heard in my life, but I constantly pause to get the names of the artists and the tracks.
There is a lot to the gameplay mechanics, and it really merges genres. It's an open-world that the player can drive through a la Grand Theft Auto. Honestly, my only problem with the game stems from this aspect. Not the driving, which I am fine with, but the navigation. I am a person who is generally not good navigating, directions mean very little to me. In the game, the player has to constantly look for a white light coming from the sky at a far distance to figure out where to go next. Not all the time is the light even visible, so I wind up getting lost or have to constantly go back to the menu to look at the map.
Basic action is hack and slash, guitar solos (hitting the right buttons on time) can be pulled off to cause certain effects such as the face melt. There are a few types of side missions you can go on, and so far most have been one of about four different types over and over again. Highly repetitive, but too short to get bored of.
There are also elements of real-time strategy where the player builds up Eddie's band and stage and has them take down the enemy's stage. That is also what the multiplayer mode consists of, the RTS gameplay. The player can choose from three armies: Ironheade - Eddie's army, a band of headbangers and razor girls. Drowning Doom - An excellent parody of goth culture. When I see and hear them I almost have to think that Tim Schafer plugged in the brains of Edward Gorey and Charles Addams, and then hired Jhonen Vasquez to consult him on their gothic sensibilities and aesthetics. Naturally that is the army I almost always use. There is finally Tainted Coil - The demonic army themed around S&M and dark divinity. For example, in the army, there are nuns in skimpy outfits with zipper-teeth, men with large torsos with arrows sticking out of their backs and gag balls in their mouths, and leather faced priests.
The story has been really involving so far. Most of the characters all have an interesting flair to them, and are more than just stock characters. Eddie Riggs seems like a mind meld of Tim Schafer and Jack Black, and of course the character is incredibly likable as well as has the funniest lines. The only character who I found to be a little one dimensional was Lars, who leads the resistance at the beginning. Mr. Schafer has listed Kurt Vonnegut as an influence on more than one occasion and it's certainly helps. The game never forgets to have a sense of humour, even during or not long after some of its darkest moments. I've reached about a third through, and the story and humour seem to be getting better. Though it has reached a point where it strikes a dark chord. Tonally, the game is a lot darker than its predecessor Psychonauts, which was purely whimsical, and pretty lighthearted. But that's to be expected. Psychonauts was set in a psychic camp for preteens, this game is set in Heavy Metal hell, so it's darker, gorier, and edgier.
I haven't finished it off, and I think I will try to stretch out my enjoyment of it as much as possible, since it was four and a half years between this and Psychonauts. It will probably be just as long of a wait for the next. But I am already excited for what it will be. I can only assume it will probably have a totally different tone and style, since, in an interview, he once said he likes to go from one end to the other in terms of what his games are about. I look forward to it, but until then...
See everyone in (heavy metal) hell!
