Tim Schafer's latest game was released to a fairly predictable reception in October 2009: conditional praise. The mind of the man behind much of Monkey Island has always been best at writing games and creating concepts. Schafer's previous effort at the helm of his development company, Double Fine, was Psychonauts; a brilliantly conceived concept and a well told narrative wrapped around a slightly awkward platform game. Brutal Legend is certainly a more polished effort, but it does fall into some of the same traps.
Prepare to headbang your way into glory with these metal-infused games. You'll find yourself flipping your hair in pure excitement.
The Humble Day of the Devs Bundle 2022 just launched. It includes sixteen items including Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Broken Age, and more.
The world of Brutal Legend looks like something a 14 year-old metal head would draw on their notebook while not paying attention.
Liked the aesthetic, tone, humor, and action combat.
Didn't care for the RTS elements.
Never cared to finish it.
Yeah they marketed the game like it was a Heavy Metal GTA-ish adventure. And at the beginning of the game that's what it was. The game fell apart when the half-baked RTS stuff came in. I'd be interested in a reboot or sequel, but just go full action adventure and ditch the RTS. There really is something there with the Heavy Metal theme.
PS360 gen was special, then again it was still the mid 2000s. Everything went to shite in the teens
I think that was the breaker for Doublefine's creative ambitions and their mixing of genres (which was getting kinda stale). It was a nice to look at but it was more of a tribute to the many things Tim loves, was influenced by and has great admiration for....but the forced RTS stuff was like a drinking buddy's "great idea" that never should have come to light. The game seemed a lot more vast, but it ended pretty quickly too. And Jack Black. As much as I don't care for him as an actor (annoying and requires constant attention), this was absolutely made with him in mind and it worked. I mean come on, Tenacious D? For as Metal as this game was trying to be, even comically, it did little more than meow.
Brütal Legend is the proof graphics are not enough to enjoy a game, there must be content and a gameplay that matches it. I don't mind if it's an open world or a linear piece (after all, a Heavy Metal linear game could be awesome too), I really loved Brütal Legend on the artistic side but the gameplay is so poor and we have so much nothing to do in the game I didn't pass hours on it. I even gave up doing side quests after I realized the game was split in two parts.
Aside the lack of interesting gameplay and content in the game, what I wished would be to adapt the soundtrack to the places we are. The first part of the game is set in a Heavy Metal medieval landscape, so Heavy Metal music is perfect for it, but once we cross the second part of the game, we are in a Gothic background, which I find really awesome and detailed, but listening to Motorhead or Dragonforce in such environment is a disgrace. I wish once you enter the Gothic world, the soundtrack switches to Gothic music (something like Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation, Dead Can Dance or something along the darkwave lines) and vice versa.
Regarding Psychonauts, I didn't find its gameplay that awkward, only the "rolling bubble" was pretty hard to handle, otherwise it was a great game (one of my favorite games of all times, actually).