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Brutal Legend | 
| From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: $59.95
Buy New: $49.99
as of 11/21/2009 08:43 EST details
You Save: $9.96 (17%)
New (30) Used (21) Collectible (1) from $29.99
Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 261
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: role_playing_games
ESRB: Mature
Media: Video Game
Edition: Standard
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: No
Age: 17 - 20 years
Operating System: Xbox 360
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 014633193688
Model: 19368
UPC: 020626726856
EAN: 0014633193688
ASIN: B000XJNTPG
Publication Date: September 30, 2009
Shipping: Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | Online-enabled multiplayer so players can conquer friends online via Xbox LIVE. | | • | Comedic action combat set in a rock n' roll fantasy world, staring the talents of Jack Black in the role of a demon fighting super roadie. | | • | A soundtrack made up of 108 of the most rocking tracks from 75 different bands representing every sub-genre of metal. | | • | A streaming, open world that gives players the freedom to walk, drive, or fly anywhere as they unleash the power of rock n' roll on enemies. | | • | In-game cameos from gods of Metal like Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, Lita Ford, and many, many others. |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Product Description
Brütal Legend is an action-adventure that marries visceral action combat with open-world freedom. Set in a universe somewhere between Lord of the Rings and Spinal Tap, it’s a fresh take on the action/driving genre, which in this case is full of imitation cover bands, demons intent on enslaving humanity and Heavy metal tunes. Featuring the talents of comedian, actor and musician, Jack Black as super roadie Eddie Riggs, as well as cameos by some of the biggest names in metal music it's a wild ride in the belly of the beast that is not to be missed by gamers and Metalheads alike. 
Classic action slasher gameplay with a comic twist.
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Unleashable Heavy metal powers.
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Over-the-top vehicular combat.
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8-player multiplayer support.
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Challenging bosses & baddies.
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A driving 108-tune Metal soundtrack.
View larger. | Story
The vivid and wildly creative world of Brütal Legend is brought to life through a spate of chrome, leather, rocker babes, epic music, fire-breathing/stud-wearing beasts, mountains made of guitar amps, and more. Follow Eddie as he embarks on a tour of epic destruction with an axe, a guitar, and his minions as he commands the power of rock in epic band battles. It’s lighter-flicking awesomeness that will melt your face clean off. Action Combat
Brütal Legend’s core gameplay is classic action slasher, but with a twist: ranged combat comes from your demon-slaying, electricity-creating guitar. Add that 1-2 punch to a guitar solo mechanic that can summon objects, buff your teammates, or cripple your opponents, and you have a deep, gratifying core gameplay combat loop that is fun for the hardcore and accessible for the casual. A Streaming Open World
Brütal Legend gives you the freedom to walk, drive, or fly anywhere in a fully streaming open world whose art style is inspired by some of the most iconic and hilariously rad metal album covers ever created. Every vista in the beautiful universe of Brütal Legend looks like it was pulled from a Frank Frazetta painting. Packed with Cameos and Voice Talent
Brütal Legend is full of cameos from gods of metal like Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, Lita Ford, and many, many others. It has a MASSIVE metal soundtrack from every era of metal music: 1970’s classic metal to 1980’s hair metal to the scarier cousins of 1990’s metal. And of course, Jack Black pays the ultimate homage to metal as Eddie the Roadie, continuing the theme from the work of his band, Tenacious D and his previous films like School of Rock and High Fidelity. Multiplayer Mayhem
4v4 "skirmish" multiplayer marries action combat with a strategic unit-control mechanic. As the leader of one of the factions in the game, the player will direct his armies in a Battle of the Bands where the trophy is survival. Brütal Legend’s multiplayer is online-enabled, so you can conquer your friends online via Xbox LIVE (broadband connection required for online play). Soundtrack
The soundtrack of Brütal Legend is truly massive. Made up of 108 of the most rocking tracks from 75 different bands representing every sub-genre of metal, it is something to experience in and of itself. The complete track list includes: |
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
Fun, but easy enough to enjoy. November 12, 2009
Kelsey O'Conner
Awesome game! Tons of fun and easy to get the hang of. I love the option of picking the amount of violence and foul language used. I recommend it, even if you aren't good at RPG this one isn't too hard.
 Brutal Legend Rocks! (pun intended) November 11, 2009
Anthony (North Carolina, United States)
Tim Schafer has done it again. This game combines music and video games in a way that is not just a copy of rockband, and it succeeds marvelously. The storyline is compelling, and the challenges aren't too hard or too easy. It keeps your attention, and once you finish the game you'll be wishing for more.
GREAT GAME! November 10, 2009
Michael Flanagan (anchoage,ak usa)
This is one of the most origional games i have played in a long time. Tim Schafer did an amazing job of creating a completely unique universe based entirely off of sweet sweet metal. the gameplay is a mix of quite a few different styles, kinda plays like zelda meets command and conquer meets awesome. i was a little unsure of the rts boss battles but after my first rock show i was hooked. the only problem i have with the game is the length of the story mode, but mix in side missions and searching for extras it adds up to about 20 hrs if your going to get that 100% complete achievment.
Tim Schafer's best! November 10, 2009
Bishop Bowie
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you are a fan of Jack Black, Tim Schafer (this games developer), Heavy Metal, or highly inventive and unique games you could probably just stop reading this review and go buy the game. The only caveat is what kind of length you expect from a single player experience to justify a $60 game purchase.
I'll do my best to remain spoiler free in the review below, but please be aware that there may be some minor spoiler. You may want to skip to the conclusion if you want to remain 100% spoiler free.
Story:
The story of Brutal Legend centers on Eddie Riggs (Jack Black), a roadie for a faux-metal band (i.e. Angst-ridden teenagers singing shallow songs to a mix of hip-hop beats and electric guitar.) There is an onstage accident at a concert and Eddie is injured, resulting in some of his blood dripping onto his belt buckle. This mysteriously triggers the belt buckle to transport Eddie to another world... a world of heavy metal.
The single-player campaign runs about 6-8 hours.
Graphics:
This game sports some of the most unique, and original visuals of any game I've played. If you are familiar with Schafer's last game Psychonaut's (if you're not, you should be) you will have a pretty good idea of what to expect here. The graphics are tonally similar.
For the years leading up to this games release Tim Schafer continually made reference to how cool the heavy metal album covers of the 80's were, and that his desire is to create a world that looks like you are in a living, breathing album cover. He succeeds on every level. The scenery is diverse and ranges from rolling hills with giant swords protruding from them to volcanoes that flow with molten chrome. The weather changes from sunny to stormy (replete with magenta colored lightning). It all reminded me very much of a Frank Frazetta painting.
One of the most impressive things with the environment is the variety. This is an open world game, but the world never becomes repetitive. The developers obviously spent a great deal of time on making every area unique as there is not an obvious use of repeated textures, and there is not any area that seems generic or bland.
The world is split into different regions based on the different sub-genres of heavy metal. The primary area looks like the classic album covers referred to above, but your adventure takes you through worlds designed around the caveats of "hair" metal (Poison, Twisted Sister, Ratt, etc.), goth metal (Cradle of Filth, Graveworm, etc.), and industrial metal (Metallica, Megadeth, etc.). Each of these regions has enemies and creatures designed specifically for their sub-genre and there is great attention to detail.
The art team for Brutal legend used a full palette of color for their world as opposed to the current trend of desaturation and overloading the scenery with browns and grays. It all comes together to make a beautiful and uniquely intriguing package.
Sound:
The sound design here is good, but not great. The surround effects are solid, and the game soundtrack is very well done. When you are in your car ("The Deuce") the radio comes on and plays from a playlist of approximately 100 heavy metal songs. If you leave your car you the music pans and fades as you move around and away from (or closer to) your car. For those that are not metal fans, you can turn the music off if you'd like.
The sound effects themselves are a little on the weak side. The sounds for your vehicles and some of the animals are very good, but the battle (hack and slash) sounds come across as generic.
Gameplay:
The controls and gameplay are very well designed. Early on you gain a large battle axe as your primary weapon, and you also have an electric guitar.
The axe is used as one would expect; for hack `n' slash gameplay. The axe can be upgraded throughout the game to have different abilities (lightning, fire, extra damage, etc)
The guitar is used for special (i.e. magic) attacks. Initially the guitar will only call down lightning to stun enemies. However, throughout the game Eddie will learn solo's that do various things:
A. Summon your car. This is very much like calling your horse in Legend of Zelda:Ocarina of Time.
B. Area of effect attacks. These are all based on cliché's or in-jokes in the heavy metal community, but they are effectively to give a "Whoa! Cool!" response. There is a heavy guitar riff that melts the faces of all enemies close by. One solo calls down a flaming blimp that explodes over your enemies. There is another that summons a horde of animals to your side.
C. Unit command solos. These solos are used in the "Stage Battles" (see below) to rally your troops, send troops to s certain area, etc.
The gameplay of Brutal Legend is a mash-up of multiple genres. You can explore the world of Brutal Legend in your car (which is upgradeable with weapons, armor, etc.). The driving mechanics are pretty solid and fun in an arcade-y way. You can also explore on foot which leads to the aforementioned hack-n-slash gameplay. However, the major battles are fought in a semi-RTS (real-time strategy) mode called "Stage Fights."
Stage Fights are interesting in that you start with a basic stage (replete with lighting and smoke effects). To power your stage, which allows for building units, you must harness the power of the fans. Fans are found in Fan Geysers. You must locate fan geysers and then build a "Merch Booth" (i.e. Merchandise Booth) over the geyser to draw the fans to your stage. The more geysers you control the more fans you collect. The more fans you collect the more units (and more powerful units) you can build. The units range from Head Bangers (foot soldiers) to Metal Beasts (fire breathing mountable monsters). Your goal is to steal your opponents fans, and ultimately destroy their stage.
The reason I call this a semi-RTS is that it is a mashup of all three play modes in itself. As you build your units and send them into battle you can also jump into your car or run into battle yourself. It is not an RTS where you build units, send them into battle and just watch the results... unless you want it to be. I found it much more fun to build units and then lead the charge.
All of this sounds a little weird, right? Welcome to the world of Tim Schafer! The gameplay is so unique in the way it blends playstyles that I am sure I had a big dumb grin on my face for most of the game. It is not often that you find a game that is this ambitious about its gameplay mechanics, and actually succeeds at building something that is not frustrating, but fun. It is so good, that I am almost compelled to overlook the shortcomings of the gameplay, but I will go ahead and mention them anyway...
The oddest thing missing from the gameplay (given all of its depth) is that there is no jump button. That's right, this is an openworld game that allows you to run freely through a streaming (read: no load time) environment, but you can't jump over or onto anything. Granted, the world is designed in such a way that jumps are not a necessity to navigate it, but (if you are like me) for those that like to really explore and go off the beaten path it would be nice to be able to jump. Also, there were a couple of times that, after an unfortunate incident in my car, I wound up stuck between boulders or trees. Without the ability to jump out of the situation I was forced to go to the menu and reload my last checkpoint.
Also missing is a HUD that shows you your health status, etc. I understand this exclusion as it could detract from the immersion into the amazing world that has been built for this game. However, it would have been nice for it to at least be optional, or perhaps only show up when you are in combat. There were numerous times that I would have no idea my health was getting low and I was suddenly dead. There are visual cues such as the screen starting to go red, etc. as your health is depleted, but as you get further into the game you begin to come across enemies that can apparently kill you with one or two hits (before the visual cue kicks in).
The multiplayer in the game is based on the Stage Fight idea mentioned above. You and your opponent select a metal faction, build a stage, and battle it out. The single player campaign serves as a robust tutorial for how to play the multiplayer game, and does so very well.
Innovations:
See Gameplay (Above).
Final Thoughts:
This is a VERY fun game. Even if you aren't into heavy metal (which I am not) you can enjoy this game, and even get most of the in-jokes. There is not much in the game to criticize as it shows a lot of polish and fulfilled ambition.
I only wish the single player campaign were a bit longer. If you go straight through you can complete the single player portion in under 8 hours. If you work through all of the side quests I would estimate the games length at about 13-15 hours.
I should also state that I have played this game on both Xbox 360 and PS3. For some reason the PS3 suffered from some serious frame-rate issues at times. The most confounding thing is that the issues popped up just as I was standing still looking around the landscape, and not so much when there was a lot of activity onscreen. Hopefully there will be a patch for this soon, since I didn't experience any lag or frame-rate dropping on the 360 version.
NOTE: This game does not lack for profanity and gore. It is chock full of both. However, you do have the option of turning either or both off in the setup menus. This removes all blood and dismembering and replaces all curse words with "bleep" sounds. It also places a parental advisory (as seen on cd's with explicit lyrics) over any middle fingers and curse words found in the subtitles, which is actually pretty funny.
The Metal, the Bad, and the Ugly November 7, 2009
Edmundo Ruiz (Pittsburgh, PA)
I had a lot of mixed emotions after finishing the main "quest" for Brutal Legend. I've been a fan of Double Fine's work for years, and Brutal Legend both shattered my expectations and at the same time left me disappointed.
The game does deliver the promise of its Metal theme. I'm not much of metal fan, but the characters, settings, weapons, music all came together very well, and those aspects are some of the best I've seen in games. There is a lot of detail put into each one of these, and it was a refresher to see something new, something with characters that are not always so serious or robotic, and where every spot in the world I wanted to get out and see around me. The kind of character and tone this game had is what made it worth playing.
While I believed the game to be sort of a brawler action from its first scenes, it quickly turns into a repetitive real time strategy game. The game is essentially battles followed by escort missions followed by more battles, and none of them are unique enough to feel engaging. I liked some of the ideas that Double Fine was trying to go for, but I quickly realized that it was a journey with less than perfect controls, unbalanced gameplay elements, and repetitive moments. The game also had side missions that are just few of the same missions duplicated all across the world map, and they have nothing to do with the main quest or the world. A lot of these side missions made me cringe a bit because it very much felt like neglected filler content. This was surprising since so much unique attention was put into everything else in the game.
The story was also a little thin. While I could get past through the imperfect gameplay through the game's awesome world, the story is what left me wanting more. It felt like it was rushed in, and almost like it was cast aside. This is nothing like the Double Fine's creative director's portfolio (Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island), where the story left you satisfied when the game ended, and the story is what drove the player to go further. In the case for Brutal Legend, it was mostly about the world and perhaps the hope that the story would get more interesting as it went along.
I have not played the multiplayer yet, and not too sure if I want to. Nevertheless, with its flawed gameplay and its flawless world, this mixed bag of a game was worth playing. And I can't wait to see what the Double Fine team makes next! Hopefully they've learned a lot of lessons after completing this game.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
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