Tim Schafer has to explain to gamers how to play Brutal Legend...

[TheCameraman]

Oh, I forgot to mention one thing, the organists decrease the damage of your units by 1/2 and it STACKS, so if there's 2, your units only do 1/4 damage and so on.
If there's one of those there, focus it down fast.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

As you wish...

I think that my problem is not in fact being a moron, but not wanting to invest the time to learn the intricacies of the game's battle mode.

However... the reason for that is, I wasn't having enough fun with the game to merit investing that much time in my least favorite part of it.

I have beaten many tough games on the hardest settings, (1000GP in COD4, beat Gears on insane, beat the Ocarina Water Temple in 3 hours with NO walkthrough etc)so being a moron isn't really the issue. I guess it's more to do with my taste in gameplay.

Or maybe due to the current trend of games being simplified and explained in every detail in the last few years, we've become a little spoiled with our level of hand-holding?

Could be a whole new thread.

Well it sounds like you simply don't enjoy playing the game. I don't have a problem with that, that's your own personal taste. I was simply trying to say that the game is easy to understand but as you have pointed out, you may not particularly want to understand it due to lack of interest. I suppose it is mostly the fault of the developers if gamers can't understand the game but I personally didn't even remotely struggle with it so I fail to see how others can. I often forget that other people think differently from me and thus could find certain things easier or harder so sorry for calling you a moron, it was an undirected rant regarding the "dumbing down of games" which I dislike. I don't doubt your ability to play Gears of War on insane.

Indeed, everyone thinks differently and some are naturally more inclined to understand certain mechanics than others. I unfortunately am terrible at multitasking AI.

All's good in the escapist camp so. Group hug!

 

[Jonci]

I played on Normal Difficulty and found the Stage Battles to be very easy. The only one I had to try twice was the final stage battle, and that's because I didn't realise what I was suppose to attack. One "dur" moment for me, which I quickly fixed in the second try. Seriously, what's the difficulty? Make Headbangers, Razor Girls, and a bass healer, pick a target, tell them to beat the shit out of it. Takes a few seconds and you run off to beat up the enemies units. FACE MELTER!

Now if you don't have the right solo songs, you'd be screwed. You need Face Melter, Rally Troops, and Rally Flag. After that, just send all your units to one target. Once you have the fans, just put your troops to defend whereever the enemy is coming from while you get ready to zerg their stage.

 

[ItsAChiaotzu]

i dont see the problem tbh and hopfully more people will play online \m/

btw Tainted Coil man here (i like the leather )

Oh yeah me too, they just have the beastliest stuff.

Though I do like Drowning Doom.

 

[Pillypill]

I found it easy to learn, though the insructions are in small writing, so they're not hard to miss. Though they could just have ignored the writing. I found the last battle (you know with the... well you know if you've done the game) hard i kept getting pushed back to my stage, and was unable to use my lead zepplin.

P.S. if, like me, you don't like your axe treatment, then there is a kick ass axe you get from doing all hunter missions. It is covered in spikes, does bonus damage, and when a hostile infantry unit is killed with it; their corpes explodes causing considerable damage to all nearby enimies. After killing the 4 Hextadons return to the hunter, in the small ruin near the giant cross, where you picked up the mission, he will give you that axe, it does similar hit damage to the razor thing, but the explosion makes it my favorite axe.

 

[ThaBenMan]

I pretty well agree with you, miracleofsound - I don't enjoy the RTS aspects either. Granted, I haven't had an actual Stage Battle yet (and I'm not looking forward to them, from what I hear), but even the level where you free the headbangers from the mine was frustrating in some ways.

*minor spoilers for the level "Exploited in the Bowels of Hell"*

Spoiler

For instance, when the guards and hairbangers attack the supports of the big platform over the lava, I assume that the idea is to split your headbangers into two groups, leaving one to defend each support. In no clear way was it made apparent to me how to split your forces (how do you, anyway? Is it something like give one command to a group that's in view, and then another to the rest, or something?), so I had to just defend one support, and then use the "follow" command, and run around the structure to the other support with my headbangers in tow. It might have explained why in the text in that little black strip at the bottom of the screen, but it's pretty hard to read that in the heat of battle.

And also, your own troops seem pretty fragile. All of my headbangers were dead by the time the shit-ton of guards came pouring out the doors. Luckily I killed most of them myself before I realized that I had to play the Warcry through the headset that fell onto the rock.

It wasn't really hard - I beat it on the first try - but the confusion detracted from the fun. I imagine the larger-scale battles are even worse.

*sigh* The demo was so fun and awesome, but misleading - there were no hints of the RTS crap to come. If only the game was more of that, it would be amazing.

 

[Korey Von Doom]

I played through on brutal my first go, the Stage battles can be hard, usually I just build a bunch of razorgirls and healers, but while this is being done I run interference with my duece

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

I didn't have any major problems with the Stage Battles in the single player campaign, except for the final fight against the drowning doom which I had to retry. As some people have mentioned above, the best way to win is to slam the rock crusher into reverse the moment the towers come down, and then use the bladehenge attack repeatedly to whittle down the big enemies. You can then fall back to your troops which should have a fair few bouncers to deal with the tough vehicles.

I'm probably going to be getting into the multiplayer soon, so does anyone have any good hints to help? Is it worth me fighting against the AI before fighting humans?

EDIT: Holy shit on a stick, I've played through the entire game and only now do I find out there is a sprint function! Holding down the left stick lets you sprint, which is why I was never able to use the powersilde. It's worth noting this is only mentioned in the instruction section of the manual.

 

[Fearzone]

I'd rather he explained why I can't get this game on PC... Asshole developers/publishers keeping me from enjoying good games...

I bought a PS3 because I felt that way. If you have money to burn then do the same, otherwise stick with the PC--all the truly good games are there, and controls are much better.

By the sounds of it, this is mostly a control issue. I'm hoping they tighten the controls and give some of the commonly requested UI features such as a mini-map and then it would score a "buy" from me. It sounds you are playing an RTS map, with RTS tech, units, and objectives, and yet not being given RTS controls.

 

[wewontdie11]

There's a tutorial and everything. I didn't even pay attention to the things and I still had fun with the battles.

The game needed to be longer though.

 

[CD-R]

The only battle I had to attempt more than twice was the final battle against Lionwhyte. As for the final battle against the Drowing Doom. They have a bunch of units camped on the bridge. I found what worked best was to camp my troops at the mouth of the bridge. Then use the deuce to draw them back to my awaiting units. Once they're all dead you move up with the rock crusher (make sure you have a full army that includes 2 or 3 head splitters first waiting at the mouth of the bridge. Destroy the towers and back the tank up to the mouth of the bridge. The tree is powerful but even it can't take out an entire army. Also it helps to chip away at it using the deuce's homing missles since they have the longest range.

You really do need all the solos. Especially the face melter.

http://images.roosterteeth.com/images/4ad50c58b5b55_bighugemap.jpg

This map has the location of all of them. I don't know how anyone whose been following brutal legends development could be surprised that there were rts elements in it. They even said the multiplayer was the first thing they developed.

 

[AddytheGreat]

I was thinking of getting this game, but, now, maybe not. I watched some videos on Youtube and it looks a bit awkward

 

[iamthehorde]

i found it pretty easy. i guess most people are upset because nobody really knew those battles would play such a huge part, or that they even exist.

 

[iamthehorde]

The only battle I had to attempt more than twice was the final battle against Lionwhyte. As for the final battle against the Drowing Doom. They have a bunch of units camped on the bridge. I found what worked best was to camp my troops at the mouth of the bridge. Then use the deuce to draw them back to my awaiting units. Once they're all dead you move up with the rock crusher (make sure you have a full army that includes 2 or 3 head splitters first waiting at the mouth of the bridge. Destroy the towers and back the tank up to the mouth of the bridge. The tree is powerful but even it can't take out an entire army. Also it helps to chip away at it using the deuce's homing missles since they have the longest range.

You really do need all the solos. Especially the face melter.

http://images.roosterteeth.com/images/4ad50c58b5b55_bighugemap.jpg

This map has the location of all of them. I don't know how anyone whose been following brutal legends development could be surprised that there were rts elements in it. They even said the multiplayer was the first thing they developed.

yeah, the facemelter! it´s probably the most useful spell in battles. it also helps to use the battle cry frequently to boost up your troops, it really makes a difference. bring it home is also great, but seems to look more spectacular than it´s effective.

 

[300lb. Samoan]

i've only had time to watch a friend play these and he certainly had a hard time with the battles, but i appreciate when a game comes that that isn't afraid to challenge me. tim schaffer's only explanation should be "LOL gb2 starcraft and try again". although i haven't played starcraft in years, I sucked at that game... that doesn't mean tim can't make a game equally difficult!

 

[SomeBritishDude]

I honestly found the battles pretty easy appart from the last one which I lost once. And this is coming from someone who's never played an RTS for more than 10 minites.

I found them a lot of fun, but there's generally only one way to get things done in the end; build up a huge force and hit everything for all you've got. It's not rocket science, but hey, I had fun with it. You may have found it difficult if you didn't get some of the guitar solos though.

There are probably better more complicated ways to do it, but I didn't ever felt like I needed to do anything else, appart from maybe the last battle. There, after loosing the first time, I took all the fans as quickly as possible, stuck down a gathering flag in the middle of the match, then just kept upgrading my stuff. Once you've killed the first wave of demons you only get a couple every few minites, so you won't be in danger. Once you have a huge force kill the first leach then let the huge force in the middle deal with the massive wave of demons that appear, then take the second leach.

I think in muliplayer you do have to be more tactical, as your enemy isn't just some dumb AI. But I'll deal with that hurdle when I come to it...

The game needed to be longer though.

This was probably my biggest problem with the game. I suppose you could reason that the muliplayer makes up for it (why can't you play as the glam metal guys in multiplayer by the way?) but since there a great deal of people who don't seem to enjoy stage battles as much as I did it's still an issue.

But I find it hard to criticise. The only way it could have been more awesome is if it had tits and was on fire (to be unoriginal about it)

 

[p3t3r]

i saw those parts in a review and was looking forward to playing those parts in the game and was disappointed when they weren't in them demo.

 

[ThaBenMan]

I don't know how anyone whose been following brutal legends development could be surprised that there were rts elements in it. They even said the multiplayer was the first thing they developed.

As far as I can remember (I'll have to dig it up and read it again), the cover story that first revealed Brutal Legend in Game Informer didn't really mention any RTS aspects and really emphasized the hack 'n' slash action. Later on in development, sure, they talked about the RTS stuff. But, even if asked whether that would turn off people that don't like RTS, the devs repeatedly said not to worry, that everything in the game is more action-oriented. That doesn't seem to be the case now that the game is out - the RTS parts make up a huge majority of the game, it seems. So it was kind of misleading, in my opinion.

Like I said, I haven't even taken part in a stage battle yet, so who knows - maybe I'll really enjoy them. I doubt it, though. If all else fails, I'll just change the difficulty to "gentle" so I can finish the game and experience the whole storyline - that's the real reason to play Brutal Legend.

 

[ElTigreSantiago]

I've not played it to be honest but if he has to explain gamers how to play it then surely that is a good example of a bad game?

Close, it's a good example of dumb gamers.

I had no problem understanding how to play the game. The last few battles were difficult until you worked out a good strategy (just like any other RTS... besides Halo Wars, ugh) but after that they were easy.

I mean, unless you've never even heard of RTS before...

 

[ThaBenMan]

Even the guys at Penny Arcade [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/16/] are confused...