What do you think of Brutal Legend?

[AD-Stu]

Eh for me - just to be clear I never played it all the way through, just some sessions here and there on my brother's 360. But it didn't do a whole lot for me.

I'm a huge metal fan so the soundtrack, the voiceover cameos and (for the most part) the visual design (and did I mention the soundtrack?) were great from my point of view. I'm NOT much of a Jack Black fan though, so that was a bit of a negative.

I didn't particularly enjoy the gameplay though, it got repetitive pretty quickly and Jack Black getting uppity with me when I did something other than what he thought I should do got irritating fast. None of it encouraged me to keep playing all the way to the end. Tough it did encourage me to go dig out some old thrash albums

I also felt like the game was having a bit of a laugh at me as a metalhead rather than with me - that's probably a personal mileage thing though.

 

[Terramax]

Liked it up until the point where the strategy elements came in. I had to fight some giant spiders on some mountain and tuned out. Shame, as there was some great cutscenes and production values.

Weren't the spiders long before the strategy elements came in?


Anyway, I liked the game quite a bit. Yes, even the RTS parts. But I will freely admit I'm a Schafer fanboy.

Perhaps. All I know is, I was told to start creating formations with the d-pad, or something, and I thought 'fuck this!'

 

[bluepotatosack]

Perhaps. All I know is, I was told to start creating formations with the d-pad, or something, and I thought 'fuck this!'

Ahh, okay. That was the introduction of one formation. It still mostly played like a hack n' slash at that point, though.

 

[Darklord008]

I certainly had fun with it. The aesthetic and humor were both right up my alley. I love metal, and it was cool hearing Ozzy, Lemmy, and Rob Halford (and it was doubly awesome that his units were really good, so I never really ran into the trouble others had late in the game with the BS Rts sections. Eddie's car + Fire Baron + Rock Crusher = Win.)

Wish I still had it so I could just screw around listening to "One Shot at Glory" over and over again.

 

[Agayek]

Replaying it. It's been on my shelf for a year. I got it for the Xbox for, like, 5 bucks used. I wanted to see what the community thought of it - underrated, overrated, didn't sell enough? I, personally think that it's one of the better games of the generation if only because of it's attitude, but that's just me.

Also, it saddens me that I've never seen it mentioned on here.

It occupies a very strange place in my mindscape. It is simultaneously one of the best games of the generation, and one of the most aggravating.

I love the music, the aesthetic, the ideas it plays with, the combat, the controls, etc. Really, I just absolutely adore everything about the game... except the RTS mechanics. And those mechanics are so godawful that it makes me cry tears of blood just thinking about them.

Console RTSes don't ever work, and Brutal Legend is no exception. Everything else about the game is so fantastic though, that I'm perfectly willing to put up with it to keep playing more of it.

If they had just kept the RTS setpieces out (especially the final battle, that thing is impossible unless you cheese it hardcore), it would be one of my favorite games of all time. As it is, it's an incredibly flawed gem.

 

[hermes]

The game has A LOT of personality. From the setting, to the writing, the music and the characters, its a great game. However, the gameplay could use some work. The hack and slash is decent but limited, and the driving was not very good (the weapons in the vehicles are too weak to handle most of the enemies for most of the game, which severely harmed my interest in exploration). The summoning mechanics (similar to Ocarina of Time) are good, but it gets old quickly...

The RTS sections (personally, I don't think it qualifies as an RTS, its closer to Overlord or an action/adventure game with squad tactics, but everyone seems happy with the qualification, so I will use it for quickness) are decent. Not great, but not really broken. I would also advice you to play them on easy because the difficulty escalates oddly in those sections.

The game gets a lot of bad vibe because the RTS sections get more predominant the more you advance in the story, and they don't appear at all until about half way there; that section was not displayed at all in demos and promotional material, so many people bought it and played it long before knowing it was there and got stuck when they reached that point.

 

[Johkmil]

I think you have to be pretty freaking dull to think this game is one of the better ones.

I guess I am pretty freaking dull.

Althought I do not think of Brütal Legend as one of the better games in my collecting, it is one I have fond memories of, and a severely underrated game. Driving around looking at all the small, metal-inspired details of the world. Brütal Legend is a game for those of us who care more about the world and atmosphere than anything else.

Honestly I think the most important part to be able to enjoy this game is knowing exactly what you are going into. I played it a good year after release, giving me time to know what kind of game this was. The ones buying it at launch did not have that luxury. Just bought it again on sale from Steam, so back to Bladehenge it is.

 

[Daniel Janhagen]

A lot of people have already said this, but I'll go ahead anyway: The "RTS" bits are pretty bad. I don't think they're AS bad as some people think, though (they're ok, you just don't really need much strategy and thinking about it actually makes it harder - nearly every battle is easiest when you just zerg it), and I really like everything else.
The story's cool, the music is awesome, the setting is nearly perfect, the theme and art direction is just the way I like i, and the voice-acting goes between good and great.
The gameplay and characters go very well together, and learning new combos and solos and pimping your ride was all enjoyable to me, and make sense in the story.

There's not much to see once you've cleared it once, but I don't mind.

 

[PonceyMcTosserFaic]

I thought it was super awesome. I want Brutal Legend 2! But I gamefly'd it so I eventually had to turn it in...sad faic.
I also liked the RTS parts of it.

 

[Arina Love]

marketed as action game but secretly an crappy and broken RTS game. I forgave Tim Schafer for this shitty stealth marketing but running out of 4 million kickstarter bucks and only managing to do half of a game is over the line. Now i can say without a doubt in my mind, fuck Tim Schafer.

 

[Strelok]

Loved it, one of my favorite games, played and finished on PS3 and bought again and finished again on PC. Well worth it, I like the PC version more, better visuals, the RTS parts handle better, and no screen tear, pop in, low draw disatnce and horrible stutter that the PS3 version had.

 

[busterkeatonrules]

The RTS bits go a long way towards ruining the overall experience, but Brütal Legend is still very much a Tim Schafer game, it still takes place in a world designed with metal album covers as reference material - and it still has Jack Black in the lead, playing a role that he was pretty much made for. You just have to take the good with the bad.

I wanna go play it myself again now!