Zero Punctuation: Brutal Legend

[Stabby Joe]

Why did I for the first time hear chair creaking noises in the background?

 

[Jaqen Hghar]

I loved Brutal Legend. One of the best games this year. My only gripe with it is that the main story is a bit to short, and you have no way of seeing the cinematics over again.

A bit sad to see that people worship Yahtzees words, which in turn makes them pass over great games which he didn't like. These "reviews" are fun and all, but hardly proper reviews. Oh well, sucks for you worshipers I guess.
*dreams himself off to the Age of Metal*

 

[Grabbin'Pills21]

I honestly thought that Brutal Legend was going to be a hack and slash game. It would've been better that way in my opinion but, making it an RTS/Hack and Slash didn't seem like a good idea for this game.

 

[Eldarion]

Nice review, kinda thought the genius behind Psychonaughts would get buried under Jack Black and metal garbage.

Though funnily enough the metal and Jack Black are the stronger points of the game. Its real flaw is the lack of focus in the gameplay. So really you are not making any sense there.

Yhea, I didn't think so.

The story was pushed out of the way so that Jack Black could share his metal fantasy.

The gameplay is a moot point, the story mattered more to me and it was hardly there.

The story is a metal fantasy, you can't push out a metal fantasy to replace it with an other metal fantasy. Jack Black's fantasy? This is Tim Schafer's world he is quite clearly a metal head as any one who has played full throttle would know.

There isn't enough Tim Schafer in there to keep me interested.

I didn't like the game for my reasons, you don't need to get all butthurt because I have a different opinion than you.

Thats nice? Good for you? Though if I am butt hurt why are you the one freaking out here? I mean you started off sounding like you had not played the game especially when you where picking out two of the better parts of the game as its week points rather than the worryingly unfocused gameplay. Though apparently you have played it so how nice for you, though I am a little unsure of what you mean by not enough Tim Schafer in it. Brutal legend is clearly his work maybe not the parts you like but that does not turn it into someone else's work though.

Colour me confused I guess. Though I do have a strong urge to find and play full throttle again, I am sure some one I know must still have it.

You are the one quoting me and taking issue with MY opinion here dude.

If you weren't butthurt you could just ignore it, but no keep taking issue with what I thought about the game.

The story was weak, the characters were cliche and the metal music could have been better.

I didn't like it, but I suppose you will have to go on a little tangent in response to my opinion now.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. You say some thing and then some one can either respond or choose not too, that is how comments forums work. Now you freaking out about some one daring to have a different opinion that could be seen as a little hurt in the butt however just responding? It kind of renders the term meaningless.

Also believe it or not other people form opinions too. Now these opinions might be meaningless or the might be important but every one in the world forms them and they do not always agree with yours. That is how the world works.

I didn't say even once that your opinion was wrong and I am not the one freaking out. YOU chose to respond to MY comment and attack it.

YOU are acting like an irritable douche who can't take a different viewpoint. You didn't have to respond to my comment but you did.

Whatever, I'm done you obviously have no clue.

 

[timmytom1]

Good review overall,seriously though peeps if you don`t like metal then don`t go anyway near this I seriously cannot stress that enough make no mistake this is by a metalhead ,for metalheads with a lot of in-jokes thrown in . and seriously where the hell is the hornblower thingy? I want to change the monuments on the mountain but have not the fainest clue on where to go

...Oh and the RTS bits are indeed boring in the extreme

 

[Aptspire]

well, it is pretty accurate, and there's 1 point where I completely agree:
WHERE THE F*** is the mountain where I make my statues?

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

Funny, as usual, with some good points to consider. Woot!

 

[notsosavagemessiah]

See, the problem is, this game IS awesome. I love metal, plain and simple, and since this is really my first tim schafer game, i have to say i am impressed. A lot of the reasons yahtzee states he dislikes the game are the exact reasons i DO. The soundtrack is awesome, the landscape is unique, the gameplay is an odd (but functional) mix of very different styles. It's funny, tells a good story (that i'd love to see expanded upon in a sequel) and has phenomenal voice acting from everybody involved (impressive considering most of the important parts are voiced by people who aren't a part of the voice acting community). Sure it's got it's flaws, (like the mt. rockmore example yahtzee stated and repetitive side missions) but once you get around them, this game is a real gem for metal fans, which is who this game is for.


Also, i never thought heavy metal music could be used for DRAMATIC effect, but this game does so several times and quite impressively at that. In the end, i must say that i think yahtzee was doomed from the start as he makes it clear that he doesn't like metal, he doesn't like jack black, he doesn't like an overabundance of certain types of games (understandable), and he doesn't like RTS's (no matter how light the gameplay on those parts is). If you like any of those things, this game is for you. It's the most metal game in existance, and it's fucking brutal.



OH, AND FOR EVERYBODY WONDERING, THE HORNBLOWER FOR MT. ROCKMORE IS BY THAT FIRST RACING MISSION, BUT INSTEAD OF TURNING TO JUMP THE BROKEN BRIDGE, KEEP GOING STRAIGHT, YOU'LL SEE A BUNCH OF STONE HANDS THROWING THE "DEVIL HORNS" NEARBY, IN THE CENTER OF THAT IS THE HORNTHROWER WITH WHICH TO CHANGE THE EFFIGIES ON MT. ROCKMORE.

 

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Not a mention of the games terrible gameplay or lack of jump?
Shame, i was expecting more from Yahtzees 'review' of this. In the end he only talks about the bad RTS but not the terrible 3rd person fighting mechanics and over all stiff gameplay.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

Despite my good experiences with RTS games, the idea of Brütal Legend ultimately being an RTS makes me somewhat less inclined to buy the full game.

As for the two principles, I think it's less a Tyler Durden relationship between Jack Black & Tim Schafer, and more Tim's quiet, unassuming and brilliant Jekyll to Jack's high-energy, loud-volume microphone-igniting Hyde.

 

[timmytom1]

well, it is pretty accurate, and there's 1 point where I completely agree:
WHERE THE F*** is the mountain where I make my statues?

The clifface with the faces on is to the west of bladehenge (you know the resistance base where you start out)where you go to change them however....

 

[Silk_Sk]

Ah yes, that poor RTS component. As far as RTS's go, yes, it isn't a very good one. But what it is is an excellent...whatever the hell it is. Frankly I would love to see it repeated in the future when it's no longer new and scary. As much as I hate it when people say it's not an RTS (because it is) they're right, it isn't. I know that didn't make sense but I'm as confused about it as anyone.

It is a fairly unique game play style that is VERY similar to an RTS. It's name true name would obviously be TPRTS (Third Person RTS) but that doesn't quite grasp it's ingenuity. It's one of those perfect ideas that is much newer than it feels. The depth of it's strategy, once you realize it, rivals that of any conventional RTS. Hint: Start exploring the team attacks.

This is, I hope, the future of RTS on console machines (as long as they last anyway). Brutal Legend's implementation isn't perfect. But the discomfort mostly comes from having both Hack-n-slash players and RTS players to learn a new kind of game to play. Playing it as an RTS will get you overpowered. Playing it as a Hack-n-Slash will have you overrun. But put them together and you get a game that is more than the sum of it's parts.

Complain all you want about the implementation, but the core mechanic is solid. It has that Mirror's Edge complex about being more of an experiment than a good game. However, I believe this experiment was much more successful.

 

[Maluku]

Funny how Yahtzee pronounces it the right way, but the Escapist forgot it yet again in the title and description of the video.

By the way, german in not the only language that has the 'ü' in it, there are many others

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9C

I belive it is written 'Brütal Legend' but pronounced 'Brutal Legend' since there is no word like brütal in any language I know of.

 

[Kingsman]

As I was playing* Brutal Legend, I fully expected that Raz was going to pop out from around any corner and tell the protagonist that the entire thing was a coma fantasy brought about from the intro scene.

I was almost disappointed at realizing that this was not the case.


*read: watching the online walkthrough of

 

[Highlandheadbanger]

This is more a rant about Yahtzee-fanboyism then the man's condemnation of today's game:

I'm sorry he didn't like the game, but frankly, I don't give a toss what Yahtzee has to say when it comes to buying a game. I loved Mirror's Edge, Halo 3, Call of Juarez, Mass Effect, Oblivion, and Brutal Legend. I may take a grain of salt from Game Informer or the like, but really I only go to Yahtzee for the entertainment value. Yahtzee ripped into pretty much all these games, but I still had tons of fun with them, some of which are my favorite games of all time (Brutal Legend featured prominently as one of the frontrunners).

I'm a bit disappointed seeing all the comments with people deciding not to try the game at all because Yahtzee said so, thats the exact kind of thing the man talked about in past reviews before: silly cultish little people who wait for their Oracle's guiding word in any of their gaming preferences. In a seemingly incredible, but not so predictable turn of events for anyone with a basic knowledge of Religious History and/or Human Sociological tendencies,
Yahtzee has convinced a population of console fanboys to throw off the chains of their oppresive dogmatic religion, only for them to convert and worship his word in some sort of bastard microcosm of the Protestant Reformation.

I of course don't speak ill of those who tried the game, didn't like it, and then causually posted about it. I merely refer to the unpleasent growing trend I've started to see of people blindly following Yahtzee's word, not just in forums, but talking to some in person. So much so that I was relieved after Yahtzee admitted he didn't really have a taste for the RTS genre (a favorite of mine) and refer to someone else's respected opinion, rather then the somewhat expected over-the-top condemnation several like-minded fellows concerned themselves with a few weeks ago when they sent an email to Yahtzee, asking for the official dogma of the "Church of Ramblomatic" concerning RTSs', which I begged my RTS faithful not to do, since I refused to have my beloved Total War franchise burned at the stake by ignorant Yahtzee faithful who, on forums and in direct contact in the real world, wholely denounce Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, and [now] Brutal Legend without ever having played any of them.

 

[MissAshley]

Not to try and destroy Yahtzee's point with the RTS thing, but after the game came out Tim Schafer came out and said not to play it like an RTS and to play it more like a hack and slash with RTS elements. Like you should be down there a fair bit with your guys, you just need to replenish them every once in a while.

As I have been trying to point out for the last two weeks...

THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN EXPLAINED IN THE GAME.

Or gamers could, you know, figure it out.

I'm not going to argue the point of the game not being intuitive, but as far as actual game-play goes, I'm struggling to comprehend how people are not figuring things out on their own. It seems a lot like complaining Earthbound only very vaguely tipping you off to Pray on the last fight. . .

Whatever happened to learning through exhausting option?

 

[Murlin]

I ended up with French but now can hardly remember any of it.

why bother remembering it? It's a stupid language anyway

 

[sarcastic]

It seems I'm the only person that kinda liked the action/RTS segments. I do know it's not the greatest game ever and I have no issues with the review, but I do find it tremendously hypocritical of people when they complain both that they don't like the RTS elements in the same breath that it's not a very complex RTS.

It's not an RTS, it's an ACTION/RTS. And that's not just some semantical nitpicking. You win, NOT through intricate strategy or troop selection, but through being aggressive and getting down there yourself to melt some faces.

Oh, and I'm not really a fan of Jack Black either, but he did do a pretty good job in this one. Or at least I think so.

 

[ccesarano]

I can very much understand Tim Schafer's refusal to call the game an RTS, because as soon as that comes up people start expecting micro-management and another clone of StarCraft. These sorts of thoughts result in utter suckage where Brutal Legend is involved. Just as was stated in the review, the strategy game lover never even considered summoning the car.

I am absolutely terrible at strategy games and tend to have limited joy in them, but Brutal Legend was very different. Yes, the basic strategy is build units and toss them at your enemy, but the key to winning is your personal involvement. If you just tell your troops where to go and what to do, you will ultimately fail. This makes non-strategy folks like me happy and even gives a fighting chance.

I still feel that Brutal Legend is one of the better games released because of the simple fact that it started as a multiplayer concept. It's interesting to read comments from people saying it should have "stayed a hack and slash" since it was a multiplayer strategy title to begin with. It should have been marketed a bit better, but oh well. The thing is, while a good chunk of the single player story is a mere tutorial for the multiplayer, it still has personality and an interesting universe worth exploring. In addition, there are plenty of missions and side quests that provide a completely different experience.

Will everyone want to play that experience? No, but it is still a fully packed game with loads of content as opposed a multiplayer game with a half-assed campaign or a single-player story with a tacked-on multiplayer. THAT is the sort of thing games ought to be doing these days, and considering the surprising amount of polish in comparison with most sandbox games Brutal Legend does a magnificent job.

Though not telling you how to fully play the game IS a problem. I thought a solo was required for the legends or sealed dragons, and it turns out you just required the Earth Shaker and to lock on and shock, respectively.

 

[Baby Bird]

I thought it was a truly great review of the game.