If nothing else, Brutal Legend proves that celebrity voice talent is absolutely rubbish without inspired writing. As of late, Marquee names have been headlines mainstream games – often to fruitless results. The name sells, sure, but if you’re going to feed the voice hackneyed lines between ho-hum bits of bland dialogue, then you might as well get random voice actor, not a big name.
Fortunately, Brutal Legend is overflowing with a wealth of exceptional writing. It’s one thing to be gross or to reference pop culture, but to pay homage to material as niche as death metal and filter it through the lens of humor is a wildly imaginative concept. Tim Schafer, the man behind such classics as Grim Fandango and Psychonauts, has risen to the challenge and cultivated wonderfully fresh material from an abundantly ridiculous concept; metal, hell, demons, and everything in between.
Anyway, my demo started off by pulling two guitars out of the ground. One axe was used to for melee combat, a basic combo and a charge movie uppercut, while the other was used for range (magic, basically) attacks, including lightning strikes and fireballs. Combining the two buttons was a basic ground pound, which, as always, was good for clearing a room.
Combat was competent, but enemies didn’t arrive in seemingly endless waves, rather, there were only occasional pockets. At first look I thought Brutal Legend was going to be a God of War type game, but soon I learned that Brutal Legend’s backbone wasn’t its combat engine, but its focus on keeping the gameplay fresh through a variety of play styles.
I then met another character (her name escapes me, an obvious babe archetype), whom I could use as a combo attack (basically, I picked her up and threw her at people). From there I assembled a car by playing a brief note matching minigame, and then drove the car through a canyon and, in the process, mowed down hoards of bad guys. After that was a boss, which I had to fight with a car (which worked quite well), and, soon after, escape through another canyon with my car.
Again, the game was hilarious. From Jack Black screaming to hold your hands up when the car hit a death defying ramp, to commenting on how stupid the boss was for falling for the same trick twice, or his deliberate knee slide power chord in front of a dying enemy – Brutal Legend has it’s finger on the pulse of humor, which should really come as no surprise to anyone who played any of Schafer’s work in the past.
