Brütal Legend (2009)

This game is an ambitious and unconventional game that blends action-adventure combat, open-world exploration, and real-time strategy in a world completely inspired by heavy metal. The MC is called Eddie Riggs, voiced with great energy by Jack Black, a roadie who gets transported into a fantasy realm built from the imagery of album covers, guitars, and stage pyrotechnics. The game’s personality shines through its writing, humor, and sheer dedication to celebrating metal culture, with cameos from legends like Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy Kilmister adding to its authenticity.

The soundtrack is nothing short of spectacular, packed with classic and underground metal tracks that elevate every battle and road trip across its stylized landscapes. Combat with Eddie’s axe and guitar feels satisfying, and driving the customizable "Druid Plow" through hordes of enemies is a joy. However, the game’s sudden reliance on large-scale real-time strategy battles can be divisive. These sections often feel less refined and clash with the otherwise smooth hack-and-slash experience, and particularly speaking this made me drop the game.

In my opinion, this game would be almost perfect if the RTS sections were removed, and this is not just be, a lot of people feel the same way, unfortunately. Still, Brütal Legend remains a cult classic for its creativity, atmosphere, and unapologetic devotion to metal. It’s a flawed but unforgettable experience, more memorable for its world, characters, and music than for its mechanics. For fans of heavy metal or quirky, personality-driven games, it’s an adventure well worth taking, especially for metal-heads like myself, I really wanted to say this is a must-play, but again, the RTS sections are preventing me from doing so.

And so, starting with the most important thing. Despite all the disadvantages, the game is terribly cool and humorous, which is rarely done nowaday. Stylistically and culturally, it is not outdated by a single year, if it were released today with new graphics technologies and improved gameplay, it would be a hit. It's usually difficult for me to play games released before 10s, but this is one of the exceptions, it have aged not that much.

Now the cons! There are a lot of them, but I only removed one star for that. Gameplay. It is... different, but at the same time too repetitive sometimes. The plot is somewhat delayed and the game design is sometimes strange (why is there an open world at all???). HOWEVER, I understand that at that time there was such a game design, almost standard for that time, so I did not pay much attention to its disadvantages, because the advantages described above cover all this, even during boring attempts to catch Steel Beasts, you will hear funny phrases, so it's not boring. However, main story seemed to me too long and drawn out... such a game would be great if it were shorter and more lineal.

IN SHORT, anyone who likes unusual but stylish and unique games, I ask you to go through it.

Hell yeah!

I had this game in my backlog for over a decade and I'm happy I finally got to play it. Very stylish, awesome heavy metal-inspired world and characters, great voice acting, humor, it's all really cool.

The issue is the gameplay itself. I wanted to love it but the RTS sections were pretty boring and even frustrating. I think the game tries to take on more genres than it needs to for variety, which is appreciated, but the execution hurts the experience. Still, I'm glad I got to play it since it's a relatively short game.

It also shows some age in trying to have a big world that is kind of empty and ultimately pointless to travel other than to the main objective. Seems like a thing that happened often back then, like with Kameo. Still, if you like the aesthetic and can put up with some clunky gameplay, this is well worth checking out.

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure.

Game number 20 was Brutal Legend. Every 5th game is chosen by me instead of by random selection, so I can easily say that I was excited to play this game. Brutal Legend is essentially an homage to 70s (and sometimes later) heavy metal bands.

The main character, Eddie Riggs, is voiced by Jack Black and the rest of the cast is also filled with rock icons. You have Kyle Gass (the other member of Tenacious D), Lemmy Kilmister (motorhead), Lita Ford (The Runaways), Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath, solo musician, and reality TV show star lol), and Rob Halford (Judas Priest). For some reason, they also got famous actor/stage performer Tim Curry (Rocky Horror & other appearances) to voice the main antagonist. To enhance all these famous performers, the rest of the supporting cast was all extremely talented and revered voice actors from the video game/animated TV sphere.

That’s a whole paragraph just dedicated to the talent assembled for this project and it really showed. The presentation of this game is unmatched. It goes for this incredible metal world, where demons run free and skeletons line all the streets. I think the “vibe” of the game was perfect. I also think the story was really good. Humans are being enslaved by the evil demon overlords and Eddie needs to help a faction of rebels fight their way to freedom. There is action, violence, comedy, and romance and the game ends up being pretty captivating. I liked the story a lot.

When you first start playing Brutal legend, you are treated to an engaging (although somewhat basic) beat-em-up game. You have an axe that serves as your primary weapon for defeating demonic forces. In addition to this, you get an electric guitar that can essentially perform spells. You need to balance utilizing the guitar’s supportive spells and your axe to defeat waves of demons. It’s pretty good and ends up being the exact gameplay loop that this game needed.

The other gameplay feature that you will be introduced to early on is the car. The world of Brutal Legend is open and you will need to use a car to get around to many places, as well as to defeat mobile demons in certain missions. The car is a little gimmicky, but it feels like the kind of thing that a 2009 game would artificially introduce, so I don’t think it is the biggest problem. I may even say that the car adds some atmosphere to the metal aesthetic of the world. Not good, but not bad either.

Imagine a scenario……. You have been playing Brutal Legend for 2.5 - 3 hours and have been having a great time. The unnecessary open world and car stuff hasn’t quite been your forte, but the atmosphere, voice acting, and beat-em-up sections have balanced it out….. Then one of the biggest mistakes in video game design hits you like a sledgehammer. You find out that you are actually playing a minion management, tower defense game.

Well, everyone that has ever played Brutal Legend has experienced the above scenario and I can’t speak for the rest of the people out there, but it was one of the worst gameplay design mistakes I have ever seen. Every major mission in the 2nd half of the game is actually a half-baked minion management game. You have to build minions, take over towers, and destroy the other person’s base. You can personally link up with your minions to have them do ultimate moves, but it still sucks. Everything that happens is too slow and the missions are either too easy or too hard. The 2nd to last mission is a huge step up from the other things you have done by that point and it's like a swift kick to the balls.

I don’t know what else to say. WHY DIDN’T THEY JUST MAKE A REALLY GOOD BEAT-EM-UP GAME? I would have been fine if that beat-em-up has intermittent car sections. It is really disappointing how badly this throws off my opinion of Brutal Legend. Everything was set up perfectly in the first couple hours of the game. All they had to do was introduce new power-ups and movesets to the axe and guitar and they would have had a masterpiece on their hands. I don’t know if I can recommend this game to anyone out there. The story is fantastic and the delivery actually hits home… but I don’t think you want to sit through the low points of Brutal Legend. If you have 30 min go watch the cutscenes on YouTube or Something. (4/10)

I spent 7 hours, 33 min, and 4 sec playing Brutal Legend.

I have spent 224 hours and 45 minutes on the Road to 360 challenge so far.

Next game: EA Sports MMA

I am a Heavy Metal fan so for me this game could not go wrong from the beginning.

Brütal Legend is a game where you can see that the creators had fun creating it. They put their hearts into it. It's a big project with lot of guests like Ozzy Osbourne, Jack Black as the main character and voices from Rob Halford, Lemmy Kilmister, Lita Ford and many more. The game has a huge open world with tons of stuff to do, tons of stuff to collect and explore and always keeps you busy with side missions and special assignments.

I really like the interaction between all the characters and units, this is a game where you bond with the main character because you are basically playing as Jack Black. The graphics where and still are nice and the gore effects and finishing moves are giving your rampage a boost. Of course, the many metal songs you can play throughout the game makes it even better.

The humor and filthy jokes are also there, especially in the cut scenes and they were a great deal of fun.

I did not like the stage battles to much because the controlling of your units works pretty bad. You must be in range of your units to command them. Also, the battlefields can be a little confusing sometimes and you can quickly lose your overview on the situation. This led to some frustrations but nothing too bad.

There were some frustrations however like the awful stiffness and uncontrollably of the Deuce car which made my blood boil sometimes and I really, really hated the racing side missions because of it and the fact that your opponent smashes you into a full 180 turn when he touches your car.

But despite this I had fun all the way. The game is and always will be a great classic for me and now that I finally fully completed it, I felt it was all worth it.

I absolutely recommend this game to anyone!

Started out great. I liked the humor and the combat, and all of the imagery and world stuff was very cool, but it was absolutely ruined by the RTS sections.

You play as Eddie Riggs, the greatest roadie on the planet, who dies and goes to the underworld of rock. He soon finds that he is in the middle of a war with an evil tyrant and proceeds to gather allies to liberate the land. There are different factions through the game that represent different variations of Heavy Metal music (Glam Rock, Emo, etc.) which was an incredibly neat idea. Jack Black does an amazing job as Eddie, while there are quite a few cameos from famous Heavy Metal icons. They may not be the best voice actors, but it's neat to hear them and see their likenesses.

I read somewhere that this started out life as a Real Time Strategy game, and that's where the real problem is. The game has several sections where you are required to defend and attack bases with your gathered forces. I don't really like RTS games, so these were a real chore to get through. The side missions are also incredibly repetitive. After doing a few, you can definitely see that these were not given much thought. This was very close to being an excellent game, which is a shame. Ultimately, you might find more frustration than you do fun.

This has been on my list for awhile. I've come to appreciate the creative force of jack black (and after playing this would love to see him partner with rob zombie to make a movie. I bet that would be so frickin' cool!)

I did not know this was a tim schafer game and just wow. Not only is it so different than the point and click stuff i've played, but it's crazy how this FEELS like a steady flashback from Full Throttle, with all the combustion engine related imagery nonsense!

A bit like some of his other games its a pretty interesting looking world with a carefully crafted aesthetic. You have demons and giant skull pillars and all kinds of trippy madness that is a bit like Army of Darkness and the plot is not far off either as you lead a medieval war against a very glammed out and elven looking David Bowie (who flys in and out of cutscenes by flapping his extremely long hair.)

For a 2009 third person open-world game (GTA came out a year earlier) it's okay. The world is somewhat interesting to drive around and sight-see and collect this and that, but it gets stale about halfway through as the game itself is not that engaging, partly because this is a genre that has aged (and partly because that's just not really the damn meat and potatoes of the game) But there are a few issues that make it a bit less than engaging. For one, this game really hinges upon it's unusually good and appropriate soundtrack. God if there is one thing that you will want to do in this game it's ride around in your hot rod jamming to the music. However every time you undertake a random mission or sometimes drive too close to camps that have their 'own' ambient music loop playing. your sweet steely stereo will fade to black or skip a track! This means to listen to a track to it's competition you have to deliberately have to go out of your way and not stop to do anything. Ugh.

Other than that, most elements come together okay but aren't incredible game design (again it's 2009 and open world games have come further since and i'd argue GTA IV is way ahead of this) but are clever ideas and gimmicks to make for some amusement. The game could be a bit shorter and the RTS battles a bit easier. (replaying them, particularly the final battle with it's cranked up difficulty and obtuseness isn't fun!)

this game also features a multiplayer mode for fighting the RTS battles (which imo are the weakest part of the game) for reasons.

Tim Schafer's Double Fine games tend - for myself at least - more interesting in theory than they are in practice. I have a soft spot for Schafer, since I truly loved his work with LucasArts, and the fact that he made a sequel to my favorite game - Maniac Mansion - still makes him someone I'm always excited to hear is making a new game.

But when I look at the two major games from Double Fine - Psychonauts and Brutal Legend - they're games that I love the concept of, but didn't have that much fun playing. With Psychonauts, I remember it fondly, but when I was playing it, the platforming elements always frustrated me, and the idea was always more fascinating than what the game ended up being. The same is true of Brutal Legend, a love letter to metal music that has so many great ideas, but all of them are executed from fine-to-terrible.

I think this might be the biggest problem with Double Fine: great concept, mediocre-to-bad execution of everything else. Throughout Brutal Legend, I kept wishing that Schafer had maybe just written the script and let someone else handle the rest of the game's mechanics. At first, Brutal Legend presents itself like a standard brawler, and that works fine, but it's nothing special. Then, Brutal Legend makes a shift into tower defense strategy game - a style of game I've written before that brings any game down for me - and the whole game starts to become exhausting trial-and-error.

Early on in the game, Brutal Legend holds your hand, explaining the combat and driving system, and then throws the gamer into the open-world and allows them to figure things out. I think this is a major problem of why Brutal Legend doesn't work. For one, the open world is too empty, and considering there's no jump button - A MASSIVE problem for this game - it's hard to traverse this world to comb over its secrets. But if you drive around, you can easily miss things, and quite often, you have to recall your car back to you after each individual mission. The in-game hints kept telling me I had upgrades available to me, and until the game explicitly made it impossible for me to move on until I upgraded and told me exactly how to do it, I had no clue how to upgrade myself.

Just out of curiosity, I looked to see what it takes to 100% this game, and there were entire features I wasn't aware of. Considering I did a ton of the repetitive side missions and explored the world quite a bit, I'd say this is more poor game design than it is my lack of interest. It's insane that there are large chunks of this game I missed because the game didn't take the time to explain anything about the open world to me.

Yet what really disappointed me about Brutal Legend was that shift to tower defense. I don't think this type of game is necessarily bad, but most of the time, it's just an added element that a game doesn't need and it isn't done particularly well. That's the case here, as the game pushes through the explanation of how to do its tower defense sections, before pushing you directly into the fire.

The material I did like about Brutal Legend though is the stuff that I can always rely on from Schafer. The world that he has built is unique and weird, such a clear idea and one where you can easily see the metal influences. The comedy works well here, and the voice acting, particularly by Jack Black, is all quite good. I'm glad this is a more toned down version of Black, as it matches the character far better than the more manic one I think a lot of game designers would've gone for.

But it's this world and these characters that got me through this disappointing game, and that's a shame. There's such an intriguing opportunity here, and almost every other element of the game just doesn't have the care or precision as the script does. If Schafer could combine great game mechanics with one of his scripts, he'd make a massive hit.

Brütal Legend hooks you right from the start. A live action cutscene staring Jack Black introduces to a bizarre live action menu featuring an rocking vinil cover. Five minutes in, your character has been transported from a lame nü-metal show for which he was a rodie, to an awesome world of creepy demon monks, creepy demon nuns and a kickass companion.

The world is incredible and totally holds up even for 2009 graphics. Meadows filled with dragon statues, trees made of metal tailpipes, wailing walls of loudspeakers. No screenshot of this game would be out of place as a heavy metal album cover. Characters are all music caricatures; from headbangers with huge necks that kill things with their headbuts to bouncers with humongous fist and emo kids, every unit has an unique visual.

And, of course, the music is top notch. Summoning your car with a guitar solo and driving around listening to the classics can be very satisfying. Thunderhogs heal units with their bass riffs, and you can kill enemies by playing guitar.

Even the plot is all about metal. As Eddie goes around showing the people the power of music, you battle lame glam armies and mob of goths. The true enemies of true metal... right? That's when the game loses some points. While it's all fun an games, the labour of love is also a labor of hate in it's own way. As someone with a fairly diverse taste in music, I think you can enjoy heavy metal as well as every other genre of music. The irony of treating a Bowie lookalike and his camp as posers obsessed with their looks and their hair while also idolising Ozzy to the point of having him in the game as the "Guardian of Metal" seems a but lost to the writers.

Admittedly, all that fuss is not really that serious because the game itself isn't. Up until the halfway mark of this ~8 hour game, there's a lot of humour, characters are likeable and dialogue is fun. But even after it get's dark, it still retains a healthy dose of self awareness.

But while Brütal Legend's whole ethos is the purity of true metal, its gameplay combines too many different genres, none sufficiently developed and all mixed together in a misshaped soup of noise. There is an open world but filled with cookie cutter missions that do not amount to anything. There's hack and slash, but not fluid enough and with barely any progression, so you are always underpowered to take even a few of the weakest of enemies. There's some RTS, but the way you control your units is not precise enough for it to allow any strategic placement of troops. There are also some guitar-hero elements, but they are mostly glorified commands with no difficulty whatsoever. There are even some rage-inducing escort missions.

Don't get me wrong. Even if the game would have been better removing some ingredients and focusing on the rest, there's rarely a moment where the gameplay is actively annoying. And if there is, you barely even notice over the wailing guitars and sweet bass tones.