Final verdict: C
Final playtime: 14 hours
Aight yeah, I know, been a while. I beat this game like a decade ago but never got around to reviewing it because I was busy fucking all your mothers. Unlike seemingly all of my friends, I was never particularly interested in Brutal Legend. Let it be known, I ain’t a metalhead. So Jack Black is in it. Big fucking deal. So it’s a Tim Schafer game. Big fucking deal. So it’s a tribute to metal. Yawn, wake me up when something interesting happens.
I still got it though because fuck you if you think I’m putting up with everyone raving about the game. Plus I guess I sort of respect Tim Schafer for working on stuff like Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion. Plus there’s the off-chance that Brutal Legend might end up being good (so much for that).
Brutal Legend is not a good game. It’s not a bad game either. It’s squarely in the meh category. The kinda game you play and it’s not that cool but doesn’t really do anything that makes you hate it and it even becomes somewhat enjoyable at times but once you beat it you promptly put it away without a second thought and forget all about it. That’s the kind of game Brutal Legend is. Not a very enviable position.
The game isn’t without merits. It opens up with a great intro that made me smile. Just a video of Jack Black walking down the street with you, you walk into a store looking for this amazing something he wants to show you called Brutal Legend. I dunno about you, but to me Jack Black looks like an amazing dude to hang out with, just doing whatever, fucking niggers up, sipping on some cold ones, I ain’t know.
The rest of the cutscenes in Brutal Legend tend to be just as excellent. The writing/dialogue is witty, funny and just all around entertaining. The characters tend to not be very interesting though because they’re all basically flat vessels for jokes. In fact, the entire game is pretty much a joke. I don’t think it ever takes itself seriously. Even when the stupidest shit imaginable is going on in the plot (and it will, trust me), the game gives the impression that it knows how retarded it is.
Take probably the most retarded part of the game, where the protagonist, Eddie, dumps the lead female (who is a shitty character by the way) or something, and then she goes all emo bitch, jumps into some lake, turns undead, gets all pale gothic-like and becomes an antagonist. Bitch, and here I thought it was impossible for you to be an even more laughable character. The game seems to know because at one point Eddie is like “Maaan it wasn’t even a fight, we just had a little rub and she blew it all out of proportion.” Exactly. But even then I still hated her guts and wanted to kill her. It’s like guess what, bitch, nobody gives a shit about you and your angst. “Ohhh waaahhh look at me, I got dumped, no one trusts me, give me attention!” Yeah you got dumped and everyone hates you, fucking get over it and maybe stop being such a shitty character. I’m disappointed you don’t get the chance to kill her and instead she just gets changed back to normal through the power of love or whatever dumbass shit.
Probably the most noteworthy thing about Brutal Legend, though, is how fucking legendary the music is. I said I’m not a metalhead and it’s true, but I’ll be fucked if some of these songs ain’t bitchin’ as all hell. You got shit like Motley Crue, Brocas Helm, Megadeth, In Flames, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Dragonforce, bunch of good stuff. Brutal Legend has the opposite problem of, say, Fallout 3. Whereas in Fallout 3 the radio was absolute shit music that looped after a grand total of like, I dunno, 30 fucking minutes and that’s all it gave you for like 60 mother fucking hours, Brutal Legend has so many songs that you’ll barely even get the chance to hear them all since the game is so damn short. You decide what’s worse. Short game with amazing radio or long game with shit radio?
The gameplay doesn’t fare as well. The camera feels really sluggish, even on the fastest setting. The combat’s pretty fucking mediocre. It’s just your usual hit dudes a bunch, use your bullshit shockwave move that hits everything, fuck dodging or blocking, I don’t give a shit. Not that I was expecting anything amazing.
The open world exploration on car is just as shitty and boring as GTA, Oblivion, and pretty much any other open world game. Though it is saved from being truly awful by the great music. It’s also filled with the pointless shit you’ve come to expect: hidden statues, side missions like kill a bunch of dudes, races, kill a bunch of dudes, and, um, kill a bunch of dudes. Whatever, fuck you, it’s been a long time since I played the game and it ain’t my fault it’s so forgettable.
Then there’s the faux RTS sections. As you’d expect they’re just as mediocre as everything else, but more than that, these sections are also fucking confusing, especially because there’s no minimap, it’s hard as hell to even tell friend from foe or where you’re at and it’s all basically just one huge clusterfuck. A lot of the time it’s just really hard to know what you’re supposed to do and how to do it, and let me fucking tell you, when a game makes you go “what the fuck does it want me to do?” that means it’s badly designed. End of story.
Once you figure things out (though it still keeps throwing gimmicks at you all the way to the end) it’s not so bad, but by that time the game is also over since it’s so fucking short. I know what they’d say about this. “That’s when you jump into multiplayer!” Uh, yeah, no, are you high? Why the fuck would I play your shit’s multiplayer when I’ve got Street Fighter right there? That’s what I thought.
So should you get Brutal Legend? Meh. You ain’t missing out on much if you don’t.
Final Verdict: C
Final Playtime: 14 hours…probably. Fuck you man I ain’t remember and I’m way too lazy to dig it out and check to see if it even fucking records playtime. Just know that it’s fucking short. Not that I’m complaining or anything, it’s not like the game was good enough to make me want more.