Brutal Legend - Demo - PS3 - Review - spoilers

[Ohio Joe]

I just finished downloading this a little while ago, a good sized download, about 1.6 gig. It opens with a splash screen that looks like a late 70's metal album and your only option is to press start. Doing that opens the album where, in the demo, all you can do is start a game. As boring as that may sound, it is very well done and very cool looking.

The game opens with a long cinematic. Your character of the roadie is taunted by the lame band he works for just before they go onstage. They go out and start to play some very lame metal, back stage you and another roadie lament having to work for a band like this, wicked funny dialog, it had me laughing out loud. Around here, everything freezes and a dialog box pops up asking if you want to here the curses or have them bleeped out, pretty funny the way they word it. One of the band climbs your stage prop (a big demon thing), where he is not supposed to go. Jack Black (who voices your character) fills this in as well as the roadie code as you go out to save the band member (who is now hanging and ready to fall). You catch first the guitar, then the band member and set him back on stage and fade into the background... where the prop comes crashing down onto you seeming to kill you. Your blood mixes with your belt buckle, which looks like the stage prop and the demon thing comes to life... it looks much better then it sounds. The demon puts one claw out to pop off your head and the game again freezes and asks if your good with the violence or want it censored, again very funny. As the cinematic continues, the demon stops, turns to the band and lops off their heads, heh, too funny. You awake on an alter with some people in robes who come to kill you... Now you get control of the game.

The opening action segment just has to be loved if only because they have Black Sabbath's Children of the Grave playing as the background music. No lame remake, the original shit, gotta love it :D You kill a bunch of the guys in robes while the game teaches you basic controls. Then a chic that looks like a nun but is really a demon shows up... all of this has awesome dialog running through it, funniest I've ever heard in a game. You kill her and then you get a look at where you are, on top of a mountain of bones. You jump in the nun/demon's "walker" (don't know what else to call it) and walk down the mountain... absolutely amazing graphics, with the skulls sliding down in reaction to your movement, the background, a flying... thing, heh. You get to the bottom and there are more guys in robes and you start killing them, then the funniest shit... You get blocked by one of them and off comes the hood and it is a hot chick and your character says something like "oh man, have I been killing hot chicks all this time" bwahahahahahahaha, just funny as hell! That is just the start but I'll stop there.

Controls - The game does a good job of teaching you the controls, nothing to complicated, very much God of War style stuff.

Graphics - The PS3 is really hitting it's stride in this game. This game is beautiful.

Fun Factor - Reasonably easy to control, beautiful to look at, great music (well... to my tastes anyway) and some of the best dialog ever make for a lot of fun. No apparent multi-player kind of takes a little away but hey... we need single played games too!

Bottom line - You want to get the demo at least. As much as I like this game, I'm not sure it is worth a purchase because I don't see much in the way of re-playability. Yeah... there are different difficulty levels but.... it would be the same shit just harder, it is not like you have a character that levels up. I'm definitely going to want to pick this up.... maybe used or when it hits the bargain bin or if you have the "netflix" thing for games (what the hell is that?) it would be great. If you have a lot of extra cash, it would be a great purchase... I just don't and really have to take into consideration "Will I play this a lot", and the fact is I would probably only play through this once or twice.

[Bjorn Against]

1. I played the demo as well and I am really looking forward to it now.

One correction to your review however, the final version of this game will include multi-player. The multi-player as well as a big chunk of the single player game actually looks far different than what we played in the demo, rather than playing like a God of War style game it will be real time strategy in which you control an army of crazed metal fans. It sounds a bit strange, but Tim Shaffer is a genius so hopefully he pulled it off and it will be every bit as fun as the action parts. Also another thing the demo doesn't fully convey is that this is not a linear action game, but actually takes place in a huge open world environment which probably means there will be quite a bit of playtime involved if you want to do all the sidequests.

[Ohio Joe]

2. Very cool

Thanks, good info! The game being more sandbox/open world is a really cool thing and can definitely bump up the re-playability factor for me. I'm also going to have to go look up some more on the multi-player your describing. Putting a RTS into this engine could be a train wreck or it could be awesome. If they manage to make it awesome, it could put this title as game of the year in my book.

[semillama]

3. I just bought it for Xbox

and it is one of the most entertaining games I've played. It's a must-have for metalheads. The soundtrack is DENSE. All original tracks, including a LOT of tracks from obscure but highly influential bands from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (Budgie, Saxon, etc) and some great instrumental versions of songs from the new Mastodon album. Great voice acting from Black, but also awesome cameos from Ozzy, Lemmy and Rob Halford. There's also some guest appearances that I won't spoil because of the humor. There are LOADS of great in-jokes for those familiar with the metal/hard rock genre.

Game play is pretty good, a variety of things to do and see, and the art is amazing. The level of effort and detail that went into this game is just astonishing.

My only complaints so far: commanding your troops seems easy, but in practice is difficult - especially in trying to order a subset of your units to do one thing. I often had to keep recalling units because even though I had selected the subset, all my units were following an order. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if it's the game mechanics. There's also a driving mission that requires you to drive in a circle while performing another action, and it got really frustrating for me - but then I'm horrible at driving games anyway.

Bottom Line: This game really exemplifies how a video game can be considered a valid work of art, equal to other modern entertainment such as movies and TV shows. The game is a must-buy for fans of Tim Schafer/Double Fine and for true blue metal maniacs-the soundtrack alone is worth the buy. I might advise rental otherwise - however, I still think you should buy rather than rent this game, simply to support the publication and development of truly original, well-crafted games.

[Broken_Hero]

4. I got this game the other day,

and I spent about 3hrs on it today, and it was a lot better than I thought. Spoiler, of sorts...



























What took me by surprise was how you can make your own armies, and control different types of "Heavy Metal" soldiers, and the way in which you can control them was a very easy.

[realisticphish]

5. it was certainly interesting

the storyline was surprisingly dynamic... the game was pretty fun to play, but there wasn't a lot of replay value for me. A lot of the levels (once you're past the first few unlocked regions) strained my eyes a LOT. Not places I was going to drive around and look for collectibles or something.

Still, pretty cool game.