By Alex Jarvis
I’ll start with this: Tim Schafer’s newest game, Brütal Legend, takes those doodles you used to draw in the margins of your eighth grade notebook and turns them into a video game you can actually play.
The Main character of the game is Eddie Riggs, a Roadie (voiced by Jack Black, with his roadie/rock philosophy making up for a chunk of the impetus for the story) who has been thrust into the world of his dreams: demons ride on fast cars through a destroyed landscape, face melting guitar riffs actually melt faces (no, seriously you guys, that’s an ability you get to have) and mosh-pits are a legitimate strategy to victory. If you are familiar with any of Schafer’s previous work, then you already know that the game is cleverly written, visually gorgeous,and fairly deep.
The music, of course, is also brilliant. Taking notes from the entire catalog of rock history, we are really only missing Led Zepplin and a few other masterminds to call this complete. Despite the lack of Led, you do get Ozzy, who also has a starring role in the game, Dethklok, Metallica and (of course) Tenacious D. Strangely enough, that is not what drew me in.
The most devious trick of Brütal Legend is that its advertising has been terribly misleading. It fashions itself a sort of mid-line action game, hacking and slashing through a metal world with an axe (the kind with a blade) and an axe (the kind that makes music). However, during one portion, the enemies of lionwhyte (the game’s first large rival, a hair-metal inspired troupe) attack your base. You assemble a stage to defend them, start to manage resources (“fans”) that you can turn into units that you instruct to certain points on the battle field and… holy hell, the game just changed into a Real-Time Strategy. What’s great is that it is actually one of the few RTS titles on a console I’ve ever truly enjoyed – the third-person view of Eddie as he hovers above the battlefield (on demon wings, so metal) allows you to either stay in your ivory tower, or – if you are a rough-and-tumble type – take part in the action yourself. During whole other sections of the game, it fashions itself as a car-combat title, defending the touring van from potential interlopers. The game changes up constantly, and it is fairly refreshing.
Should you buy Brütal Legend? No, no you shouldn’t. What you should do is reach deep down inside that cynical, hipster heart of yours and find that strange, confused 14 year old that wore wristbands, loved ACDC, and really believed in the music. You hand him the sixty dollars and your pink Xbox 360 controller that you constantly get teased about and let him go buck wild, then you listen to Say Anything or something and sulk. He’ll tell you how awesome it is when he’s done.
