Background

I’ve been a big fan of LucasArts games since the 90s, especially their adventure games with a run of back-to-back classics very reminiscent of Pixar’s first decade in terms of creative output. Tim Schafer was one of the prominent developers involved in a number of these adventure games, particularly as project lead for memorable classics such as Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. As LucasArts shifted away from adventure games in the late 90s, Tim Schafer eventually left to found Double Fine Productions, whose first two games were Psychonauts and Brütal Legend.

While I didn’t play any of these games on release, I appreciated Double Fine’s remasters of classic LucasArts adventure games, which prompted me to eventually take a shot at some of their original releases.

Production

Brütal Legend is an open world action game with major set pieces that include elements of the real-time strategy (RTS) genre. It’s also a love letter to the heavy metal music genre and has one of the strongest examples of art direction I’ve seen in a game. This starts from the game menu itself, which is a charming live action FMV showing Jack Black, best known as the Chicken Jockey guy from the Minecraft Movie, flicking through a vinyl album. The game world feels like you’ve stepped into the cover art of a heavy metal album: a fantasy realm filled with magic, demons, medieval weaponry, umlauts, and V8 hot rods. The locales and factions are inspired by various metal subgenres, from gleaming glam towers to spooky fog-swathed gothic swamps and hellish wastelands.

The soundtrack is a comprehensive library of licensed music across heavy metal’s many subgenres. Not being particularly well-versed in music, I personally discovered a number of songs and bands that are now part of my regular playlist. The music is so integral to the game’s feel and atmosphere that it would be a real shame if any tracks had to be removed in the future due to licensing issues.

The voice cast is stellar, from Jack Black and Tim Curry providing the star power to voice acting veterans like Jennifer Hale, along with cameos by heavy metal legends such as Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, and Ozzy Osbourne.

Gameplay

Brütal Legend’s gameplay is split between open world action and real-time strategy battles. Both modes have significant overlap, as you’re always controlling the main character from a third-person perspective. The open world starts off as a basic hack-and-slash action game and gradually introduces new elements such as magic and a car for traversing the map. Magic is creatively implemented as heavy metal riffs, cast by playing a short rhythm minigame. Combat is serviceable but lacks the responsiveness of more polished melee-focused titles.

The world has a few settlements and outposts but isn’t very interactive. There’s some local wildlife, some of which can be tamed as temporary mounts, and enemy mobs, but nothing especially challenging. Sidequests and minigames are scattered throughout, but none are particularly memorable. You can spend currency, earned through story missions and side activities, at an upgrade merchant, but there’s no meaningful economy.

Early missions are mostly linear dungeon-like segments with boss fights, but the game later adds new mission types like races and the showpiece Stage Battles.

Stage Battles introduce the RTS elements. These take place in closed-off arenas with a stage at each end. Your stage acts as a base where units are spawned, and your goal is to destroy the enemy stage. The stage can be upgraded to unlock better units, with the full upgrade level tied to story advancement. Capturing resource nodes provides currency to spawn units and upgrade the stage.

A unique mechanic during Stage Battles is the main character’s ability to fly, letting you view the battlefield from above and quickly respond to threats. You can also fight directly and take control of specific units for unique abilities. Dying as the main character in this mode is a minor setback, as you will eventually respawn back at your stage. While you can issue basic commands, the lack of a traditional RTS top-down view makes micro-management clumsy. There is also an enemy commander that flies around with similar abilities to the player character, although the limited AI makes them mainly a nuisance in the single player.

Unfortunately, Stage Battles become tedious as most battles devolve into zerg rushing to the nearest flashpoint with your units and dropping a few spells to press the advantage. Some missions can take over an hour if you aren’t optimizing every step, made worse by the lack of mid-mission saves. There are only a handful of Stage Battle missions throughout the single player campaign, so when they occur there isn’t much variety in how they play. The only other game I’ve played that tries this hybrid formula is Giants: Citizen Kabuto, a janky cult classic from 2000 which also struggled to balance such gameplay. Brütal Legend might have benefited from cutting down the RTS layer and focusing on third-person action, similar to MOBAs like League of Legends, which interestingly launched the same year.

The Stage Battles are also the core of the multiplayer mode, although I didn’t spend much time here as it’s not that enjoyable for me.

Technical Note

I played the PS3 version, which should be avoided at all cost. Besides the typical performance issues of PS3 games compared to the Xbox or PC versions, there’s a game-breaking bug that corrupts your save if you get too far into the 100% completion checklist. This remains unpatched in the PS3 version and effectively forces you to skip sidequests and exploration until after the main story. The game also includes DLC with trophies that is no longer accessible on the PS3. Despite these issues, I pushed through to complete the game because I appreciated the artistry behind it.

Conclusion

Brütal Legend’s artistry is second to none, and stands as a unique heartfelt tribute to heavy metal. However, its gameplay, especially the RTS elements, struggles to keep up. For me, this makes it a mid game overall, though one that’s definitely worth experiencing for the world, the music, and the style.

7/10 Worth playing for any gamer, if you get the PC or Xbox version

or

3/10 for the PS3 version - avoid