A brilliantly designed fantasy world, unique gameplay, a potentially strong multiplayer component, a story that just keeps driving forward, and some of the best voice talent ever for a video game make up what is so great about Double Fine’s salute to all things metal.  Brütal Legend takes you for a wild ride that never lets up and is constantly giving you new things to do and new gameplay elements to explore.  There are just a few things that hold this game back from absolute greatness, but man is it one of the most original and fun experiences I’ve had this year.

The story of roadie turned savior of the world Eddie Riggs starts strong and keeps that pace up for the entire 8-10 hour campaign.  There was always some new twist coming down the pipe that I usually didn’t see coming.  Combine that with the new gameplay mechanics that are consistently keeping the actual playtime fresh and interesting and I couldn’t put the game down until the credits were rolling.  By now you’ve undoubtedly heard the tale of Brütal Legend so I’m not going to spend time talking about that, I want to talk more about the unique and interesting gameplay that Brütal Legend has in store for anyone who plays it.

What seemingly starts off as a standard third person hack-and-slash type game quickly turns into first, an open world game, then a very light rts type game.  While the action portion of the game is fine, I’m really glad that’s not all they did because I don’t think that kind of gameplay could support this whole game.  The open world stuff they added though doesn’t really make anything better.  I was interested enough in the story that I never really spent any time just cruising around the world (although any metal fans might find plenty of reason to do so thanks to the in car stereo the Deuce eventually acquires that is loaded with licensed music) and usually I just went from mission to mission to see what would happen next.  Also, when you are just driving around the world the navigation system can be very misleading. You mark places on your map (brought up by hitting the back button) and then you’re supposed to follow the turn signals on your car to get there.  This does have one benefit of keeping a mini-map off the screen so you really do look around at the world and don’t just drive exclusively looking at the map, but I often got lost trying to follow the turn signals.  There were several times that my destination was clearly in front of me but the signals kept wanting me to turn off to follow one specific path.  The side missions scattered around the world are also a bit lacking. They get repetitive quick and aren’t really that fun, even the first time you play them.  Luckily the team at t Double Fine did craft some portion of the game that I think is really original and does carry the game throughout the entirety of the experience, and that’s the glory of the stage battles.

The stage battles are the light rts part of the game, and they really make good use of the fiction.  You collect fans as your resource and spend them on a variety of units that fall into the standard needs of any strategy type game.  You have your ranged, melee, and building destroying types, but all three factions have such a unique arrangement of units that all three really do feel different to play as.  When a stage battle starts it begins a race to collect resources but, unlike actual real time strategies there isn’t really a need to separate your units apart from each other, and it’s usually a good idea to keep them all together thanks to the buffs they usually get from being near each other.  During the stage battle your character gets the ability to fly so you can have a bird’s eye view of the field of battle, but it is not a good idea to be in this mode most of the time as you help out your units a lot more by being next to them hack and slashing away.  You also get access to guitar solos that act as the magic for the game that you can deploy anytime on the battlefield. Along with guitar solos you can also perform double team attacks with any unit on the field; these can become very important and devastating if used correctly.  With the mixture of the troop management and knowing when to deploy a certain guitar solo, and knowing when to use the double team attacks, the strategy is definitely there for anyone who wants to explore its depths, but it’s not too over the top with requiring you to be a master at this type of action to progress through the story.

With the stage battles’ being the star of the show in multiplayer as well really makes me believe that if enough people get into it, the multiplayer of this game could take off.  Unfortunately when I tried it, the matchmaking process took a long time for me to find a game.  When you do get into a game, the first thing you’ll notice when trying to move your character around is the lag.  While the lag is definitely there and very noticeable I didn’t find it that bad when the action starts to get heavy as long as your opponent has a green connection.  A few games I got into had red connections and the lag made the game completely unplayable.  You don’t need to be that precise in this multiplayer where a little lag would completely destroy the flow of a game.  The only real problem the lag caused was I sometimes had trouble hitting the guitar solos when I needed to, but once you start accounting for the lag while playing the solos it becomes a non-issue.

The three factions seem expertly balance with Ironhead being the standard that most people will play with since there the faction you use in the single player.  Drowning Doom and the Tainted Coil are very interesting as the other two factions though.  As the Drowning Doom you really have to play up the debuffs the units can cast on enemies, and use the double team attacks frequently.  The Tainted Coil rely on a strict hierarchy system that really plays up the importance of the double team move because you have to perform the double team with certain units to make the cannon fodder units for that army.  What’s really going to determine whether this multiplayer is actually something people will play is how bad the lag problem becomes, and if it stays interesting enough to keep people’s attention.

Brütal Legend is definitely worth playing through and has some of the most unique gameplay of any game I’ve played this year.  The story is captivating enough to motivate you through it, even though the side missions are completely something you can ignore almost with how little they actually matter.  The multiplayer in the game has a good chance of catching on with a certain strategy type crowd and could be a reason to keep coming back to Brütal Legend.  But even if the multiplayer is completely uninteresting to you the characters and brilliant fantasy world are more than enough to make you want to explore this heavy metal world at least once.

9 Ninja Heads out of 10

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