Game designer Tim Schafer has one of the worst jobs in the world:  He has to live up to his own reputation.  Often lauded as the critical darling underdog of the console world, the man has the portfolio of near legendary PC adventure games behind him.  Inevitably, as most PC developers do, migration to home consoles is just about necessary to stay viable.  And sometimes that migration doesn't treat the PC-centric folks very well.  It could be argued that it hasn't treated Schafer very well either. Psychonauts, an action/adventure/platformer on the last generation of consoles, was generally well received but lacked solid sales figures.  It can also be said that while the game was full of charm and wit, and the gameplay unique and inventive, that it lacked the kind of polish expected from a top-tier title.  The question begged is: Does Brutal Legend fall into this same fate?

You play as Eddie Riggs, the greatest roadie that ever lived.  Sadly, Eddie is on tour with a new-wave, punk-pop, rap-infused outfit known as Cabbage Boy.  Eddie is brutally injured during an onstage mishap, his blood trickles into his demonic belt buckle, which triggers an event that sends Eddie into a fantasy world built on the premise of everything heavy metal.  Things get rolling quickly, and Eddie becomes the promised saviour of a group of humans fighting to survive in this alternate Heavy Metal universe.  To say Cabbage Boy is emblematic of the shit faux-metal bands of recent years is to state the blindingly obvious.  Eddie is a fan of classic metal through-and-through, and Tim Schafer enshrines the genre with this game.

If there is one resoundingly awesome aspect of the game, it is almost certainly the world of Brutal Legend, a fantasy realm inspired by the outlandish art accompanying classic metal albums.  Basically, it's a lot of bones, gore, organic and metal hybrid monstrosities, and twisted nightmares smothered in a thick layer of over-the-top scale and atmosphere.  Trees of metal pipes sprout from the ground, hogs forged with motorbikes squeal and tear across the landscape, gigantic effigies of guitars and swords erupt from the ground, and the sky revolts with lightening and fireballs as naturally occurring weather patterns.  Brutal Legend is a looker - the special effects and dynamic weather systems particularly impressive - but the art direction itself steals the show regardless of its sometimes impressive technical chops.

The land of Brutal Legend is fully explorable and mostly open-ended from the start.  Eddie learns early on how to summon his ride - a powerful beast of a car known by its nick-name the Druid Plow - which allows him fast (and often fun) transportation around what would otherwise be a land too large to traverse on foot alone.  Schafer and his crew at Double Fine put quite a lot of work into this metal fantasy world making it unique from one region to the next.  The differences in tone, colour schemes, and theme are almost jarring from area to area, but makes for a much more interesting journey.

As you'd expect with an open-ended structure, Brutal Legend features many of the things you might expect.  Side missions dot the landscape which include racing a rival demon, ambushing enemy hordes, and turret-manning missions to name a few.  There are also jumps to drive the Druid Plow through, a ridiculous number of hidden items that either unlock goodies or grant Eddie more upgradable powers, and so on.  There's enough here to potentially keep you occupied for some time, especially considering they each have an achievement for finding all of a particular kind.

The world of Brutal Legend isn't without its faults.  The camera fails to highlight the visuals in a way that does them justice - there isn't even a first-person look option.  You're often staring straight ahead down a screamingly obvious path as you traverse the world.  Despite discoverable sight-seeing stations which trigger a short cinematic showing off many iconic structures, you may just end up driving past most of them without even realizing they're there.  Moreover, side missions are extremely repetitive and this open-ended world is unusually hostile to exploration, what with glitchy terrain resulting in getting irreversibly caught in the geometry far too often.

The core gameplay features third-person combat which gets off to a great start - anyone that's played the demo will attest.  Upon entering the world of Brutal Legend, Eddie obtains a battle axe and guitar, the latter able to summon lighting and fireballs when its strings are struck.  As a matter of fact, the guitar is upgradeable and unlockable guitar solos can be found - the solos are successfully completed by executing the right button presses at the right tempo, as accomplished through a display similar to Guitar Hero or Rock Band.  The axe and guitar are geniously and seemlessly woven into the overall theme of the game, turning the instruments of metal into the instruments of death and destruction.

A combo system between axe and guitar is typically how Eddie dispatches his foes, but he also gains access new allies along the way which he can utilize for unique double-team attacks.  Considering there are a quite a few different allies with different skills, this adds a unique layer to combat besides the typical hacking and slashing.  Mind you, the hacking and slashing is pretty bloody satisfying - blood splurts about cartoonishly with every slash, and hacks will often result in dismembered body parts flying off in a slow-motion display of silly gore.  The combat isn't very polished - Ninja Gaiden this is not - but it is at the very least serviceable and, dare I say, fun.

As mentioned, you meet additional allies along your journey, each with specific attributes in battle.  This is how Brutal Legend eventually builds up to one of its key gameplay features: Real-Time Strategy combat.  As Eddie builds up an army, he is eventually tasked with commanding this army against the armies of his enemies.  His stage manager builds a stage representing your base; Eddie builds fan tributes on fan geysers which serve as resources for the stage; with enough fans Eddie can call up additional units for his army and then send them into battle.  If your stage gets destroyed, you lose - the objective in most cases is to destroy the enemy's stage first.  Basic RTS gameplay.

Taking RTS gameplay and fitting it seemlessly into the overall theme of Brutal Legend is yet another strikingly original and clever facet of the game.  However, the RTS segments is where Brutal Legend falls down.  There's a reason why RTS games haven't traditionally fared well on consoles, and that reason is that its simply unintuitive.  The same thing happens here.  Eddie can sprout demon wings during these sequences to quickly fly about the arenas and view the battlefield from a distance, he can call up new troops and direct them to do a number of actions, he can upgrade his stage for more powerful troops and different units have different attributes and specialities.  There's a lot going on here.  Despite best efforts to ease you into these mechanics, it all becomes overwhelming and convoluted very quickly, which results in a frustrating experience overall.  At the point where I realized that the latter half of the game was going to be comprised mostly of these RTS battles, I nearly turned the game off and never returned.

For some, faults in Brutal Legend's gameplay may be quelled by Schafer's penchant for wit, charming characters, and imaginative worlds.  Indeed, the game is full of expressive characters and stand-out voice acting.  Jack Black does a very good job playing Eddie Riggs, and other heavy metal icons make surprising appearances for key characters.  Ozzy Osbourne in particular does an absolutely amazing job playing the game's shop keeper, bringing a ton of life and levity to what would otherwise be a mindless menu crawl.  The universe these characters find themselves in is as fantastical as it gets, utterly unique and possibly the very first of its kind.  That said, the story is disappointingly short and surprisingly lacking in its ability to make the player empathize with their companions.  All the pieces fit, but there's a certain something missing, that spark that keeps the proceedings from elevating to something really special.

There was a point during my time with Brutal Legend where I was entirely enthralled, loving the time I spent with it and anticipating a memorable experience come the game's conclusion.  But then I ran full stop into the RTS elements that dominate the latter half of the game, dragging the whole experience down considerably.  Still, Tim Schafer should receive huge credit for those elements of the game that really do work - when they work, they work brilliantly.  This game is a unique gem at least worth a rental.  But when it comes to polished gameplay and synthesizing the RTS elements more smoothly into the whole, there is still a good deal of work that needs to be done before Brutal Legend becomes a gaming legend.

YAY! - Utterly unique universe; charming character and wit; core combat gameplay is satisfying; lots to explore and discover.

NAY! - RTS gameplay is confusing and frustrating; most of latter half of game is comprised of RTS battles; story is short and lacks feeling.

For those of you who hate reading or only learned to read numbers: 7/10

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