Brütal Legend First Impressions

Last year I attended an event called Day of the Devs in San Francisco. A company named Double Fine teamed up with other local video game developers for a showcase for upcoming games. It was cool seeing stuff that would not normally be stocked on retail shelves, and it was a chance to get a game I bought years ago to be signed by Double Fine founder Tim Schafer. Since I need to catch up on my game backlog, here’s an explanation of why I liked the first experience with the last full priced retail game Schafer’s studio produced.

Brütal Legend stands out as a heavy rocking title from the opening sequence. The main character Eddie Riggs, voiced by Jack Black, begins his journey as a roadie, but after blood falls on his belt buckle during a gig, The Eternal Firebeast awakens and transplants Riggs into a heavy metal world. The flora and fauna of this new world are all metal, and you can play rocking licensed tracks as you cruise around in your hot-rod and freeing humanity from an evil overlord and his hair metal minions. When you’re not boosting off of jumps and ramming through obstacles, you can run around slashing foes with an axe or stunning them with a shocking guitar riff. Certain riffs can be played to activate environmental objects or rally troops for real time strategy elements, but army and resource management ramp up later in the game, so I don’t have much experience for it.

As in the previous Double Fine title, the humor and charm is top notch.  Riggs is the best roadie in the business able to fix anything. When the music from the band he was helping suddenly changed from its metal tone, a big grin burst across my face. The game has other moments like how Riggs talks about starting a revolution with some head bangers, and the prompt to start the mission asks, appropriately, to start a revolution. You can then say no to it, which I found funny as well. The game contains content filters so you can censor the profanity from the character played by Ozzy Osborne or censor the violence, but honesty I would rather see heads exploding than just watch people faint from seeing a metal god. The characters enjoy rocking out in the heavy metal inspired world, and I enjoy it with them.

Brütal Legend may be the last major retail title Double Fine releases, but it’s still something I need to check out and finish. It eventually got released on PC too, so it’s not too difficult to acquire. I ought to explore the title more just to justify the vinyl album cover the game came with when I preordered it ages ago.