Brütal Legend
The best parts of Tim Schafer games rarely have anything to do with the gameplay. If you approach Brütal Legend thinking "boy, I bet this open world action game with RTS set pieces is going to be a blast of fun!", then you're probably going to be disappointed. That's not to say that Legend is boring, but the action game parts are average, the RTS set pieces are simply functional, and the driving and open world aspects are merely present.
The great part of Legend is in the funny writing and badass situations and designs. Main character Eddie Riggs (Jack Black) can do some pretty awesome things, like shoot lightning out of his guitar and literally melt faces with a wykkyd guitar solo. He also has clever one-liners and is surrounded by people who do as well. Not every gag is a winner, but I didn't think they fell flat very often except through repetition.
The images in the world vary from good to great, not just through rendering power, but in design as well. Most of it is lifted wholly from metal imagery, so they can't really take credit for all of it, but the original work is strong.
Of course, if the game shines in the writing, scenarios, and design, then why put it into a medium that needs more than just those three things? A pretty good movie or TV series could fall out of a well-done trio of these elements, but they don't need the element that Legend is lacking: a compelling reason to interact.
There are plenty of WAYS to interact, whether they be the aforementioned action sequences (beating guys with your axe (weapon) and blowing them away with your axe (guitar)), driving sequences, RTS sections, and a scattering of other things. However, I can't imagine doing any of those things more than once if there weren't the promise of more of the good parts to follow.
I think Schafer games have always been this way, but it was a bit more difficult to notice when he was doing graphical adventures. Those games are almost entirely interchangeable except for the writing, design, and scenarios, so even though that's all he ever did right, that's all ANYONE ever did right in that genre.
I don't blame him for leaving adventure games after they died, but I suspect that his decade since then could have been better spent working in a different medium. Make Brütal Legend non-interactive and it would be somewhere between Metalocalypse and Tenacious D, but probably better than both. Leave it as a game, and it's pretty ok, but absolutely worth playing if it's the only way you can see the non-interactive parts.
Given the existence of the internet, I doubt that it is.
7 comments:
after playing the demo - i am going to wait until i find it used and cheap in 6 months...
the demo was fun...but i really hate driving in games.
Another reason post-adventure-genre Schafer games are noticeably less awesome than the adventure games: Psychonauts and Brutal Legend are, by their very nature, less verbose than the adventures.
Heroes like Guybrush, Ben, and Manny all have comments about virtually everything in their games. They describe the items in their inventory, the objects in the world, and the environments they find themselves in. The volume of potential jokes that comes from a game that has a huge amount of monologue in addition to the usual dialogue has a much better chance of coming across as routinely funny.
I think this is something Fallout 3 suffered from, as well. The first two games had a lot of extra text all over the interface which provided an extra bit of humorous interpretation of what goes on. FO3 still had some funny text and some witty dialogue options, but the pervasive level of commentary was all but gone.
I agree with that sentiment. Fully immersive environments aren't always a better way to view a game world. I think game companies stifle themselves as a whole because they treat 3 dimensional environments as the only way to make a video game anymore, ignoring all of the possibilities that still in 2 dimensional worlds.
To be fair, on the Fallout 3 thing.
You're TOTALLY right, but it's equally, an artifact of Bethesda doing the game, and not.. well... Chris Avellone.
I don't know if I want to give Bethesda credit, considering the writing improved leaps and bounds from say.. the Elder Scrolls stuff... or rap them on the knuckles.. for still being.. noticably sub par for a Fallout Thing..
Now.. New Vegas??? Yeah, more please.
Why does he not simply utilize non-shitty gameplay mechanics? Or, you know, hire someone who knows how to utilize non-shitty gameplay mechanics?
Things I do not like: Video games utilized soley as mediums for jokes.
As far as I can tell the only virtue to Psychonauts was the jokes, the humor. It seems, similarly, that the virtue to Brutal Legend is the jokes, the humor, the hi-larious side-splitting hijinks within the world.
How would Psychonauts not have been better as a movie, as a novel, as a comic book? Would Brutal Legends have sucked as a film? Whence the need to access these jokes via game controller?
I understand games the focus of which is player interraction and progression of characters. So, why am I playing Diablo II? To level my character, to get items; that is why I have to be the person pushing these buttons.
Psychonauts, to me, sounds like one is pushing a bunch of buttons to unlock the next joke. Brutal Legends, it seems, is also utilization of button pushing to unlock jokes and situations; it is narrative progression rather than game progression.
It just seems silly to use a video game to accomplish the task for which books were created.
Are you FUCKING with me, J?
Psychonauts is a tightly formed precise platformer. Yeah, the setting and story, of which the jokes are of MAJOR importance, were the defining feature, but that's becuase of how GOOD they were, not becuase it was a story medium first.
Behind all the chuckles and chortles? Is a very, very good platformer, and a somewhat disturbing and touching story. It's no more a joke delivery mechanism than Beyond Good and Evil.
And, I'd argue with your thesis that books were created for joke delivery. I mean, if that's yoru stance, then why go to see live theater? Why go to audience participation comedy? Why listen to rifftrax, which imply and create an illusion of interaction?
Frankly, sir, I call bullshit and shenanigans, and reveal your stance as nakedly unconsidered! I await your glove, to be thrown at my feet at your convienence.
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