Brutal Legend is an action adventure/strategy game from Tim Schafer, the man responsible for one of my favorite games from last generation, Psychonauts. Psychonauts was a great game with a lot of unique ideas and sense of humor. But sadly the game performed badly in the market although the game was well received by the critics. Now, Tim Schafer’s latest game has arrived and there are many gamers who have been curios to know if the game is good enough to guarantee a purchase or not. Brutal Legend is a pretty good game. But let us look at the game from a different angle with the following question, is it Tim Schafer’s greatest? No.

While the game does have its share of drawbacks, the biggest problem is: my hopes for the game were very high. You may not face the same issue that I had encountered, but with that burden off my chest, I can continue my review without worrying much about that.
 

You will start the game as Eddie Riggs, a roadie, voiced by and modeled after Jack Black. After you finish watching the intro scene, Eddie will be transported into the heavy metal world with the help of the fire beast Ormagadon. Once you be able to move Eddie, you will be rushing to find a weapon to kill the red coated demons. You will get a broad axe and a guitar, the axe acts as your melee weapon while the guitar is your spell caster.

After a lot of slaughtering, you will meet Ophelia who will guide you towards Bladehenge, where the leaders of a small human resistance group. You will be able to go there by using The Deuce, a car that Eddie was able to create. From here, Eddie joins forces with the resistance group in order to defeat the evil being of this world Doviculus. The game story is well told with some nice twists and laughs and the excellent voice acting of the game characters helped the story to be even more exciting to watch.
 
 

Brutal Legend gameplay is mix up between action adventure and strategy. The game follows an open world structure with lots of side quests to finish. While some of the side missions are fun to play, there should have been more variety in mission types. To tell you the truth, Side missions such as ambushing enemies or racing from point A to B will get old after a while. I was expecting a better constructed or more creative side missions from Double Fine, but that wasn’t the case in Brutal Legend.

In the other hand, the main missions in the game is well constructed and more importantly fun to play. Most of the main missions in the game are stage battles based on real time strategy elements. The player will be required to defend a giant stage. Eddie can create an army for attacks by creating merchandise booths on fan geysers done by performing a summoning minigame akin to the note-matching aspect of Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Once enough fans are collected, Eddie can summon different units, each consuming a specific number of fans, or upgrade their stage to allow him to produce more powerful units. Enemies will try to destroy your booths in order to make these spots as their booths, which will lessen your fans amount and of course will prevent you from spawning more units. Most of the fun you are going to have in this game are from those missions, but the issue is you will not play a lot of these missions. As soon as you find yourself starting to enjoy the game, the end credits will start rolling before you know it. In my opinion, that’s one of the reasons that prevented the game from reaching its full potential.
 
 

By finishing missions and side quests, you will obtain tribute points. You can then visit The Keeper of Metal (Ozzy Osbourne) and exchange points for aforementioned weapon, combination, vehicle upgrades, special moves and additional items. The game doesn’t give you the motivation to upgrade, as you will be able to finish the game without so much investment in upgrades.
 

The multiplayer modes are team-based and play in the same manner as the single-player Stage Battles. Each team selects from one of three factions which affect what resources and troops they can summon, and are tasked with defending their stage from attack by the other team.
 

On the visuals side, the game is beautiful to look at. That’s due to the amazing visual style of the game world and the great looking characters. The game does have some frame rate issues, but it doesn’t ruin the experience. Another great thing you will notice about the game is the music. I’m not a big fan of metal music, but I really has enjoyed the great variety of tracks the game has offered. Sometimes I found myself riding The Deuce and traveling the game world just to listen to the great tracks from the game.

Brutal Legend is a unique experience that we don’t see often these days, but some issues has prevented the game from reaching the same level of quality we have used to see in Schafer’s previous games. I have enjoyed my time playing the game and I really recommend it for anyone looking for something refreshing. But don’t expect to see the best work from Tim Schafer in Brutal Legends, if you do so, you’ll not be disappointed.

Score: (8.5/10)