Brutal Legend Review by Madknight 64

Brutal Legend is basically "Metal: The Video Game featuring Jack Black". The game is a fun romp through and open world where everything has been influenced by the musical genre of Metal. Brutal Legend has a couple of different game play styles and can be quite difficult at times. Mostly if you play this game, enjoy some pretty awesome environments and enjoy an awesome Metal soundtrack.

Story
You play as Eddie, the Jack Black look alike roadie who works his way through a world straight out of a Metal album cover. The story revolves around trying to free humanity from the tyranny of demons while your character is helping from the back ground doing what he knows best, helping out to make an awesome show. The voice acting and characters in this game are all great, and some of the jokes that are made are pretty good. The big thing about this game is not to take it too seriously, you're just having in fun in a place built around Metal.

Game Play
There are a two styles of game play that happen during Brutal Legend, open world exploration/combat and RTS style events. During the open world sections, you'll just drive around, do side quests and do standard fighting combat that goes with action games. Though you can play some guitar solos that can make the fighting more eventful such as the face melter, which literally melts the faces of your opponents. There are tons of things to find and collect, and the more you do, the stronger your character gets, but a lot of it is optional. So don't feel like you are forced to do everything in order to proceed.

The RTS style events can be some of the more frustrating/difficult parts of the game. During these events/missions you will be building units, collection resources, and aiding your units in combat to achieve victory. I recommend using a keyboard and mouse, with a controller, this can be quite difficult (as RTS's can be on controllers). At times it will feel like you have achieved victory, but then the computer will just spawn units that you aren't prepared for, and that the computer shouldn't have the resources for based off of the field of the game. This can be the biggest issue, because it feels like the computer is cheating, or throwing unnecessarily obstacles at you. It may take a time or two to get through it, just remember to take it slow and you should be able to get through them eventually.

Last Thoughts
If you are fan of the Metal musical genre, ridiculous stories, or Jack Black's comedic style, this is definitely a game for you. It has a lot to offer, and there are lots of creative things in the game, from the environments to the creatures themselves. This game know's it's out there, and creates a really fun environment to play in. This game at times can feel like it's just a long musical video for some of the music in it (and has some pretty unique cameos).


This review is my own opinion of the game and mine alone, and doesn't reflect the opinions of my employer.