Brutal Legend Review

"A good roadie knows his job's to keep out of the light, make everyone else look good"

Brutal Legend was a game I was leant quite a while back and ,to put simply, contained all of the things I enjoy in life.


It follows the story of Eddie Riggs, a roadie who at the begining we see his displeasure at the turn metal has done in recent years, as it turns out the band who he works for who are meant to be heavy metal are essentially boy band punk. Through a bizarre accident Eddie ends up crushed by one of his set pieces, sending him into the world of... Brutal Legend!, where everything is different and Eddie's guitar is now a lightning, fire ball creating weapon of pure awesomeness.

This game as I said earlier combines things I enjoy in games and real life, It contains some of my favourite Genres of music E.G. Metal, Rock and Glam Rock. If your a fan of Metal, whether it's screamo metal or general metal this games soundtrack is ideal. The soundtrack is 100+ songs of metal gods such as Ozzy Osbourne, Motorhead, Marilyn Manson, Judas Priest, Def Leppard, 3 inches of blood and so on. Some of these stars even make appearances in game. Ozzy Osbourne plays the God of Metal who is essentially the shop-keep who deals you guitar, Weapon and Axe improvments, Lemmy from Motorhead is known as the Killmaster, a legend of Healing, Rob Halfward plays Lars one of the main characters and Lita Ford plays his sister Lita. Kyle Gass from Tenacious D makes a brief cameo in a couple of side missions and finally the main character is Jack Black.

The games genre is made up of many variants. It has the whole customaization and character modding of an RPG as you wield you're axe with mods such as more damage, lightning etc. and with various guitar strings to change it's effects. The RTS in it comes into play in the occasional "Concert Boss Battles" where you must build up an army, capture points then launch an attack on the enemys stage. The general genre is essentially a Hack and Slash Comedy game.

Comedy is one of the things this game is great for, and it's rare for a game to create comedy for 16+ year olds without it just being silly. The writers I think in this game must've been payed loads but whatever it was, it was NOT enough, especially seeing as they incorporated metal into whenever possible, E.G. the Roadie unit is invisible and uses feedback from amps to crush structures, The Headbanger unit uses their ridiculously thick skulls to batter other units and so on. I also love how each Big Boss is representing a section of Rock. Eddie with Heavy Metal, Lionwhyte with Glam Rock, Drowned Ophelia with Emo Metal and Doviculous with Death Metal

The story itself is amazing. It starts off with 4 people planning to start a revoloution against the evil lord Doviculous. The "Revolution" Originally involves you freeing/creating new units with more unlocked as the story progresses. The story has Comedy,romance,depression and even a few Hamlet references.



So Overall here is what I think

In General I'd give the game a 9/10, reasons being will be explained below

Music and Sound: 9/10, The music in this game is fantastic and has something for the whole "Metal Family" Whether Motley Crue, Ozzy or Angel Witch. The missing point comes from the sound. The sound to me sounds like it's been recorded in a very large room and close up and just to shoddy.

Graphics10: The Graphics for the world and people are amazing and for a cartoony style game.

Gameplay: 8: All the combos and mods available and the units in concert mode make it incredibly varied however little things such as the lack of jumping DO make a difference

After Life: 6 after completing the game there is an option to return and re-do any left over side quests, however I think there's 8 different side quests but they're repeated over and over again in different areas.