Brütal Legend

Yess folkens, i dag bringer jeg dere en engelsk anmeldelse jeg har laget. Hvorfor engelsk? lurer du kanskje på. Vel, det er mange grunner. Hovedgrunnen er vel at jeg opprinnelig ikke hadde tenkt å poste den her, men sånn ble det altså. Det er jo også ypperlig engelsk-trening da^^ Så, hygg dere med anmeldelsen og fortell meg gjerne hva jeg gjorde feil, og hva jeg gjorde riktig. Engelsk retting mottas med takk :)

Hey there, guys. This is Marku$, and I'm here to review the legendary game-producer Tim Schafer's latest game, Brütal Legend. Now, Schafer has previously worked on titles like The Monkey Island-series, Grim Fandango, Days of The Tentacle and Psychonauts, so obviously, the anticipations for this game was very high. But now that it's out, how does it add up? Does it live up to its hype? Or does it fail incredibly? Well, lets find out!

First of all, here's the premisses of the game:
A roadie named Eddie Riggs, played by Jack Black, is transported into a different dimension when a huge stone statue collapses over him, and some of his blood drops into the mouth of his belt-buckle. In this new dimension, he learns that an evil demon-lord, named Devicilous, has taken over the land of metal, and that a small rebel group is the only one left to stand up against him. Eddie soon joins the group, in their battle for freedom. In close combat, Eddie uses a huge battle ax and a magical guitar, that shoots flames and lightning, to blow the shit out of his enemies. You've got this demonic looking hot-rod ready for you, at any time, which you can use to explore the massive and insanely creative world you play in. Through the game you will be battling demons, groupies, emo kids, grim reapers, giant monsters, motorcycle-pigs, mammoths without trunks, spiders and god knows what.

Although Brütal Legend may seem like your typical hack and slash game, the gameplay's actually a mix of a lot of different game-types, and it kind of gives you a feeling that your playing some kind of middle thing between The Legend of Zelda, Red Alert, Grand Theft Auto, God of War and the Guitar Hero games. Eddie is a really original character to play as, since his battle style is a mix of basic martial arts, ax-wielding, guitar playing, car-driving and even flying. Most of the time, Brütal Legend is pretty close to games like Zelda, God of War and No More Heroes. You're walking around, exploring the world, killing bad guys and collecting items. Pretty standard stuff. But then suddenly, like out of nowhere, the game does a flip-flop on you, and your all of a sudden treated to a pretty detailed Real Time Strategy game. In other words; The games goes from you controlling a simple character, to you controlling an entire army, in a big battle with lots of enemy forces coming at you from everywhere. It's a challenge, but fortunately, it's not too hard to master, so you're gonna get into it pretty quick. But sadly, these parts of the game, when you're playing huge epic battles against demons, 80es-people and emo rockers, are some of the worst parts of the game. One would think that gigantic battles involving laser zapping hot chicks, fire breathing monsters, depressed kids with shovels and scythes, and large retro-styled car that shoots lightning-bolts would be a breathtakingly awesome piece of win, but unfortunately... No. The biggest problem with these battles, is that you don't really need a plan. All you need to do to win the match is to make the biggest army that's possibly, send it into attack, and keep on respawning your troops. Keep this up long enough and you will eventually win the match. And isn't that kind of stupid? You can't really call it a strategy-game when all the strategy has been taking away now, can you? When the battlefields where you have your fights also are linear one-roaded crash-parties, you don't really get as much strategy, as one would hope.

An other realistic, but kind of stupid thing about the strategy-parts is that you can only give commands to the troops that's within the range of your voice. And even though this is realistic and stuff, it gets really annoying at times, since you've got to fly back where you left your troops, command them to do their job, and THEN continue what you were doing before. Another really annoying thing about these battles happens when you're trying to order different kinds of troops to do different kinds of things. You might as well just give up on that, because there's NO WAY you're gonna manage that. This thing's so awkward and so complicated to use, that you're better of without knowing about it... Heck, I don't even know if I've used it once while I have been playing... But even though the strategy part's got some problems, it still is pretty fun to play through, and since the rest of the game is so good, it doesn't really bother you that much.

Worth mentioning is, of course, the multiplayer mode. In this mode of the game, up to 8 players can play as either Ironheade(Eddies army), Black Tears(The "emo" army) or Tainted Coil(Devicilous's demongang), and duke it out in massive Heavy Metal battles of epic proportions. The multiplayer sure raises the whole strategy part to a higher level, because now you actually have the possibility to play against real people, with real minds, giving you a REAL strategy feeling, and the opportunity to use other tactics than your usual Rambo-wannabe-plan.
So now that you know what the game is all about, let's take a look at the graphics shall we?

Brütal Legend's got a cartoony kind of art-style, with detailed face expressions, a wildly variation in characters, and sometimes ridiculously large amounts of blood. All of the characters are incredibly detailed and is a real joy to watch, but what really stands out in the game is the landscape. The metal-land in Brütal Legend is one of the hugest and most creative worlds in gaming history, and it really sticks out with its huge guitar statues, large battlefields, volcanic mountains and a giant wall built by loudspeakers, called the screaming wall. Every single piece of the game, paying a tribute to the art of Heavy Metal.

Heavy Metal is actually the best word to describe this game. It's just metal. The characters, the landscape, the story, the gameplay and last but not least the incredible soundtrack all truly represent what Heavy Metal is. And the soundtrack really is incredible. Picked solely by Schafer himself, Brütal Legend delivers a kick ass soundtrack which is gonna blow your mind. With amazing tunes by bands like Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Dragonforce, 3 Inches of Blood and even Jack Black's own Tenacious D, Brütal Legend stands as a clear candidate for the award, best soundtrack ever. The music in this game is something that will make you want to bang your head and sing along, for a long long time.

But even though Brütal Legend's got motorcycle-pigs, hot-rods with machineguns and flamethrowers, demon-wings, flame- and lightning-blasting guitars and emo kids with shovels, what really makes it a whole lot different from other Hack and Slash games is the humor. Yeah, that's right. A game where you slash demons with axes, melt groupies faces off with guitarsoloes and crush porcupines with a giant hot-rod actually has humor. And you know what the weirdest part is? It works! They actually managed to make a game where the jokes work! Just that is an accomplishment itself, but to make it this funny? I'm really impressed of what Tim Schafer and Jack Black has done here. The humor is one of the funniest ones I've ever experienced in any game, and the brilliant cameos from famous rockers like Ozzy Osbourne, Kyle Gass, Lemmy Kilmister and Rob Halford just makes it even better. So if you enjoy games like Team Fortress 2 or the Mario games, you know, action games with humor in it, this may be the game for you.

So that was Brütal Legend. An exciting and funny action-game, with a kind of disappointing strategy part, that fortunately gets a little better when you go online with it. But in the long run, how did it turn out? Pretty satisfying I think. Sure, it does have some issues, but most of them are minor and doesn't damage the game too much. So to sum it all up, here's the good things about the game:
The landscape is amazing! Everywhere you go, there's huge statues or buildings or other awesome looking things that really makes the world feel alive.
The story of the game is funny, creative and with a lot of surprising plot-twists.
The game has got one of the greatest soundtracks of all time.
Jack Black and the other cast-members does a tremendous job with the voices of the characters, which by the way are really creative and original.
The basic gameplay, when you're just running around with your ax and your guitar, or squeezing people with your car, are just awesome. Too bad the strategy part doesn't quite deliver...

But what game is perfect? Here's what sucks about Brütal Legend:
The real time strategy parts sucks every possible sausage-shaped thing you can imagine. It's disorienting, complicated to choose different troops, impossible to win if your tactic isn't Rambo and it's just downright boring...
The side-missions are way, way, WAY to repetitive! Sometimes you get cool stuff like taking beer to a concert without it heating or blowing up, hunting missions or races, but most of the time you're treated to the same boring ambushes, which by the way isn't ambushes, they're just random fights. Insanely boring shooting galleries and shooting stuff with Kyle Gass' cannon. Which was funny the first time, but after that... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
The servers online isn't exactly top quality, and they have already had lots of problems. Let's hope they can fix it.

I give the graphics a 9 out of 10 for it's original and impressive artstyle and all it's brilliant details. The only thing that keeps the game from getting top rating is that there is a few ugly textures around in the game. Most of the time it looks perfect, but there is places where the game looks a little outdated, nothing big enough to pull the rest down, but big enough to keep it from getting top score.

The sounds of this game has got to get a 10 out of 10. The voiceacting is incredible and the soundtrack is one big pile of win. The only bad thing about the sounds is that some of the sound effects sounds a little fake, and kind of cheap. But then again, it's not big enough to pull the rest down.

Gameplay, this one pains me... Because when you're playing as Eddie Riggs, the gameplay is brilliant. There's not many things that are funnier than slashing demons, splatting monsters and rocking the stage in Brütal Legend, but when it comes to the strategy elements, it just doesn't work. It wouldn't been so bad if they weren't that important, but when the huge battles plays such a big part in the game, I have no choice but to give the gameplay of Brütal Legend a strong 7 out of 10, because of its kinda disappointing strategy mode.

The story is without doubt the very best part of the entire game. Not only is it funny and engaging, but it's actually also kind of sad. The game has a lot of plot twist, and some of them are really going to shock you. And at the very end, it actually shows us a little clips that tells us that it just may be a sequel to the game. In other words, the story is great. It's funny, exciting and surprisingly enough a little hearbreaking at times, I give the story a perfect 10.

And last, but not least; The Final Verdict. In the end, how does Brütal Legend live up to the expectations? Well, though it may not be the masterpiece the fans were hoping for, it sure is an amazing game, and a really entertaining journey to take part in, go buy this game silly! I give it a final verdict of 9 out of 10. Now go get it!

Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 10/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Story: 10/10
Final Verdict: 9/10

Bildet: Eddie med sin awesomesauce gitar!