E3 2009 Mega Impressions – Brütal Legend

I had the opportunity to play around with Tim Schafer’s newest creation at E3 2009 - Brütal Legend.  What did I think?

Eddie Riggs is a roadie of legendary proportions.  A mythical man, able to construct any stage, tune any guitar and fix anything.  He is the world’s best roadie… for the world’s worst heavy metal band.

One night before a show, Eddie is tuning a guitar when an accident happens, spilling a bit of blood onto his belt buckle.  The buckle is awoken, revealing itself to be an ancient amulet for Ormagöden, an evil demon that destroyed all of ancient civilization.  Ormagöden flings Eddie into the the land of metal, and Eddie wakes up in a temple that looks exactly like the stage he was at prior to being transported.  Waking up to some very pissed off druids huddled around an over-sized axe, our demo starts and we are given control of Eddie Riggs for the first time.  (Thanks to 1up for jogging my memory of the beginning portion of the game!)

Though these druids attempt to lodge their knives in Eddie’s abdomen, they are easily dodged by simply running in the opposite direction – this is the introductory sequence, after all.  Picking up the axe gives our hero the ability to fight back, and we are treated to a small cinematic proceeded by a static, stylized image (not unlike those seen during Guitar Hero’s loading screens) introducing the item, as well as a brief explanation of its functions.  Named “The Separator”, the broad axe is capable of causing great damage, literally separating limbs and other such appendages from their unfortunate hosts.  Combat is handled in the typical hack-and-slash manner; tapping the attack button in quick succession performs combo attacks.  Holding the button down charges the attack, causing Eddie to leap up in the air and cleave his enemy, causing even greater damage.  I played around with the system a bit and noticed that it seems placing a charge attack at different points in the combo yields different results, which is great when you have a swarm of enemies on your back.

Decapitating and kicking the ass of a few enemies on the ground level, I hurried up the stairs to find our newest best friend: the guitar, ”Clementine”.  This guitar was very ordinary back in Eddie’s home world, yet it casts magic in this metal universe.  Clementine will essentially act as the ranged-attack in the game; pressing the button once unleashes a lightning bolt, frying the nearest enemy.  Holding it down will call up a pyrotechnic explosion under the feet of the enemy.  The guitar’s magic is not limitless, however – playing it repeatedly will cause it to get sizzling hot (the guitar starts to get red, clearly seen on screen), after which a cool-down period is needed before magic can be used again.  These moves can be used in conjunction with your axe, leading to some interesting combos, like a “home-run hit” that stuns your enemy and knocks them outta the park.  Also included are conjunction moves: pressing both the axe and “axe” button together causes the “Earthshaker” attack.  Eddie jumps up in the air with the guitar and stomps the ground as he hits a massive power chord, useful for knocking nearby enemies away and solving environmental puzzles (it quite literally shakes the earth, sending debris and loose objects to fall from the sky).  I know this doesn’t sound exactly like the most innovative control setup in the world, but it works and fits the bill.  I have no complaints with the combat system, as we undoubtedly will discover upgrades for each weapon, hopefully keeping the combat varied and fresh.

As we progress through this intro level, the tone that Schafer and friends are going for becomes vivid.  As we’ve seen from the trailers, screenshots and concept art, the environments absolutely breathe metal beauty - in the best way possible.  Stone sculptures of guitars and hands demon-horning jut into the sky, the skeletal remains of mythical beasts litter the landscape, fantastical structures of a long forgotten civilization are strewn about – they have definitely created the atmosphere they intended to.  Everything is very much tongue-in-cheek, yet it takes itself seriously enough to not be an insult to heavy-metal fans; in fact, the entire thing works as a giant inside joke, and a damn good one at that. 

The script and dialogue are clever, badass, hilarious and everything in between, a definite feat.   Jack Black’s vocal performance in particular is way above average; his lines are delivered with perfect grace, timing and execution.  This is paired with fantastic, articulate facial expressions drawn in by the guys over at Double Fine.  The animations themselves can be a bit wonky… but more on that later.

After killing a few more druids, we are introduced to a new enemy: The Battle Nun.  We come across her praying on a… spider-seance-table thing, and after a short (and hilarious) monologue by our hero explaining how she’s “hot, in a weird sorta way”, we are put to battle.  A few powerful takes her down, and we hop on her walking prayer-table to start navigating down what we now realize is a giant pile of bones, skulls and other such awesomeness.  After heading down the mountain (paired with a fantastic “prayer” by Black – seriously, you’ve gotta hear some of the lines that come out of his mouth), we are thrown back into a fight with some standard druids.  As we attack the last one, we are introduced to Ophelia, a local resident of this mythical world.  Both explain who they are (Ophelia is terribly naive, contrasting Eddie’s crude and brazen personality) and what their motives they have, they decide to travel together.

Ophelia is a bit more than just a pretty face tacked on to a plot device; with practice, Ophelia and Eddie can perform powerful combos together (think Prince of Persia).  It’s here that I noticed that combat can be pretty fluid, if you know what your next move will be.  Knocking enemies aside with the Earthshaker, I ran up to the nearest Battle Nun, performed a quick combo followed by a charge attack, switched focus on and electrocuted a group of druids and finished it up with a tandem attack with Ophelia.  The basic system is functional and could have worked perfectly fine by itself, yet Schafer is promising us a myriad of gameplay styles to shake things up.  One such example is The Duece, Eddie’s primary mode of transportation.  Raised from the earth by a player-controlled guitar solo, Eddie assembles the beast with precision and speed.

A classic hot-rod sporting exaggerated proportions to match the style of the game, The Duece plows through normal enemies with ease and features a nitro function to give you an added boost of speed and power.  It handles a bit slippery, but it becomes easier to control once the player gets the hang of it.

Driving down a chasm and landing in a circular track, we are greeted by our first boss: a gigantic worm-like fugly with three tongues.  Driving circles around the arena, the player needs to boost at the right moment to avoid the beast’s slam attack, at which point its tongues get lodged in the ground.  Ramming into them causes one to rip off and, as expected, doing this three times ends the battle.  Hey, remember how I said the Earthshaker Power Chord would be used to solve environmental puzzles? 

When the main battle is won, a large metal gate opens.  Ophelia runs past it and teases the monster to get its attention - this is where we take control of Eddie again.  The player is to perform the Earthshaker while standing at the gate’s entrance, breaking the chains holding it up and nearly decapitating it.  Thinking a victory session is in order, Eddie and Ophelia share a bit of dialogue (with Eddie promising to “teach her the art of french kissing”), only to be interrupted by a very-much-still-alive worm fugly.  Making a clean getaway in The Duece, we are thrown right back into another driving segment, leading straight into the open world.  Unfortunately, it is here that some of Brütal Legend’s technical issues become apparent.

Driving across the collapsing bridge, there is some strange, game-freezing slowdown.  This isn’t a normal framerate drop that happens when there is a large amount of information to be drawn in on-screen – the game will be fine one moment, yet lock up at random, sound and all.  In the open world, there are occasional pop-ins and other such forgivable nuances; in a linear roadway, game stopping graphical issues really stand out.  It’s also very strange that The Deuce will flip over if it so much as graces a pebble on the side of the road, but I suppose that’s Double Fine’s way of telling us to drive straight.

Another peculiarity I noticed is the animation quality in the cutscenes.  As evidenced by the trailer below, the character movements range from phenomenal to jerky and unnatural - the latter of which I definitely did not expect.  As I said earlier, the articulation of the facial expressions are fantastic, yet the character movement feels very robotic.  I don’t know if this was a conscious design choice by the animation team or what, but it marred my otherwise-enjoyable experience I had with the title.

 

I imagine this will be smoothed out in the final release (hopefully) this Rocktober.  The script and vocal performances alone were more than enough to captivate me; although there seems to be some weird graphical hiccups here and there, they don’t turn me off to the point I wouldn’t anticipate its release.  Here’s hoping for another solid title from Schafer.