Brutal Legend

Brutal Legend for the X-Box 360 is an interesting hybrid of action adventure mixed with Real-Time-Strategy similar to the Overlord series. Like Overlord, you are in command of the main character and act as a general to your forces while roaming the battlefield with a melee weapon. You can slash, use magic, or you can just sit back and let your lackeys do the fighting for you. Both games also offer colorful and lush environments along with humorous dialogue.

Unlike Overlord, in Brutal Legend, your main character has a voice and personality which makes him far more interesting. The world is also much more open, and the means by which you explore it far more fun. I spent over an hour doing nothing but driving around in my car, boosting off jumps and running over wildlife. Not to mention that you can listen to heavy metal music the entire time while doing it.

The story is rather goofy and ridiculous: you play as the world’s greatest roadie Eddie Riggs who gets sent back in time to a world where car engines are dug out of the ground and there are mountains of speakers. Your melee units are a bunch of head bangers with overdeveloped neck muscles. You also run into a number of rock’n role legends like Ozzy Osbourne, but it all fits with the feel of the game which is modeled after every heavy metal CD cover you ever saw. Unfortunately there are some continuity errors in the story. On a few occasions Eddie seems to get some off screen exposition and know things that he shouldn’t, and those moments are rather confusing.

The game starts out as a hack and slash adventure with Eddie running around chopping people up with an ax and electrocuting them with a magic guitar. You try to help the local prince raise an army against the big-haired bad guy, and then the game throws in an RTS element that feels almost like a minigame. You have a stage as your spawn point and tap “fans” as a resource by playing a guitar solo which feels like Guitar Hero on a game controller. You run around the field, ordering up new units and telling them what to kill. The controls for this part of the game are both simple and complicated at the same time. You can order nearby units around with the press of a button, and there are four basic commands to give: attack, follow, or stay. This is all fine when all you want is to send every unit over to a tower and tear it down. The problem is with the strategy part of the real-time-strategy. In order to select a single unit type for a certain job, you have to highlight an area you want them to go, then you have to walk over to one of that unit, click a different button and hold it down, then give the command. It may not sound too difficult but in the middle of a fight it is a real pain to pull off. It’s much easier to do a double team which is a move that allows you to take direct control of any of your units.