So I went and bought Brütal Legend. The first stage battle felt eerily familiar, but I couldn't quite figure out why until it hit me a couple of days ago: the stage battles are almost exactly like the 2000 PC game Sacrifice. There are some differences in the particulars, but basically Brütal Legend is a spiritual successor to Sacrifice. In both games your character is present on the battlefield (unlike other RTS games), controlled from a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective, and personally engaged in combat with opposing forces. In both games, your character is endowed with a variety of special abilities (spells in Sacrifice, solos in Brütal Legend - Facemelter FTW). I think Brütal Legend is better balanced, though. In Sacrifice, it could be incredibly hard - like Nintendo hard - to make any headway, for a variety of reasons having to do with the core gameplay mechanic. Once you started to lose, the game was basically over; it was just a matter of hanging on by your fingernail for as long as you could, assuming you didn't just chuck it and start over. At least in Brütal Legend comebacks are possible.

Haven't bought Bayonetta yet. Gamestop wanted $35 for a used(!) copy. WTF?

Used copies go for maybe 10% off, if you're lucky. Gamestop owns you.

I enjoyed Sacrifice. I never did finish it, though I think I was getting near the end at one point.

When I heard about brutal legend, I kind of thought it might be similar, but don't have any gaming system except the wii.

If you liked Sacrifice, it's a pretty safe bet that you'd like Brütal Legend, at least the stage battles. There are also on-foot and vehicular combat segments, and optional racing missions. Whether you'd like it enough to drop $300 for a PS3... I'd look into the system's game catalog and see how many titles look interesting, first.

So, Brütal Legend is now on PC. Did anyone else buy it?

I like Brütal Legend, and it was easier going into it knowing that it wasn't God of Manowar, but a bad stealth RTS masquerading as God of Manowar.

It has a lot of faults, I think, primarily in the fact that all the zany "This is the Age of Metal" stuff slacks off after you kick Lionwhyte in the ass and it becomes basically a nonstop grind of stage battle -> move the army -> explore the areas that have opened up for tabs and secrets -> do all the side missions for fire tributes -> stage battle -> repeat.

And worse, all the side missions became the same damn missions: ambush and tower defense, with the occasional mortar defense. They used to have madcap, one-off side missions, like hunting down plagued raptorelk before they infected the herd, or doing a beer run, or flying wingman for an insecure headbanger. Even after the game turned grim, they could have had more serious one-off side missions. But they never did.



I'm also annoyed at the fantastic amounts of consoleitis in the game. Its console port nature shows a lot, such as the radial menu to choose which riff you want to play. A radial menu is acceptable when the highest-precision input device the player has to their person to choose between twelve options is an analog stick, though I'll point out that between the d-pad, buttons, and the four shoulder buttons, a normal controller could have done the same thing with button presses. But it is not acceptable with a mouse; radial menus with twelve options and computer mice don't get along very well. I'd often find myself hitting around the solos I wanted, trying desperately to call up the fan tribute to claim a geyser I managed to clear but which won't remain clear for long, only instead to accidentally select (or worse, play!) facemelter or flag-plant.

It was a bad choice on the console, there's no excuse for not correcting it to a point-mouse-at-choice-and-click menu on the PC.

EA was in charge of the advertising of the game.

Yeah, the same EA that just released SimCity.

'Nuff said.

Why would you need advertisement? When you have Jack Black as Jack Black featuring Jack Black... Jack Black

And Ozzy as The Guardian of Metal and DadBat (who threatens to bite your head off!). And Rob Halford proving you can be Butch and Flaming at the same time. And Lemmy sounding almost sober. And Tim Curry as the villain (That's a guaranteed sale right there!)

When is Tim Curry not the villain?
In some cases he even sings about his villainy! (the horror)

Malcolm McDowell just got to play a good guy for once.

Oh, wait, Tim Curry plays a "good" guy in Oscar! He also tries to make Stallone speak properly, and is not too successful.

As a game, Brütal (Bruuuuutal!) Legend was very faulty. Terrible consoleitis in the PC version, the lack of an initial PC release (fuck you, EA,) the latter half of the game feeling rushed and lacking for content, half-assedly making a hack and slasher into a real time strategy where it's near to impossible to manage any strategy more complicated than "throw a pile of your mates at target A while you jump in the druid plow, drive to target B, jump out, summon two tallusks or one Hextadon, jump back in the Druid Plow and and double-team the target with the Hextadon and your main guns, then aim your targeting beacon at target C, send the animals there and run to whatever mates have survived Target A and send them there", unforgivably three-quarter assing the hack-and-slash to the point where there's only two really memorable Eddie-versus-nasty-thing boss fights in the game....

If you're someone who doesn't love heavy metal music and rocking out to DragonForce or Black Sabbath or what-not while smashing down carnivorous raptorelks and demons or hair-bangers with the business end of a ferocious, demon-jaw-headed hot rod, you probably won't find Brütal Legend to be all that enjoyable. If you do, though, then you'll probably love it. I was frankly rather amazed at the number of awesome songs in the game that I recognized. Indeed, they queued up one of my favorites (Through the Fire and Flames by DragonForce) during an intense set-piece that immediately preceded the most heart-wrenching (and head-bangingly stupid) moment in the game.

I have the soundtrack that I listen to while I nap.

...

Yes, I sleep to Death Metal.

Uh ... Who doesn't? Are there such people?

Interesting trivia, I met Herman Li at the pub once... What? I told you it's an awesome city for drinking, wasn't all coincidence though, my friend knows the guitarist from Dragonland (and Nightrage and Amaranthe, guy is silly talented) so it was a release party for their new album, you're bound to run into some names.
Anyhow, after guitar hero it was the song that gave him the most headaches, as the studio recording was done in segment and was close to impossible to not screw up live, he also admitted on not being able to beat it on hard ^^ Seem to be a theme, had In flames play guitar hero 3 at a local store when it released, they to were pretty bad at it... Well, besides Jesper.

Having done both, I can tell you that playing a guitar and playing Guitar Hero bear virtually no relation to each other.

I can also confirm this.

I can also confirm that wrecking one's elbow makes playing both painful.

Doubtless. Was it your picking hand or your fretting hand?

Well guitar hero somewhat helped me to learn the intro to sweet child of mine, but that's it.

Dominant hand, so picking. Never was good at fretting anyhow.

Brütal Legend is on sale on Steam again, for US$9.99. If you missed it last time, now's your chance.

i boughtit yesterday evening because of that sale ^^

Brütal.