Battlemouth

And now for your reading pleasure a Special Guest Review by our Kiwi friend Rory! Follow Rory on Twitter, @Nightwyrm and check out www.nightwyrm.com for some good bloggy fun!

I’ve been a bogan for over 20 years now (that’s a metalhead or headbanger for my non-Australasian cousins).  Through my formative years and beyond, I surrounded myself with the joyous tones of the likes of Judas Priest, Motörhead, and Iron Maiden.  Thus, it was with great pleasure that I received the announcement that Brütal Legend was being made (and with Jack Black in the lead too!).

The months passed, the long-anticipated release day came, and I picked up my copy for the PS3.  Sadly, the game had been released with a bug in it so, when I first inserted the disc, I was prompted to install the version 1.01 patch.  This was a 256MB patch, downloaded through the EA servers, but I was relatively lucky and had it all installed in half an hour.  This was a bit of a killjoy for my purchase buzz, but I tried to put this aside and enjoy the game.

When you get past the opening production credits, you’re treated to a short movie of Jack Black telling a story to the camera (in his usual style) and entering a record store to find the Brütal Legend record.  This record, its cover, and sleeve notes provide the navigation for the game menu in a truly imaginative way… I thought it to be quite clever.

From the cover, I started the game and went into the opening sequence.  This cut-scene sets the stage for the rest of the game – literally in the case of setting the level of gore and swearing you want.  Here, you get a good introduction to the humour in the game and how well Jack Black plays the protagonist Eddie Riggs.  At the end of the sequence, you’re transported to the heavy metal world and you’re straight into the action.

I’m not going to go into the details of the story line, as I don’t want to be a spoiler.  Suffice to say, there is very little wrong with the story itself or the character portrayals.  Instead, I’m going to focus on the gameplay as it is something that people will either love or hate.

The game manual is okay at providing you with some of the basics of the game.  It tells you the controls and some of the things you need to look out for, but it also omits some pretty important tips.  I ended up checking the Basics section of the IGN walkthrough just so I knew how to identify key objects in the game.  For example, there are 140 Bound Serpents in the game for you to free and gain fire tributes (experience), plus bonuses.  The manual mentions this, but doesn’t tell you what they look like.  This is quite frustrating, as you’re roaming around this world that is full of objects, but most are just decoration.  Once I found out what the Bound Serpents (as well as the other key objects) looked like, I was better able to immerse myself in the game and start enjoying myself.

The game is broken into primary missions and secondary missions.  The primary missions are the storyline missions and are mostly quite enjoyable.  The secondary missions are combat missions, racing games, or a hunting grind.  The combat missions do become quite repetitive, and the hunting quite tedious.  Racing games aren’t my thing so I’ve left those for now.

Combat is somewhat interesting.  At a basic level, you have a melee attack (axe) and a ranged magical attack (guitar).  What’s somewhat irking for me is the button mapping.  The melee is the Cross-button (A-button on Xbox360) and ranged is the Square-button (X-button on Xbox360).  I’ve become quite used to the Square button being the default attack button on games so I often find myself in a clump of enemies firing lightning by mistake.  Unfortunately, there’s no option to change the mapping.

The other form of combat is the Stage Battles.  These take the normal combat, add squads for you to command, and mixes in some elements of RTS.  I’ve only done one of these so far, and found it to be a little confusing and chaotic (especially as your guys and the enemy are near-identical), but this must be something you can get used to.

One of the reasons I bought the game was the promised integration of my kind of music, and it delivers in spades.  There is background music during some missions, and the first upgrade for your car is a stereo (Metal Mouth) which plays music you unlock.  Thankfully, you can control the stereo like a real one so you can skip past songs you don’t like… nothing quite like fumbling for the Skip button when Def Leppard comes on as you’re rocketing down a windy road (a bit like real life there).  The music is really a critical part of the overall game experience; until you get the stereo, the game does feel a bit lacking.

As mentioned in the title, I’m 30% into the game.  It hasn’t grabbed me like previous games, and I have questioned the purchase at times.  I’ve found aspects of the gameplay mechanics that are quite off-putting, but not deal breakers.  In the end, the unfolding storyline, character portrayals, and the music are what’s keeping me interested.  At this stage, I’m rating it as 7/10.