Brutal Thoughts… by Jack Black

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No matter how many showers he takes, he will never look clean.

Let me start out this post by saying I am not generally a big Jack Black fan. He is fat, has greasy hair, and I sometimes think that if I look at him too long I will get gonorrhea of the eyes. To me, he is one of those actor/comedians that doesn’t quite make it to funny all the time. Its like he is just at the cusp of the Make You Laugh Canyon and he doesn’t have enough “it” to jump in. It is almost funny. You are watching one of his movies and he delivers a punchline and you say to yourself “I see why that would be funny, I know that it should be funny, but I just can’t get a laugh to come out.” It almost makes you chuckle but not quite.

With that being said, I recently got the video game Brutal Legend from GameFly on the recommendation of a hard core gamer. It looked really stupid, and I am NOOOOOOT into heavy metal at all. I shit you not though, this game was amazing. I play video games (Xbox 360) quite a bit and I am somewhat of a picky bitch when it comes to what I like and what I don’t like. Oh, some of my favorites? Knights of the Old Republic, Halo 3, Bioshock, Grand Theft Auto, Command and Conquer, Tom Clancy’s End War. I was really surprised that I loved this game so much because it is so not how video games are typically made. It combines so many different types of game play, its really well written and thought out, has lots of big name stars in it, and is really centered on having fun instead of worrying about your health meter, number of lives, or conforming to a specific type of game. In many ways it is a lot like Grand Theft Auto in control and game play but it has multiple other elements too.

Game Play

The game play, the game play, oh my GOD, the game play. The best thing about this is that on top of its sandbox style gameplay where you can explore the entire map, choose your side quests, and decide when to do missions, it also has a large real time strategy (RTS) component to it. Several times throughout the game you have a “Stage Battle” that switches the game into RTS mode where you collect fans (resources) that allow you to build and command an army of characters, upgrade their status, upgrade your stage,  and fight against bosses. The multi-player version of the game is just the stage battles. They have it set up for random matchmaking against other players or against the AI by yourself. You can play with a friend on your team as well against the AI or others. The other different game play feature is that if you complete different side quests you can get fire tributes (Money) to buy upgrades to your weapons, cars, special powers, paint jobs, and other miscellaneous stuff.

The shittiest thing about the game play experience is that like all other games in this genre, the camera determines what direction you go in, and generally speaking, it will decide for itself. If the camera is are looking forward  then right is right and left is left. Very simple. But its when you are trying to watch an enemy and move that the ordeal starts. It is IMPOSSIBLE to back up. To fight with someone and back up cannot be done because you have to point the camera in the direction you want to go. So you have to turn around, go as far as you want, and then turn back around to fight your enemy. When you are walking it is not that bad, but when you are driving and not just going forward it is a huge pain in the dick. There is this one part of the game where you have to drive around in a circle to capture this metal beast. You have to control the camera, the steering, and dick with the buttons to release fire from your exhaust. If you don’t have complete control of the camera, it “fixes itself” and then right turns to left and you are going the wrong way. Its manageable but in situations where you have to maneuver it is less than helpful.

Story and Characters

Useless but awesome Cameo by Brian Posehn

You control Eddie Riggs throughout the game who is played by Jack Black. He is a cool death metal roadie that gets sent to another universe (honestly they reference going back in time but that doesn’t make any sense) to try and save the humans there. It is a good story all the way through with solid characters and a ton of cameos.

One of my favorites both in this game and in real life is Brian Posehn, who plays the master hunter. Ozzy Osborne is of course in this and you can actually understand him sans captions. The most appropriate is Tim Curry as the chief villain Doviculus. No one can play an evil snarky bad ass like Tim Curry. All of the cameo characters look like the real life people and the other characters are really well done too.

I’m sure everyone does this, but you know how when you are playing a game and one of the other characters says something stupid, you insert your own dialog?

Your sidekick: “We have to save the Princess!!”
You: “No f*cking shit.”

Or like after you beat a hard boss you flick them off and curse them out? Well one of the things that makes it for me in this game is that Jack Black actually does this as Eddie Riggs it has partially redeemed him in my eyes. He flicks off bosses, throws out the occasional, “What the Fuck?” and makes sarcastic comments to other characters throughout the game.

With the big name stars doing the voice overs, the well written story and dialog, it’s really as if a movie crew made this game instead of a game design studio and is pretty clever all the way through. Rent it or buy it, it is defiantly worth trying.

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