Backhand of Justice

Grim Fandango. Day of the Tentacle. Full Throttle. Uttering one of these titles to a PC gamer from the 90’s is akin to sharing a secret handshake. Those who have played these games belong to a special club: the club of Tim Schafer. (Members of the club must unapologetically fawn over Mr. Schafer, praise his holy name)
 
The value of these games is inestimable and no matter how revered they are, in my mind they will always be unappreciated classics until they are as well known as Mario or Sonic. Adventure games have fallen out of favor since their heyday over a decade ago, but Brutal Legend promises to take the elements of the genre that made it great and update them for the 21st century.

Going Sightseeing
 
Open world fantasy games pretty much have one visual style: medieval England. In fact, that pretty much covers all western RPGs (that or nuclear wasteland). So when somebody says that their game world was created when the fire beast Ormagoden explodes and his essence, made of fire, chrome and speed, flows into the landscape, you take notice.
 
Add in a pinch of BDSM iconography, two tablespoons of heavy metal album art and a quart of cartoonish World of Warcraft-esque graphical style, and you start to create some sort of heavy metal cake (that image derailed). The only thing that could possibly make the environment more stylish is to incorporate Norse mythology and the twisted shapes of Hieronymus Bosch and, wait, yep, those are in there. Check it out:

 
I think for $60, Double Fine doesn’t even have to make a game. They can just make this giant heavy metal fantasy world, put me into no clip mode and allow me to wander around.
 
The only way I’m not going to enjoy this game after seeing the environment is if the Blu-Ray disc is radioactive and gives me cancer. And even then I have to remember it’s a Tim Schafer game. It could be worth it.
 
Music
 
I don’t know much about heavy metal music. I was born a little too late, and Aerosmith or Guns N’ Roses are more to my taste than Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. In the world of Brutal Legend, hair bands are the enemy!
 
That being said, my playlist does need some fresh names and I’m open to any soundtrack with rocking powerchords and downward spirals. Brutal Legend might be just the game to get me into the metal sound but even if it isn’t it’s unlikely that this soundtrack will disappoint. According to Mr. Schafer himself, Brutal Legend has the greatest metal soundtrack of all time. This statement is lent credibility by the fact that he was able to solve a Rubik’s cube in the time it took his colleague to read the song list (proof below):

 
This game was inspired by music and heavy metal iconography, and it’s clear that Tim Schafer and Double Fine have thought about what impact each song is going to have and incorporated it seamlessly into the game. I’ve long been a proponent of the concept that soundtrack is woefully underrated in terms of in-game impact, and Brutal Legend surely won’t disappoint on that front.
 
Pedigree
 
I kicked off this article with a fawning tribute to Mr. Schafer’s game creation ability and such is my respect for it that I’m going to reiterate my estimation of it here. Tim’s adventure games with Lucasarts were some of the funniest and most charming games around and Brutal Legend seems to have captured the same magic.
 
I’m not going to say that I don’t have concerns. Schafer has never really made great gameplay; he merely writes good characters, dialogue and story. The mechanics could be flawed but hopefully he has learned from his mistakes with Psychonauts and Brutal Legend won’t try to be jack of all trades and master of none.
 
There are plenty of games with a fun story and characters but suffer from poor mechanics and end up being a tiresome experience (Final Fantasy XII comes to mind). Hopefully Brutal Legend will have gameplay that doesn’t just stay out of the way of the story, but enhances it.
 
As long as I’m being blindly optimistic, I can hope that even if the gameplay isn’t that great, the story more than makes up for it and results in a fantastic game a la Planescape: Torment.

Eat your heart out Joe Perry!

 
Jack Black? Seriously?
 
I don’t think games need celebrity talent to be great (50 Cent: Blood on the Sand being the exception that proves the rule). I don’t think Jack Black is going to add much to the game, much like I don’t think Ozzy, Tim Curry, Lemmy Kilmister or Rob Halford are going to add much. Nolan North wasn’t exactly well known when Uncharted came out and he still voiced one of the most fun characters in videogame history.
 
I similarly don’t think their inclusion is going to hurt the game. I don’t think Jack Black’s overbearing persona is going to overwhelm the charisma that Tim Schafer characters exude. It’s no coincidence that ‘Tim Schafer’ and not ‘Jack Black’ is on the box. This is a Tim Schafer joint and no amount of meddling will sap the magnetism of Eddie Riggs.

Who just said they didn’t like Nacho Libre? YOU?! RAAAAAAAARGH!

 
This game, like all games I haven’t played, could be terrible. The gameplay reminds me of a mix of Overlord, Dungeon Keeper and Diablo, and those gameplay styles could mix atrociously. The multiplayer might be a travesty and the story could fall flat.
 
There are always potential missteps, but this game has the most upside of anything in recent memory. You know what you’re getting with Modern Warfare 2. You know what you’re going to get with Uncharted 2, or Assassins Creed 2, or any of the other big budget sequels this holiday season.
 
I have no idea what Brutal Legend is going to be like as an experience. All I do know is that I can’t wait. How about you?