When I heard a long while back that Tim Schafer was making a new game based on a heavy metal fantasy realm and you played a roadie, I was on board already. Even with the involvement of the constantly overexposed Jack Black, it seemed Schafer had a true vision of what his next opus could be. Full Throttle and Psychonauts were amazing, so he could do no wrong in my eyes.
Introducing Eddie Riggs: Roadie.
In recent weeks though, the concept of Brutal Legend has become something I'm not entirely sure I want to play. Like an big fat onion, layers of gameplay have gradually been peeled off with every public showing of the game. At first, it seemed it was a God of War-type game; main character Eddie Riggs hacking and slashing away at demons while making quips meant to make us laugh. Good, but nothing too exciting.Then, things changed. News suddenly dropped that it was an open world game. Immediately, my interest was through the roof. An open world game featuring heavy metal, hot rods and the writing of Tim Schafer? Sign me the fuck up.
Thumbs up indeed, Tim.
But in the last week or so, Schafer has been doing interviews stating something kind of strange. The game itself started as a multiplayer experience. And the game is chock full of multiplayer real-time strategy type elements that is apparently integral to the single player game. Now to be clear, I'm of the opinion that there hasn't been a decent real-time strategy game since Age of Empires II. But that aside, I'm not entirely sure I would even want that type of gameplay in a game like Brutal Legend. I mean, this fucking game has Lemmy in it.
And apparently he's your healing unit. I'm dead serious.
What of the potential audience for this game? Your average kid walking through a game shop is going to see a game featuring heavy metal and Jack Black and think "Dude, awesome!". What happens when they get it home and try and figure out what unit management and gathering resources is all about?
Unfortunately, all this uncertainty adds up to Brutal Legend being the only game I'm not entirely sure about in Q4 2009. Modern Warfare 2? SOLD. Dragon Age? SOLD. Borderlands? FUCKING SOLD.
Brutal Legend? I'm not sure. I'll have to wait and see. And that's insane considering it's being made by Tim Schafer. We'll find out on October 13.
We'll see, Tim. We'll see.
