Brütal Legend

Yesterday my copy (finally) arrived. Man, what a great feeling to finally see metal properly represented in a video game with buckets of fantastic humour and a soundtrack* that could hardly be more diverse and pure. I love that you can skip through the tracklist when in your vehicle, GTA-style. Best game music evar!!1

Jack Black really did an awesome job voicing main protagonist Eddy Riggs and together with the awesome animation infused a great deal of fun into the game. The graphics are really outstanding as well. I remember reading that they tried to include every heavy metal album cover into the game and it's so obvious. It's like looking at an Iced Earth or Judas Priest cover the whole time.

If you've been looking out for this game, are into metal and have an Xbox 360, you'd be crazy if you'd let this one go by.

* There are a few questionable bands on the list, but in these cases they took classic songs that were still great and influential back in the day. I name In Flames, Cradle Of Filth, Marilyn Manson (the biggest WTF?!), Prong and White Zombie.**

** I'm probably just personally biased.

This game will be a huge hit for/with all those people who believe that metal music + fantasy are a "natural" combination.

I'm not one of them, though. I still prefer orchestra as my favourite music for fantasy, although the NLT (Realms Of Arcania) Trilogy taught me kind of the hard way that there are differend kinds of music which fit to the fantasy genre as well.

Well, it is a good fit for metal, surely. In my experience, a large percentage of metal fans also like fantasy to one degree or another. Furthermore, I also think classical music has a relationship with heavy metal. I believe that there are many similarities, not the least the musical proficiency of their musicians. Just look at bands like Rhapsody or some of the more technical atmospheric bands.

But apart from all that, there is a good deal of humour in the game that should click with metal fans. The ongoing war between "true" metal and sell-out glam/hair bands is just hilarious. So I'd say there's much more on offer than just metal + fantasy here.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

This game will be a huge hit for/with all those people who believe that metal music + fantasy are a "natural" combination.

I'm not one of them, though. I still prefer orchestra as my favourite music for fantasy, although the NLT (Realms Of Arcania) Trilogy taught me kind of the hard way that there are differend kinds of music which fit to the fantasy genre as well.

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Brütal Legend is not a fantasy game with heavy metal music. It is a fantasy game created from and inspired by the heavy metal music genre. Everything in the game can be linked directly to either heavy metal music or the heavy metal music scene (bands, album covers, fashion style, etc.). As such any other music than heavy metal would feel completely out of place.

The game does many things right, but unfortunately the basic gameplay elements just aren't good enough in my opinion. I really wanted to like it, being a huge Tim Schafer fan (Psychonauts RULE!), but the choice to focus on multiplayer instead of singleplayer was a poor one, again in my opinion.

fatBastard() said:

Brütal Legend is not a fantasy game with heavy metal music. It is a fantasy game created from and inspired by the heavy metal music genre. Everything in the game can be linked directly to either heavy metal music or the heavy metal music scene (bands, album covers, fashion style, etc.). As such any other music than heavy metal would feel completely out of place.

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As you write this, I wished there would be similar games for other styles of music ... Soul, Blues, Art-Rock, Jazz, Orchestra ...

I've been listening to metal and going to metal shows for all of my life and I will keep on doing that until the day that I die. I breathe metal, I look metal and I live metal. So this game would have appealed to me if the gameplay was just mashing the A button for 15 hours. I'm not saying that you can't like other music, but just saying that you'd wish there were similar games for other musical styles of music tells me that this isn't necessarily a game for you. I also don't mean by this that the game only appeals to and was only made for metal fans, but it's obviously a labour of love and doesn't make too many compromises. I feel games like this are rare. They've managed to nail a specific subculture without feeling forced or mocking it maliciously (obviously the self-deprecating humour present in the game is not of that variety) and with which people can personally relate.

Love for metal goes beyond the way many other people love, even in within many musical genres. It would be arrogant of me to say that only metal fans are this way, because it obviously is not. But hey, rock 'n roll is still alive and kicking today and millions of people come together each year to enjoy it and the surrounding life-style. To me, when I start giggling uncontrollably as Wheels Of Steel by Saxon starts playing and I pump some nitro into the Druid Plow, it's far more important than just any other old game.

Metal is forever!!

I've always been a huge metal fan, but this game just doesn't appeal to the gamer side of me.

Cool commercial though.

Yeah, man, but open-world exploration, vehicle driving, hack 'n slash and RTS rolled into one. What's not to like?! It's Space Rangers all over again. (Well, almost.)

You mean this commercial? Yeah, it's fantastic.

By the way, I can almost hear Bruce Dickinson's resounding "No!" when they (probably) asked Iron Maiden to contribute.

Thaurin said:

I've been listening to metal and going to metal shows for all of my life and I will keep on doing that until the day that I die. I breathe metal, I look metal and I live metal.

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Metal is forever!!

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What alwass surprises me is that the group of "metal lovers" is the *only* group that says things like this - in this way.

Imagine a blues music lover saying this :

I've been listening to blues and going to blues shows for all of my life and I will keep on doing that until the day that I die. I breathe blues, I look blues and I live blues.

Blues is forever !

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Or someone saying this about soul music :

I've been listening to soul and going to soul shows for all of my life and I will keep on doing that until the day that I die. I breathe soul, I look soul and I live soul.

Soul is forever !

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This doesn't sound too unrealistic, imho, especially since I've got a certain bond to the BLues music maself - although I never could get my feet properly into it.

Sorry for dissecting you quote so much, but I just want to go a step further :

I've been listening to progressive rock and going to progressive rock shows for all of my life and I will keep on doing that until the day that I die. I breathe progressive rock, I look progressive rock and I live progressive rock.

Progressive Rock is forever !

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And a last one:

I've been listening to classical music and going to classical music shows for all of my life and I will keep on doing that until the day that I die. I breathe classical music, I look classical music and I live classical music.

Classical Music is forever !

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What I always find is that the group of the "metal lovers" is the one voicing out their pride most. I rarely see in forum people writing similar stuff about their other kinds of music they prefer. It's always the metal group which is voicing out that they love their own kind of music. You'll hardly ever hear voices using the same tone in their posting which are lovers of let's say electronic music.

I can easily see people loving other kinds of music and associated life styles/views saying the same things. Your substitutions don't look so out of this world. I don't know, it could be anything. Maybe the fact that there are people feeling that metal in a youth rebelling phase kind of thing, while it is so much more.

Metal encompasses such diverse feelings, too. Politics, belonging, hate, death, violence, partying, horror, occultism, cameraderie, etc. How many people are there with stories (true or only perceived) that a particular song or music saved their lives? It gave me identity and showed me that there is something to live for (however small).

I'm sorry, I'm on iPhone so I can't really be articulate or edit my post. Just wanted to say that this isn't exclusive to metal, but metal is related to many other genres (including blues).

Alrik Fassbauer said:

What I always find is that the group of the "metal lovers" is the one voicing out their pride most. I rarely see in forum people writing similar stuff about their other kinds of music they prefer. It's always the metal group which is voicing out that they love their own kind of music. You'll hardly ever hear voices using the same tone in their posting which are lovers of let's say electronic music.

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I'm trying to undertand what your point was here.

My point is/was that I got the impression over the years that the group of people liking metal music is the most agressive in terms of expressing their love of music.

One could go as a lover of "classic rock" for years unknown, meanwhile at one points a distinct group of heavy metal fans forms and expresses themselves as a group.

It's like they seem to me to almost "automatically" form a group of their own, as if they were trying to defend themselves against the rest of the world. Kind of a corral.

It's a very subtle thing, so I can't express in words the same way as I feel it. Especially that English is not my native language.

By the way, I just came across an international congress about "Heavy Metal And Gender" :
http://www.mhs-koeln.de/heavymetal.html?&lang=en
Now these results would interest me.

The same happens in many other scenes. While one can certainly speak of a metal scene and it's easy for me to just go to a random metal show and run into people I know, I'm sure the same can be said for jazz, rock, punk, hardcore, trance, etc. I always thought that metal started out of a need to fill a void that could not be filled with contemporary music or scenes. Punk, hardcore, thrash metal, etc. wanted to rebel against existing values, music and societies. Then they only wanted it louder and louder until we arrive at where we are today. Things can hardly become any louder without deteriorating into white noise.

I don't think metal fans are defensive per se (and who are these metal fans, anyway? Let's not generalize overly), but there exists a certain "us against the world" mentality in some and I need to stress the last word again. I believe that may be a leftover from times when it was nigh impossible to find like-minded people and people were trading tapes across the world to find out about new bands.

Maybe anthropologist Sam Dunn could explain this to us. If you're at all interested, I recommend watching one of his documentaries:

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
Global Metal
Flight 666

Really cool stuff. It will make you understand.

P.S. Cool congress! I would try to make it if it wasn't so far away (oh, and if it wasn't over already ).

While I do like other kinds of music as well, I'm unabashedly 'metal for life' as well, so I know where youre coming from Thaurin!

Seems like a fun concept, if it ever comes to PC i'll definitely check it out. I'm in support of anything that gives kids an inroad to metal, and away from the ghetto bullshit. Kids arent exposed to classic metal in popular media and culture too much anymore. In that respect, I'm really glad this game was made.

If it helps turn one kid from the "dark side", then BL was a success.

btw - Yahtzee does his Zero Punctuation thing w/ BL