In Brutal Legend, there's one thing everyone should know before they start playing: every scene in the game was "designed to look like a heavy metal album cover," says game creator Tim Schafer.
That means endless Boris Vallejo-inspired landscapes littered with V8 engines, oversized amps and mountainous piles of bones. The characters embody every heavy metal cliche imaginable -- from good guys with long flowing hair to evil druids, demonic nuns and giant spindly-legged monsters. All of the game art has a cartoony style to it, so the end product actually looks less satanic than it sounds.
In the middle of it all is Eddie Riggs, the ultimate heavy metal band's roadie voiced by Jack Black who gets sent to another world, by way of a magical belt buckle. Riggs, naturally, finds himself at the front of the movement to save the human race, which has been enslaved by all-around evil dude Doviculus and his demon army, The Tainted Coil.
Combat in this third-person action game generally revolves around using a combo of close up and ranged attacks, delivered by Eddie's broad axe (get it?) The Separator and a guitar named Clementine. Eddie can also use a supped up hotrod called the Deuce (which he assembles in the beginning of the game) to plow through druids and speed past monsters. The roadie works solo and with other characters, sometimes giving troops basic orders, similar to Rainbow Six games, or working in tandem with computer-controlled counterparts. The weapons and the car are upgradeable, and new combos unlock as the game progresses, making Eddie's attacks more powerful against increasingly powerful enemies.
If you're an old school metal head -- there are tons of winks and nods packed into the game -- the more obvious including vocal cameos by Lemmy from Motorhead, Rob Halford from Judas Priest and Lita Ford. There will be a full-blown metal soundtrack with licensed songs, playable through the Deuce's radio -- called the Mouth of Metal. Hidden tracks will be scattered around the landscape, and Eddie has to find them to add them to the playlist. No songs have been confirmed for the playlist yet, but based on the voice talent, we can expect it will include Priest and Motorhead at the very least.
It's worth noting that underneath all of the game's admittedly awesome style is a fairly simplistic game mechanic -- slash, hack and electrocute enemies and then move on to the next group of enemies. It's reminiscent of the recent Matt Hazard game, which was hilarious but didn't offer anything spectacular in terms of actual gameplay. We're not saying that's going to be the case with Brutal Legend, but it's something we want to explore more in the next few months.
Multiplayer for Brutal Legend will have a 40 vs. 40-person Battle of the Bands mode -- where players use combat and unit commands to send their troops into battle -- think traditional headbangers against hair metalheads, industrial metalheads (groups you will also fight in the game's main story mode).
Creator Tim Schafer (Psychonauts, Grim Fandango) says the game was born out of his life-long love for metal music, when he'd sit around and listen to his cassette tapes in his garage. Whether you relate to that or not might make or break the game for you, but we're flashing devil horns in anticipation of the game's release in October for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
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