That's Brütal

Finally, one of my most awaited games of the year was released last week. I've gotten to the point of experience in this hobby that I'm starting to follow notable designers and software teams' work as opposed to being attracted to strictly brand loyalty (although that happens too I guess...)

But I digress. Double Fine Productions, headed by Tim Schafer, has released their latest game, Brütal Legend upon the world. One of the interesting things about Schafer is that ever since he left Lucasarts he has been dabbling in other game genres while still keeping his signature sense of humor and strong character-based plots. Psychonauts was a ridiculously funny platforming game and Brütal Legend is a... really ambitiously designed game. Thus far, Brütal Legend is no different. If there were two things that have surprised me about the game so far though, it's that 1) The sharp dialog seems to taper off after a couple hours (somewhat disappointing) but the visual humor keeps the overall comedic tone high and 2) it's a Real Time Strategy game. The latter point completely blindsided me until maybe a couple days before it was released. The demo gives no indication to this point (indeed, you'll see not even a couple hints of RTS game in the first couple videos I'm embedding below). Despite what(Tim Schafer says about the game not being an RTS, I'm more inclined to agree with Penny-Arcade.

It's not that I dislike RTS games, it's just that I find them really hard to play and there's a huge learning curve on them. While I'm dealing with my RTS shortcomings I will say that Brütal Legend's hilariously badass aesthetics make me want to continue learning to play the game and get better. For the record, I think Brütal Legend will probably join Warcraft III as the only RTS game that I actually enjoy, but time will tell.

Below, I've posted some direct feed HD videos of my concurrent Brütal Legend playthrough. I've put the subtitles on for a particular friend of mine. I also have a save game that's much farther along than this, but I'm posting this one to make the game look as badass as it deserves. Some game over screens will be preserved for hilarity's sake (like Jack Black's/Eddie Rigg's line of dialog before crashing into the sea on the upcoming 3rd video). Should I put video updates in new posts or should I append them to this current one? Let me know in the comments.

Introduction:



I get to play! (the demo material...):



Alright, now it's time to finish off the demo and show a snippet of the full game itself: