The Metal Path Nears Its End

I finished the single-player campaign for Brutal Legend last night. Given all the ranting I usually do about game length, I find myself in the unusual position of being sorry it is over. Technically I don't think the game is too short. And like a lot of open-world games it puts you back into the game world to finish finding whatever you missed, replay side missions, and generally explore to your heart's content. But I actually would like THIS main game to go on for a bit more.

So I don't HAVE to leave, but the save-the-world narrative is complete. I like the game enough to definitely travel around in it to finish up all the loose ends. I don't even care that it'll net achievements or gamerpoints for me, it is just plain fun!

The last few dreaded RTS 'stage battles' were much less awful than I feared. At one point I was reading the BL guidebook, looking for any help to just get through a battle that was kicking my ass, when one particular tactic sort of leaped out at me. I tried it, and it got me through the shitty part. On the next battle I applied it again, and it made it much easier than the one before, though it had much tougher enemy troop types involved. I died once total through all the rest of the games stage battles.

Basically, my problem before was overthinking the battlefield, and trying to do everything at once. The key to Brutal Legend single-player stage battles turns out to be simplicity. I took the time to amass a large force at the get-go, before sending any one of them to any objective, THEN tackling each objective whether it was a power source, a bottleneck, or whatever, with my entire force in turn... one at a time. Since the AI opponent doesn't build forces faster than you do (at the normal difficulty level anyway), keeping everything you have together is going to roll over anything the enemy has. The AI DOES split its forces a bit, but if you're whole army is hammering away at his main force, Eddie can break off to crush an enemy splinter force on his own. Finding a good bottleneck or main route on the field and blocking it with your entire army does wonders for how much running around Eddie has to do. Very little. And that's what was so frustrating before. I couldn't keep tabs on everything. So my epiphany basically was 'don't try to cover it all, keep everyone together'. Stopping up a bottleneck with my entire force, always sending reinforcements to that exact same place, and then rolling them forward towards the enemy HQ, the AI can't get around you, so the resources on your side are all safe. I definitely felt my nerd-boner push out my pants when I learned this!

Anyway, blah blah blah. The final fight, a one-on-one action confrontation (NOT a stage battle) was a LITTLE on the easy side, but Tim Curry's dialogue and awesome death scene ('deeecaaapiiitaaaatioooooon!) made that section rock anyway.

Too cool. I'll putz around in BL world for awhile as I decide what my next 'big game' is. Current contenders are Darksiders for the Xbox 360, Baroque for the Wii, and Epic Mickey for the Wii. Probably I'm going to have to strike Mickey from the list since my kids are both currently working on it, and if I get ahead of them it'd be shitty for them to see any spoilers. I've been spending a fair amount of time on Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu (Angry Bee Boss Great Resurrection) the newest Cave home port. It is absolute awesome, but as with all shooters, something I sit down with for a half-hour to an hour at time, between forays into 'the big game'.

Future entries will cover my thoughts on all the 'pachi' (bee boss) games. I've also ruminated on what I think my Game of the Year for 2010 is. And y'know? MY award for GOTY is the one all the developers should be courting. But they're dumb. I read this roundtable discussion about what should be GOTY between several high profile writers and reviewers and their points (and most of their choices) were utter ass. So it is up to me, in THIS 'blog to fix that.

Brutal Hybrid

Mommy

Daddy

Baby

As I knew they would, the Real Time Strategy aspects of Brutal Legend are giving me fits.


If you have been reading this blog for a while you may remember some ranting about my general lack of skill and/or patience with strategy-based pursuits (and some puzzles or puzzle games). I like the idea of being an armchair general, and in fact I have a decent track record with tabletop wargames like Warhammer. But Warhammer and 40K are turn-based. You take a turn, then I take a turn. You have time to think about what you are doing. The ‘real time’ aspect of RTS games kicks me in the nuts.

It shouldn’t. Emotionally I think an RTS is a good idea. If you were commanding a real battle, the enemy doesn’t pause while you consider your next move. Not that video games are really like actual war, but the continual unfolding of events whether you direct it or not, is a feature in warfare (and so many other things) that video games are uniquely able to duplicate or simulate.

But I’m terrible at it. It is the whole resources management and control facets that suck the fun out of it. Almost universally, there’s a ‘cost’ to building or acquiring units in RTS fames. Usually it is money, energy, fuel, or some other facsimile of a real-life resource. In Brutal Legend, the resources are the fans, as in concert fans. The more ‘fans’ you have pouring power into your ‘show’, the more frequently you can call up troops. RTS games also frequently have time delays to the arrival of your units (representing travel, build, or recruitment time), and depending on the technology represented, command and control limits… ie, your general can’t be everywhere at once.

All these restrictions are a fundamental part of the genre, simulating the limitations that might be imposed on real commanders, and composing much of the challenge. You have to learn to make do with what you have, and learn to adjust on-the-fly as the situation changes and your resources wax and wane. But for me, that shit just isn’t fun. It is too much like real work! I don’t think the genre should change for me, but I usually steer well clear of these games. My video game enjoyment is almost entirely predicated on immediate feedback, physical coordination skills, and memorization. That’s why the preponderance of my game collection comprises 2D shooting games, racers, fighting games, and platformers. With a few first person shooters and third person action games thrown in. I have a mere sprinkling of RPGs because I don’t cotton to the lack of immediate, direct control. So for real-time video wargames I think I have three… and that’s including Brutal Legend. My gaming background springs from the arcades, ‘twitch gaming’ as it were, and on home consoles I’m happiest near my roots.

So I’m running around BL, enjoying the utterly spectacular and badass scenery, getting in the occasional small fight, and finding the hidden items. The game makes finding stuff really rewarding because they aren’t just items collected for some long-term goal, you frequently get new abilities and entire new music tracks. The game keeps throwing something cool or interesting at me. My kid is just blowing through the story mode and it's a shame because a lot of work went into making this world. A player really needs to slow down and look around in it.

Then it comes time to fight one of the major battles. The RTS battles. I don’t feel like they are just shoehorned into the game like some reviewers have opined. The designers did an okay job justifying the mechanics and integrating them into the story. BUT. I hate this kind of battle nonetheless. They shove me all the way from having the time of my life to getting apoplectic with frustration. It isn’t that I can’t learn how to play the RTS battles… but I really don’t want to. Like I said before, it is too much like work. Everyday life is an exercise in resource management. Balancing a checkbook or juggling priorities at my job might not be as cool-sounding as ordering a unit of Razorgirls to annihilate enemy Grave Diggers, but it comes off even more of a hassle because its landing square in the middle of my fun. I’d feel the same way if someone handed me that checkbook to balance just as I was climbing aboard a rollercoaster.

So I’m being a total lame-ass and using the guide to help me. I just don’t have personal ‘resources’ to get good at this on my own. And using the book isn’t sailing me through these parts either, because it is terrible… one of the worst game guides I’ve ever seen. The map poster is useful. Everything else about it, the organization, descriptions, everything is jank. In effect, even making the book useful (during the battles) is WORK.

This isn’t killing my enjoyment of the game as a whole. The rest of the game is just too much fun for that. This game could’ve easily just been a total joke. A game about heavy metal? How did that even get greenlit, much less turn out to be fucking awesome?

From the point where I am in the game I think I have three more of these ‘stage battles’ to go. I’d rather they’d made the RTS stuff a separate mode, but its obvious a shitload of work went into that part of the game too, so that might be more than I could reasonably expect. Hopefully I can shut up about it now, get through the RTS battles as they come up, and remember the game for its strong points after its over!

Brutal At Last

Finally.

I'm getting around to playing Brutal Legend, the exploits of Jack Black's muscled roadie character in a world based around heavy metal. A comical, but extremely loving tribute to the songs, artwork, and attitude associated with the musical style.

Anyone who knows me (in real-life) would think my playing this game is not only a no-brainer but probably necessary to life. That's not far off. I managed to survive not playing it, but I'm not sure how. I put it off because the game is yet another major investment in time when my game playing mood is clearly bent towards shorter score-based sessions. But I've had this thing a year and figured it was high time I cracked it open. I DID play through the demo when it first premiered on XBLA.

I'm a little put off by the idea of how much real-time strategy stuff there is here. RTS games are not my thing, and ordering your army of headbangers around in medium-scale battles is a big part of this game. But I'm so enamored with the style, humor, and of course the music, that I'm eager to give it a go anyway.

This is the role Jack Black seems closest to in real life. You can just feel how much he loved doing this and that he totally gets what the designers of this game were going for. He has dozens and dozens of on-the-fly lines that totally rule. Whatever one thinks of his movie roles... his acting not really BEING acting because he's always Jack Black... here is a context where Jack's actual personality fits perfectly. The co-creator of Tenacious D has landed at his place in the universe. Near the beginning when he 'prays' to the evil powers that rule this strange world he's found himself in (while driving a demonic walker vehicle) I thought I was going to pee it was so funny. Watching Jack's promos for this game on the talk shows via Youtube (complete with him dressed in long black wig and muscle suit to match Eddie's appearance) are pretty hilarious.

There's an option to bleep out the swearing. I chose yes to that because I have kids who might be around occasionally while I play it, but as the game states it also makes it even funnier... in the same way South Park is funnier because they censor the language. The kids are totally gobsmacked too that all the weird music their Dad listens to suddenly has a high-profile, flashy presence right up there on the TV. Like, wow, there must be a world of people who listen to that noisy shit Dad likes.

I can so 'identify' with this game (except the strategy/command parts) that playing it is two-thirds nostalgic for me. And the game is only two years old!