Brütal Legend (Xbox 360)
A headbanger's journey
10/13/2009 6:53 PM | 12 Comments | Page 1 of 2
What's Hot: Leather; Chrome; Noise
What's Not: Hair Spray; Glitter; Pop
I may be in the minority, but Rock Band has never inspired me to pick up a real guitar. In fact, the nutzo note charts for some of the game's most difficult songs discouraged me from ever wanting to try playing music again. If I have to practice all day to play a fake rendition of Megadeth's "The Conjuring" on Expert difficulty, then how the hell am I ever going to convince a Strat and an amp to make those sounds?
Last night, while playing
Brütal Legend, I got the urge to pick up an axe and play for the first time in ages. I was tooling around in a hot rod as Eddie Riggs. "Am I Evil" by Diamond Head blared out of his ride's car stereo. Even though my digits were wrapped around an Xbox 360 controller, my fingers could remember what it felt like to hammer the notes in the song's opening solo. For a moment I was transported back to my teenage years, where I'd spent more than a few afternoons sweating Metallica's album "Kill 'Em All." The band's cover of "Am I Evil" was one of my favorites.
Brütal Legend taps into a very specific nostalgia for heavy music of the '70s and '80s. It's a powerful alchemy that put a wide grin on my face more than a couple times.
Jack Black plays Eddie Riggs, a roadie who is transported to an alternate world where the heavy-metal faithful have been enslaved, driven into the fringes by the powers of evil and by human sellouts who want to leverage the spirit of metal for profit and survival. It's the story of a very particular time in the history of heavy metal: when the pop glam of Poison and Warrant overcame and, some would say, defeated true metal. Riggs allies himself with a ragtag gang of rockers -- an army that needs the guidance, organization and soundchecking skills of a man like Riggs to bring metal back to its former glory.
Eddie Riggs is hell-bent for chrome.
Sure, it's not all that daring to make a game about monsters and axe-fights. But by injecting it with the DNA of heavy metal,
Brütal Legend subverts classical fantasy to an insane degree. With imagery culled straight from album covers -- the gleaming chrome and sickly blue neon of vintage Judas Priest, the towering pagan grandeur of Led Zeppelin and the oil-stained denim grime of Motörhead are chopped, screwed and channeled into
Brütal Legend expertly.
This desire to revisit the past glory of metal is intensely personal to Tim Schafer. But he and Double Fine spin this passion into a wildly imaginative and genuine expression that doesn't require a history with heavy metal. You don't need a closet full of faded T-shirts or the muscle memory of old guitar solos to appreciate
Brütal Legend. The game's appeal is upfront and unassuming, just like a concert. You buy a ticket. You feel the noise. You get rocked.
This is due in part to the keen, clever writing and expressive, subtle animation that bring characters like Eddie Riggs to life. As Riggs gathers his allies, we come to know a handful of characters -- the proud but ditzy Lars, his wary and loyal sister Lita, the mysterious and alluring Ophelia. More fun, though, are the characters on the periphery. Rob Halford's falsetto hair-metaller General Lionwhyte is a hoot. And Alex Fernandez as the burnt-out Mangus is particularly likable. Best, though, is Ozzy Osbourne, who in his brief moments as a profane guardian of the secrets of metal undoes all the doddering and foolishness of his years as an MTV reality-show spectacle.
