Brütal Legend promises to rock Rocktober, in stores now

Are you ready to rock, roll and kick some ass? Well the first opportunity to let you do both is now in stores. Electronic Arts and Double Fine Productions have shipped the rock ‘n roll rich action game Brütal Legend to retailers in North America (shipping in Europe on October 16th). The brainchild of Tim Schafer, Brütal Legend stars Jack Black as roadie Eddie Riggs who embarks on an epic rock adventure featuring guitar wielding combat, storytelling and humor along with imagery inspired by classic heavy metal album art and music.

Brütal Legend is a third person open-world action game from Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine Productions. Starring Jack Black as the voice of Eddie Riggs, Brütal Legend tells the tale of Eddie, the ultimate Metal roadie who is knocked unconscious in a stage accident and awakens to a world where heavy metal breathes life through mountains made of amplifiers, killer spiders spinning guitar strings and rock gods roaming the lands. In addition to Jack Black, Brütal Legend features metal’s biggest names, including Rob Halford of Judas Priest, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Lita Ford, Ozzy Osbourne and more. Brütal Legend also offers a soundtrack featuring more than 100 tracks for over 75 bands including Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motorhead and more.

Brütal Legend is available for MSRP $59.99 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and is rated M for Mature by the ESRB and 18+ for PEGI.

Brütal Legend sountrack revealed

Electronic Arts and Double Fine Productions announced the complete soundtrack for Brütal Legend, the heavy metal rock inspired action video game from Tim Schafer starring Jack Black. The game will offer 100 tracks from metal’s most celebrated rock bands including Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Megadeth and Motörhead.

Brütal Legend will be released for the Xbox 360 and PS3 October 13th in North America and on October 16th in Europe.

A full accounting of all the tracks can be found after the break.

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Activision sues Double Fine over Brutal Legend

Activision is having quitter’s remorse – assuming that you believe it gave up on the negotiation with Double Fine for Brutal Legend. The company filed a lawsuit in California today against Brutal Legend creators Double Fine Productions, claiming that it still holds the rights to the game - which is now being published by Electronic Arts.

Activision claims it still has a valid contract with Double Fine Productions to release the rock themed action game starring Jack Black and has invested roughly $15 million in it. Further, Activision claims that Double Fine missed an important deadline last year and then asked for another year to finish it, along with an additional $7 million. Of course, this lead to stalled negotiations. But Activsion’s claims that Double Fine took its proverbial ball and went home to find another publisher.

But the real kicker is that Activision dumped the game from its roster shortly after the merger was complete, according to some sources. And yet it claims that it never gave up its rights to the game and that it somehow suffered “irreparable harm” from the whole ordeal. Naturally companies never worry about their image when they decide to sue each other. For its part Double Fine says that it owns the rights to the game and therefore had the right to shop it around to other publishers.

We’ll see how this all plays out, but it is a shame that this game, which looks like it could very well be awesome, could be taking a $15 million dollar hit before or after it is released.

Brütal Legend’s Love Triangle

Activision implied that it didn’t want Brütal Legend, but it wants something from Electronic Arts now, according to Variety. Electronic Arts and (Variety thinks but has not confirmed developer Double Fine) have been informed by Activision that it has a claim to the rock and roll action game starring funny man Jack Black. Apparently somewhere in the murky waters of Activision and VU Games’ merger, jobs cuts, cancelled games, studio divestures and contract negotiations, both parties might have gotten confused.

Activision seems to be taking the position that it was not done negotiating with Tim Schaefer and Double Fine. But the company apparently let those talks die on the vine, and because Vivendi Universal Games didn’t exist after the merger and the publishing deadline had passed, Double Fine moved on. In December of 2008 the company announced that it had inked a deal with EA. But Activision says that it still holds some kind of right to Double Fine’s IP. Go figure.

Speculation is that Activision isn’t looking for a fight - instead it probably wants some sort of buyout for the rights from EA like it got with Ghostbusters and Riddick when Atari bought them. But Double Fine’s contention is that there was no deal with Activision… EVER.. and they showed little to no interest in picking up the game because it was too risky.

While Activision has no comment on this story, an unnamed EA pep. has told Variety the following: “We doubt that Activision would try to sue. That would be like a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy.”

I’m not sure that EA is the better looking guy, but it is the guy that will take the odd girl with the brains over the girl with the big.. elbows.

EA Brings The Metal With Brütal Legend

In recent month, publishers everywhere have been picking at the castoffs of the Activision/Blizzard merger. First, THQ snatched up 50 Cent:Blood on the Sand. Then came the news that Atari had gobbled up the rights to both The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena and Ghostbusters. However, one game whose fate was left in limbo was the Double Fine produced, Jack Black starring, heavy metal action game, Brütal Legend. Today, we finally learned its fate.

Earlier this morning, Double Fine and Electronic Arts announced that they have signed an exclusive publishing agreement to bring Brütal Legend to headbanging gamers worldwide next Fall. Crafted by video game icon, Tim Schafer, Brütal Legend tells the tale of Eddie Riggs, played by Jack Black, who somehow gets tossed through time and space (a la Army of Darkness) to a mythical world ruled by Rock n’ Roll.

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