Brutal Legend Review or The Collective Conventional Wisdom of the Gaming Industry Disappoints Me

Guess what, this isn't really a review, so as they say on Pandorra: pis off.

Brutal Legend and the Temple of the Gaming Culture’s Conventional Wisdom

Brutal Legend is not a good game. I don’t know what the problems are. I’m sure parts of it work, but just parts a game do not make. Maybe I’m a snob, or my lack of love of heavy metal don’t allow me to care as much about the “subject matter,” but I just didn’t care.

And that fucking sucks.

I was talking to a buddy about Brutal Legend and how he found it pleasant, but forgettable. He was already trying to sell it. Which bummed me out. He asked me what I thought about it and I said what has been said: that I found it extremely underwhelming, overly ambitious, but inherently shallow. I asked him if he had played any other Tim Schaefer games. He said no.

This is not a comment on how my buddy is lacking in gaming literacy for not playing Psychonauts or Grim Fandango. This is partially because I don’t think it matters in enjoying Brutal Legend, and because gaming literacy is about as dumb of an idea as I can think, but that’s for a latter day. It’s a comment on how he expected the game to be good because it is from Tim Schaefer. It’s a strange off shot (or maybe the main goal) of the marketing behind Brutal Legend: that this is a Celebrity Game Designer and he doesn’t dissapoint. Too bad the game was almost all premise, no meat on the bones.

The closest game that I can compare this experience of mine with Brutal Legend is Spore, which I played for literally 2 hours.




Man I’m a fucking bummer.