E3 2009: Impressions of Brutal Legend Gameplay

So, I've been pretty excited about Brutal Legend for a while now. Jack Black is probobly my favorite comedian, Tim Schafer is one of my favorite video game designers, and Heavy Metal just totally rocks! There can't possibly be anything that you can think of that would make that combination bad.

So, it was really a treat to get to see a live demo for Brutal Legend. Now, This wasn't at the press conference, and it wasn't on G4. Instead, on the now infamous site, Gamespot, they had Tim Schafer talk through a live gameplay demo of Brutal Legend. As much as I dislike Gamespot now, it's currently the only place with any gameplay footage for the game! If you want to check it out for yourself, then follow this link.

They showed off the part of the game where Eddie Riggs first gets transported into this world of metal. He finds a guitar, an axe, and he rips and shreds both physically, and through the power of rock. With his axe, he has normal melee attacks, with various combos, and it looks like your standard 3rd person action game. However, since the whole world is powered by rock, when he shreds on his guitar he's able to cast various stage effects such as lightning, as well as pyrotechnics. He also has a big earthquake attack that he can do by pressing A and X simultaneously, and doing a power chord.

Besides the combat, however, Mr. Schafer also talked about how there would be a big open world that you could drive your car around in, and they even showed off a little bit of that. I thought the open world stuff looked good, but I'm not exactly sure how well the car controls will be... I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Overall, I really think the game is shaping up to be everything I hoped it would be, the iconic Tim Schafer comedy is there, and Jack Black does an amazing job of voicing it, and giving it his own little style, too. I feel like the combat might get old fairly quickly, but the boss battles should prove to be fun, the cutscenes will be amazing, and hilarious, and hopefully all of the open world exploration will prove to be amazing. The game is out "Rocktober" 13th later this year, and I couldn't be more excited.