DAY 10 / GAME 10 Brütal Legend

DAY 10 / GAME 10

Brütal Legend

            In honor of the 10th day-aversary of this blog.  I present to you my second most favorite game of all time.  Brütal Legend is a goddamned masterpiece.  For me, this game excels in all aspects.  Gameplay, story, visuals, audio, acting.  Brütal Legend is also almost single-handedly responsible for my love of heavy metal music and reinforced my love for the works of Tim Schafer.

            Brütal Legend brought back all the flavour of Grim Fandango's development.  It's production held so much interest with me, just like back in the Lucasarts days.  Such a unique and stylistic title, Brütal Legend set you into a world build on the themes and principles of heavy metal.  It was so full of eye candy that I became super excited by all of the artists involved.  It was shortly after that I started to follow the works of other Double Fine staff such as Scott C., Nathan Stapley and Pixar animator Tasha Harris.  I blame Tasha for the outstanding, fluid and emotional animation which really helped sell the characters and story alongside some great voice talent.  This included Jack Black, Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, Lita Ford and even Pennywise the Clown (Tim Curry.)  And man, playing through a second time, after learning a ton about heavy metal, this game really opens up a whole second layer of references.

           Brütal Legend, not unlike Grim Fandango, is a game driven by visual and story.  My favourite kind of game.  Only this time around it's a Frazetta style heavy metal world instead of a art-deco jazz world.  Brütal Legend even hints at some of the great Tim Schafer personality from Grim Fandango.  Tim's love for muscle cars shows through as you drive a demonic rat-rod through the open heavy metal world.  You even encounter a hotrod racing demon named Fletus, which feels like a throwback to your partner in Grim Fandango, Glottis, who builds a rat-rod out of a DoD company car for you two to tour the land of the dead in.  Driven only by his own raison d'etre; to wrench engines and go fast.  

        This game will stick with me forever.  The world is so ripe and tangible.  You can just pick it up to drive around in it and explore the art of it all while the Deuce (your car) blares your choice of metal music.  Double Fine managed to secure 107 different heavy metal songs from 75 different bands.   This doesn't even include the original soundtrack produced by Peter McConnell, who has composed soundtracks for Lucasarts and Double Fine since Monkey Island 2.  To top it all off, when this game's demo was released, I played it with Leia when she was only a few months old at the time and the soundtrack put her to sleep like a heavy metal lullaby.  To this day she still enjoys the likes of Black Sabbath and Mastodon, singing Iron Man to herself in the backseat of the car.