Ooooh Brutal Legend. There was a time when I was genuinely excited to play you. You seemed like such a promising game, like a great hack-n-slash, action, platformer with a brutal soundtrack; in fact, those were the main reasons why I wanted to buy you. Flash forward to about three weeks before the game's launch date. I start reading more and more about the game and I watch some new gameplay footage to which much of my surprise, I come to find out that the game has a heavy emphasis on Real-Time-Strategy. I was a little confused because much of what I was told, and believed, was that Brutal Legend was not an RTS, but an action-platformer...you know, like how the game was being MARKETED!!
Flash forward another two weeks to the time the demo comes out. Worried about the RTS elements that I read were a HUGE part of the game, I was somewhat skeptical to download the demo (which in fact took two whole hours to download on my PS3 because it was so huge). When I finished the demo, I was pretty relieved to find out that my worries have come to pass, as I did not encounter any sort of RTS crap along my journey. I actually enjoyed the demo, I thought the story was pretty unique, the game was fun, and the soundtrack was of course BITCHIN'. But as I were to come and find out, this is where the fun ends.
So, flash forward to launch day, and now all these game reviews come out from all my trusted sources, like Gametrailers, IGN, and 1UP. It was all of these reviews that arose my fears once again because as they report, the game is pretty much 80% a half-assed and uninspired RTS game. (deep emotional sigh)
Here is Zero Puncuation's view on Brutal Legend, which does a better job of putting my frustrations into big words.
Don't get me wrong. I'm sure there are some people out there who enjoy RTS games and really enjoyed this game. Personally, I think playing an RTS game is like attending a college math course. But the thing that really upsets me about the game is the fact that the game was marketed as a hack-n-slash game up until about a month before the game's release. WTF man?! EA pulled the good 'ol bait-n-switch on us. What if all game companies did that? What if we all thought Assassin's Creed was this great open-world adventure game when in fact it was a dating simulation? What if we thought that Left 4 Dead was a first-person zombie shooter when it was actually a Pokemon game?
I could go on and on about how it was wrong that EA tried to, somewhat, hide the fact that Brutal Legend had heavy RTS elements in the game and that the game was built from the ground up to play that way, but for now, I'm going to have my own personal boycott on the game. I really don't see myself playing this game anymore, which is a big shame because it seems genuinely funny and there was a time that I was really excited for it.
What do you think about the game? Did you know about the RTS elements? How do you feel about the bait-n-switch? And more importantly, do you see yourself playing this game ever?
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