Brutal Legend Preview

Have you have ever looked at the surreal landscapes adorning the covers of classic heavy metal albums? If so then you will have some idea what to expect from Brutal Legend; set amongst fantasy grasslands and mountain ranges scored with deep chasms glowing with the fires of hell. Skeletons and demons stalk these plains, taking and enslaving all humans they can find. Standard procedure in such fantasy lands requires a fantasy saviour. However our hero is no barbarian in a loincloth, and no elf with a whistle can hold back this rising darkness. No, Brutal Legend is the song of a roadie, his only weapons? A pair of axes; one battleaxe and his guitar!

If you really wanted to break it down and pigeon hole it Brutal Legend could be an Open-World Fantasy Brawler With RPG Elements or some other gubbins. Nowhere though does that suggest just how AWESOME this game could be... Jack Black voices the hero, Eddie Riggs and among others the cast includes Lemmy from Motorhead and Ozzy Ozbourne! The most exciting name though is one you might not know: Tim Schafer, the game's Creative Director. if you don't know who he is then stop reading for now and go and play one of his other games... (Monkey Island is coming to XBLA, other classics include Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle)

Back now? Wasn't that great, hilarious and intruiging? Tim Schafer was the brains behind the majority of Lucasarts' classic adventure games and more recently the wonderfully surreal 3D platformer Psychonaughts. Brutal Legend is Tim's own brainchild and if anyone can pull it off, he can.

From what we have seen of the game in action it certainly lives up to its Brutal moniker. Riggs' battleaxe is called The Separator and with it and a few simple attack combos he can take on the evil hordes. Should things get out of hand he has Clementine, his other axe. Clementine is a classic metal Flying V guitar that came through with him when he was pulled into this world. Riggs can use his guitar to blast lightning at his foes and trigger a selection of magic effects.

Ultimately the goal will be to liberate the people of the world from the evil General Lionwhyte. How do you defeat an evil general? Battles of course; how do you fight battles? With an army... This is where Riggs' roadie skills come in. By building stages over fan geysers Riggs can rock out in a Guitar Hero style minigame and attract fans from the headbangers who have been waiting underground for the return of metal! These headbangers become troops under your command in the battle sections of the game.

From the start of the game the setting is massive and only gets bigger as Brutal Legend's story unfolds. To cover these vest tracts of fantasy wilderness Riggs has his Deuce, a massive Hot Rod that he can summon with his guitar and upgrade throughout the game.

Brutal legend is pencilled in for release this October. It's not definite because of some unfortunate legal complications. EA are now publishing the game but previously it was Activision who dropped the project, allegedly after developers Double Fine failed to meet their targets. Now that Double Fine are almost ready to release the game with EA, Activision have brought a lawsuit against them.

Promising to be a wild mix of inspirations and gameplay styles Brutal Legend even features a multiplayer mode which Tim himself described as, "your typical head-to-head, battle of the bands scenario. But with axes." Sometimes videogames trying to mix it up like this end up a confused mess with the lesser parts dragging down the rest of the package. In this case though, there don't seem to be any weak links. This really could be the most AWESOME game for a long while!