Brutal Legend: The Strength of Stuff

brutallegend

I finished Brutal Legend yesterday, and thought I’d share a few of my thoughts. First of all, I love Tim Shafer, and Psychonauts remains one of my favorite games and one of the best-built games I’ve seen.  I had some initial excitement about Brutal Legend, though Jack Black had me worried since celebrities in games hasn’t always gone over well, but I downloaded the demo on XBL and was floored by both the comedy and the action.

I had heard that it becomes a lot more RTS centric as you continue the game, but as an RTS computer fan I decided it was worth a shot and picked it up. And in case you think you know where I’m going with this, don’t worry this isn’t going to become a hate-rant: Brutal Legend is a very well made game with an excellent story and gameplay. The voice acting from Jack Black was well done and both funny and distinctly not just Jack Black being himself. The dialogue was quality enough to give Eddie a distinct voice separate from his voice actor, which is impressive in itself.

The only issue I had with the game is how powerless it makes you feel. During the Demo and introducation of the game you feel very powerful, able to take out most enemies with a handful of shocker or axe swipes, but as the game continues in order to balance your character into the RTS the enemies began to overtake you, and soon running at a group of enemy archers will cause you an early death an respawn before you even get a chance to attack.

And I understand this, it wouldn’t be much of an RTS if you could ignore the units and go wading into the enemies killing everything yourself (and they have lower difficulties for anyone who would rather play that way). I even enjoyed the RTS once I understood this shift in gameplay after being shot down a number of times.  The issue I have is I don’t feel it fits the game thematically.  We’re talking about a universe based on the world of heavy metal, where your character is a musclebound half demon equipped with an axe and an axe (battle and guitar, respectfully).  Not to mention you just went through an entire introductory scene where you’re slaughtering hordes of demons single handedly, the shift to becoming a back row quarterback who only wades into battle when his defensive line of meatshields is in place is a startling one, and one that just doesn’t feel very ‘Heavy Metal’ to me.

Another issue is that in order to become more powerful, instead of a leveling or the character naturally increasing in power, you’ll only get additional strength through collecting the games many collectables. These aren’t tiny upgrades either: 30% additional life and increased health regeneration for you an your teammates.  I know once I started having issues in the campaign I went around collecting everything like a madman and hate a notable increase in my survivability.

The worst were the totems that contained your spells, some of which contained pretty pivotal parts of the RTS game play.  I somehow missed the one giving the ability to drop a rally point (a point your newly spawned units will automatically go to), and had a devil of a time flying back to my base to individually tell my troops to follow me as they spawned and lead them up to the action.  Character upgrades are excusable, but making your already experimental RTS gameplay more difficult by hiding important mechanics on your world map just generates frustration and can potentially break your games to those who miss out.

I was also disappointed when I finished the game that there wasn’t a new game+ mode that would let me play on a higher difficulty without collecting all of the items again.  I would have loved giving Brutal mode an attempt, but had no desire to repeat the collection process to power up my character.  I think even the most hardcore gamer who enjoys the item collection parts of these games must balk at repeating it on replays, and it firmly set me in the one time play camp as far as the campaign goes.

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The Glowing Trail

Image from Joystiq

I have been considering navigation systems recently after beating Fable 2 (yes, I know, late to the game).  As someone who tends to get lost in levels, or at least wander off the beaten path far enough to get confused as to which direction was the exit and which was the way I came. Navigation systems are a tricky issue, especially when you have games that especially emphasize searching an area and finding the hidden chests as Fable 2 does.  If you aren’t aware, Fable 2 has a glowing trail that always points towards your next quest objective.

When I began the game I thought I would hate the glowing trail.  I remembered a previous experience in Bioshock where I’d learned to hate the constant navigation reminder (in Bioshock’s case, a compass was constantly displayed pointing the way).  Both could be turned off in the menu, true, and I did make a point of turning down the glowing trail to minimum brightness at the onset.  These were games of exploration, whether a fantasy universe of bandits and sorcerers or a dystopian underground filled with plasmid zombies, I was there to experience these worlds not get lead from one point to another, ignoring the world crafted around me.  In Bioshock I would constantly turn off the compass when I entered an area and only turn it back on when I knew I had explored that region to my satisfaction.  And I tend to dislike having to constantly go into menus in games, so I was concerned that Fable 2’s trail would lead me to the same conclusions.

However, as I continued to play I learned to appreciate the glowing trail. Unlike Bioshock, where I found the compass distracting from my exploration, the glowing trail was more of a gentle reminder. Being integrated into the game rather than part of the on-screen navigation helped more than I would have imagined. Instead of something obscuring the world around me, it just fit in with the rest. I even ended up turning back up the brightness, so that when I wanted to follow I could easily pick it out.

My favorite navigation game mechanic is still Deadspace’s line. In Deadspace you press in the right joystick and it creates a blue line across the ground showing you briefly which way to go. The option of being able to turn it on with the push of a button instead of on/off in a menu was a godsend. I came to use it obsessively, though probably not how the game developers intended. Every time I would reach a turn I would press in the joystick and then take the path not highlighted, the road less traveled as it were. I wanted to make sure I explored the area properly before going to the next plot objective, so having something that would point out the last path I should take was especially helpful as I explored the dead space station.

I eventually reached the conclusion that as much as I loved the mechanic (and hope it is taken as an example for future games), it didn’t ultimately help with the mood deadspace was attempting to set.  I found once I learned to rely on the navigation line, I calmed down quite a bit while exploring areas that were supposed to keep me on edge.  I also started to easily pick up on when I was going to hit a trigger point in the game.  When I’d explored an area down multiple corridors and all lines pointed to the one door, I knew there was something wicked waiting for me on the other side.  The navigation line became my helpful companion with the blueprints, and instead of scared and lost in a space station, I had become the player controlling the environment to my character’s benefit.

This raises the old questions of ease-of-use game mechanics versus limiting the player in order to set a certain tone or difficulty to the game.  In deadspace’s case it already pretty flawlessly transitions from a survival horror game to an action game, so I don’t feel like they made the wrong choice including the navigation system.  Finding that line between giving the player that exploratory feeling and having the player become frustrated lost is one of those issues all game designers, especially those of open world games, are going to keep exploring, and I’m curious to see what systems get developed going forward.

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