Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Tim Shafer has always created great games that are normally critically acclaimed, yet never have any amount of commercial success.  Brutal Legend went through a tumultuous sequence of events on its way to release, but throughout the process, looked to be a solid experience.  However, some game design elements and repetition seem to take a lot of the fun out of an otherwise, incredible open world experience.

Starting into Brutal Legend, I was poised for a great hack and slash experience, as all of the demos and presentations gamers have received for the game have showed Eddie Riggs, our main protagonist, tearing up beasts.  He would do combat with an axe and with the blazing hot strings of his guitar, but never would I have thought I would be playing Command and Conquer lite in Brutal Legend.  If you cannot piece together that analogy, it basically means that you will be doing less hacking/slashing and far more building units and commanding them into battle.  It is not a flawed system, but it is not what gamers were prepared for walking into this title.

While I was a little perplexed with the design decision for Brutal Legend, I can say that the story that backs the gameplay is rather solid, and was one of the main items that kept me from giving up on Brutal Legend at the half way point.  The writing is top notch, taking something that could be clichéd and making it into something rather memorable.  You have Eddie Riggs, a standard roadie, that never wants fame and fortune, killed in a stage accident, and then transported to a fantasy world, filled with all of the images you could possibly remember from early 80’s heavy metal album covers.  You end up with Riggs helping the native populace rise up from oppression to fight the evil leader of this world, Lord Diviculous.  Of course, there are some great turns and twists, including some great deception in your own party that adds to the intrigue of the story.  However, most may never see the end of the story, because the gameplay just kills any kind of rhythm or atmosphere that is created by the writers.

Yes, you will spend most of your time in RTS battles.  The combat starts with your side building a stage, and from there, you are tasked with two directives: capture green geysers that hold the “fans” that will help you generate more troops and upgrades and the other directive is to destroy the enemy’s stage.  Commanding your troops is rather easy, with a press to the D-pad choosing their actions.  They can attack, defend and rally, and that is about it.  Later, you gain the ability to set a simple waypoint, but nothing that will tax an RTS veteran.  There are huge flaws in the RTS gameplay, with troops that really never seem to have any intelligence.  More than once, I had my troops collect at one point and watch another troop in the distance get mauled.  It should have been in their line of sight, but they did nothing to help.  The other issue comes from repetition, because after one or two of these battles, you will just want to get them done as fast as possible, due to the tedium of finishing them.

Side quests are also available, and they do add some variance to the RTS stage battles, but after awhile, even these start to get repetitive.  You do have five or six different type of missions to fight, but they seem tacked on to the game.  Each comes with about six lines of canned dialog that will vary each time you start a mission.  They are also rather easy, and none ever really struck up a challenge.  I started off the game completing most of these missions in the first area of the map, but after awhile, I just wanted to finish the game, and the side quests never got touched after that fact.

The sad thing, after all of these criticisms, is that Brutal Legend is at its best when you are just driving around, experiencing the world.  I loved just checking out the different landscapes and little in-jokes that you would find just observing the world.  One thing that Tim Shafer has always done right in his games is creating a world that is unique and fun to experience, and in Brutal Legend, that is absolutely true, to a fault.  Whether it is looking at huge stone swords, sign of the devil hand statues or even just the creatures that inhabit the world, you can just get mesmerized by the scenery.  Even your character, Eddie, makes great little quips about things he sees while you are cruising, just making the world more enjoyable.

I also enjoyed a lot of the voice over work from everyone involved with Brutal Legend.  I normally abhor anything that Jack Black is associated with, but his voice work for Eddie Riggs is actually amazing.  I loved every little line from his character, because it was done with such gusto and polish.  Normally, big actors tend to phone in their performances on a video game (David Duchovny in XIII anyone) but you can tell that Jack Black really enjoyed his time with Eddie Riggs.  Cameos also abound in the game, including Lita Ford, Rob Halford, Lemmy, Tim Curry and even Ozzy Ozbourne.  Ozzy is especially of note, because his character absolutely steals the show.  He has a surprising amount of dialog, and all of it is funny to listen to, and it is genuinely funny.  This is “I can understand you” Ozzy, not “stammering like an idiot” Ozzy.

One thing of note is also how the game handles language and violence.  My eight-year-old son had watched some of the trailers for this title and was a bit upset when he found out it was going to be a Mature rated title.  But Double Fine has built into the game, a censor system that removes the violence and swearing, in any combination.  You can have swearing and no violence, or vice versa.  So my son was able to start a game with the no violence and no swearing options selected and it was a great experience for him.  It also does some great stuff, by putting big parental advisory stickers on anything that is questionable, remembering back to the Tipper Gore days of early 80’s controversy with obscene lyrics in music.  I was extremely happy for this option in the game, and it would be great to see more developers jump on the bandwagon.

And this is where I am completely perplexed for a score on Brutal Legend.  On one hand, the action is repetitive, side quests dull, and overall fun is lacking, and yet, I could come back and just enjoy driving around and experience the well conceptualized world.  The whole reason this review was delayed for so long, was because I was trying to find a score that would fit what I played.  In the end, I felt that Brutal Legend was a great game to experience, but after getting through the first few hours of the game, boredom and tedium step in and ruin a great, visually stunning world.  Brutal Legend gets a 2 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.
Check out Brutal Legend and other Xbox 360 reviews at Test Freaks.