I realized this past Tuesday that I would have a couple extra hours to kill going from the mid-week into the weekend. I stopped into my local Blockbuster store to check out if there were any new games I would be interested in renting. I saw Brutal Legend on the shelf, and I thought to myself, “Hmm….Jack Black is sometimes funny. And I enjoy classic rock music.  And Tim Schafer’s last game was brilliant. Shouldn’t any combination of these be extraordinary?” Of course I assumed the positive, and paid the 9 dollars (Sidenote: NINE DOLLARS TO RENT A VIDEOGAME IS PRETTY RIDICULOUS.) to check out Brutal Legend for a few days.

The game started off fairly well. The first twenty minutes or so was the same material presented in the demo, which was a lot of fun. The game definitely had promise, I’ll give it that much. But it did not really deliver on any of that promise. The fighting mechanism was interesting, but only two hours in I was begging for more diversity. I hoped that the side-quests would be good enough to keep me interested, but they were all pretty much variations of the same “Ambush” mission. And I have to be honest, Brutal Legend probably has the most annoyingly repetitive background dialogue I’ve ever heard. I’m so thankful I no longer have to hear my troops yelling, “We’re just marching around, kicking some ass.” And the inclusion of an RTS system halfway through the game was a terrible choice. If this was meant to be an RTS game, it should’ve started as one and stayed one the whole time. The attempted mash-up of third-person action and real-time strategy that Tim Schafer attempted in this game was probably well-intended, but it fell flat.

But needless to say, I played all the way through Brutal Legend. It wasn’t terrible. It just wasn’t very good. It was just okay. I will say, however, that Brutal Legend is probably one of the greatest examples of a game that warrants a rental. It’s a fairly short campaign, and most of the hidden items can be found fairly easily. So, if you find yourself with a couple hours to kill, go rent Brutal Legend and see for yourself. And for all you Achievement hunters out there, there are some doozies in this game. (For a semi-spoiler on my personal favorite Brutal Legend Achievement, click here.) I had fun with Brutal Legend, but it’s not a game I’ll remember 6 months from now.

MidwestGamer, aka Zack, aka AbsentAmpersand