As an aspiring writer there’s been only one goal in your mind for the last few years, aside from a shallow grave: publication! For many people it’s simply a matter of sending out their flowery, wondrous manuscript about growing up Puerto Rican in Alaska and watching the cash fly in, but you’re a white dude from New Jersey so it’s been a tougher journey for you.
No one would buy that “from the streets” crap, since you’re a skinny guy from Hoboken. You’re slightly less physically intimidating than Ruth Bader Ginsburg and can’t go through a conversation without referencing your favorite pretentious books, most of them Russian translations.
That left documenting your struggle and your triumph with an invented drug problem, but then that Frey cunt had to ruin that one by beating you two it. You thought about making an even edgier “memoir” about rehab, but it eventually devolved into a novelization of the film Saw as you considered various ways that people could be tortured into no longer doing heroin.
No one accepted the manuscript.
That left an “edgy” crime drama about vampires having sex with teens while solving murders and a three hundred page diatribe about modern politics centering around a small town in upstate New York and its slow descent into collective madness. You decided to write the crime drama and Putnam ate it up.
So tomorrow you’ll be sitting at the release party when George Saunders arrives. You’ll leap out of your seat to shake his hand but before you reach him he’ll have his fist in a ball and you’ll be laid out on your ass. He’ll then depart your book release in his traditional mix of style and poise and return home to write some more books of actual value.
His actions will generate a whirlwind of press around your title and lead to record breaking sales. Since your book is terrible this isn’t a good thing, and after an overwhelmingly negative critical response you’ll publish a second, considerably less successful book before becoming the pariah of the creative community.
Congratulations on Being Published!
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Congratulations on Choosing the Wrong Horse!
After you steal the priceless gem from around the neck of Countess Quintessa Montressa you won’t have a lot of time to think. You’ll be running with that shitty imitation gold chain in hand, besashed bodyguards pursuing you through the Old West style theme park, wondering how you could possibly escape.
You’ll consider a bold gunfight, but that’ll go right out the window. You’ve never fired a gun in your life, and you doubt that the sheriffs of this little burg are carrying live firearms. You’d try to escape through the sewers if you thought you could get a moment of privacy, but those royal guards are in good shape so you don’t think you’ll have the opportunity. You’ll consider turning around and shouting just kidding, but that’ll seem too simple to work. Then you’ll see the hitched horses and all your problems will go right out the window.
They’ll be just outside a local “saloon” where tourists can purchase various knick knacks and bottles of liquor. That’s where you bought Quintessa that cowboy themed bear on your first date together, and it seems only fitting that it should give you your means of escape as well.
You’ll leap atop one of the horses and take off galloping. The shocked royal guard will hesitate before mounting the other horse and giving chase, his sash flapping with each kick. You’ll have a decent lead on him and everything will seem fine. That is, until your horse’s leg snaps as you approach the inappropriately named “Ye Olde Gorge.”
You’ll be hurled forward violently and spared death only because you land in a cactus. Quintessa’s guard won’t be so lucky. He’ll follow you over the cliff, assuming that this is all part of a very clever plan on your part. He’ll be wrong, and his horse will land on top of him. Ironically, the horse will survive the fall.
You and the horse will lay there dying until some First Nations People come along and decide to help you out. The two of you will form a bond as you go through traction together and when you leave the First Nations People after establishing a community college with the money from fencing the necklace you’ll ride out on the back of your new horse friend, headed into the unknown together.
Congratulations on Choosing the Wrong Horse!
You’ll consider a bold gunfight, but that’ll go right out the window. You’ve never fired a gun in your life, and you doubt that the sheriffs of this little burg are carrying live firearms. You’d try to escape through the sewers if you thought you could get a moment of privacy, but those royal guards are in good shape so you don’t think you’ll have the opportunity. You’ll consider turning around and shouting just kidding, but that’ll seem too simple to work. Then you’ll see the hitched horses and all your problems will go right out the window.
They’ll be just outside a local “saloon” where tourists can purchase various knick knacks and bottles of liquor. That’s where you bought Quintessa that cowboy themed bear on your first date together, and it seems only fitting that it should give you your means of escape as well.
You’ll leap atop one of the horses and take off galloping. The shocked royal guard will hesitate before mounting the other horse and giving chase, his sash flapping with each kick. You’ll have a decent lead on him and everything will seem fine. That is, until your horse’s leg snaps as you approach the inappropriately named “Ye Olde Gorge.”
You’ll be hurled forward violently and spared death only because you land in a cactus. Quintessa’s guard won’t be so lucky. He’ll follow you over the cliff, assuming that this is all part of a very clever plan on your part. He’ll be wrong, and his horse will land on top of him. Ironically, the horse will survive the fall.
You and the horse will lay there dying until some First Nations People come along and decide to help you out. The two of you will form a bond as you go through traction together and when you leave the First Nations People after establishing a community college with the money from fencing the necklace you’ll ride out on the back of your new horse friend, headed into the unknown together.
Congratulations on Choosing the Wrong Horse!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Congratulations on Buying the Can of Barbasol from Jurassic Park!
As the world’s fifth most eccentric billionaire, and the only one of the top ten who doesn’t presently live in seclusion, you’ve got a reputation to maintain. You’ve got to keep the public guessing so every once in a while you’ll move up on a grocery store, buy all the toilet paper and run around outside with your bodyguards, pelting people with rolls of Charmin. That’s just an example, you also pull plenty of pranks that aren’t totally lame.
But this Thursday, a week after your tremendously successful “pay all the cops in a small town in Iowa to act British” prank, you’ll feel as if you’ve outgrown the high concept prank phase of your eccentric billionaire-hood. You’ll make a final blog post explaining that you want a change of pace and then head into the west wing of your mansion/Bat Cave to ponder.
While lounging in a sex swing which has never been used for its intended purpose you’ll run through the various “done” aspects of zany wealth. You could purchase music rights, but that would be perceived as mercenary. You could go in for charity work, but then it would seem like you were trying to hide something. Investing in pharmaceutical research is so blah, and it would put you adds with the universal healthcare agenda which as an off-beat billionaire you naturally support.
You’ll spend nearly an hour and a half laying there, swinging back and forth awkwardly, listening to the creak of the carabineer in the eyebolt before inspiration strikes you and you phone your secretary’s assistant to make an appointment at an auction house selling pointlessly expensive worthless memorabilia.
Within 36 hours you’ll have flown to Vienna, Austria, idle rich capital of the world, and seated yourself in a luxuriously appointed 14th century palace which has been converted to serve an auction house for the rich and bored.
Most of the items will be uninteresting. Catholic reliquaries, celebrity semen and ovum and Angelina Jolie’s first strap-on will all be paraded across stage without eliciting even the tiniest bit of excitement from you. When lot 26B comes along, though, all that will change.
You’ll leap out of your chair, shouting “ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS!” the way you always wanted to. The auctioneer will inform you that there’s no need to shout and that bidding starts at a paltry two-hundred thousand dollars, but you’ll tell your man to strike him in the face and shout your offer again at the top of your lungs.
After a brief fine and the most exciting check-writing you’ll have experienced in a while you’ll leave the auction house with your purchase, content in the knowledge that you’ll appear briefly on a few news stations tonight and give a few people bemused smiles with your antics.
When you get home you’ll check to see if the can of shaving cream from Jurassic Park opens the way it did in the movie. You’ll be overjoyed when it not only does but also contains tiny nodules containing what you assume to be a representation of “dino-DNA.” You’ll share the news with a bored Megan Fox, who will inform you that she never saw that movie because “dinosaurs are for nerds.”
You’ll give her a quick “eat shit” look before retiring to your Egyptian-style antechamber where you’ll be fellated by a woman who looks just like a young Ally Sheedy. After she finishes the two of you will talk about Jurassic Park at length and years from now, long after the two of you have married and raised your children, you’ll recount this meet-cute story for your first son’s in-laws to be as they shift uncomfortably, surrounded by your army of cloned dinosaurs.
Congratulations on Buying the Can of Barbasol from Jurassic Park!
But this Thursday, a week after your tremendously successful “pay all the cops in a small town in Iowa to act British” prank, you’ll feel as if you’ve outgrown the high concept prank phase of your eccentric billionaire-hood. You’ll make a final blog post explaining that you want a change of pace and then head into the west wing of your mansion/Bat Cave to ponder.
While lounging in a sex swing which has never been used for its intended purpose you’ll run through the various “done” aspects of zany wealth. You could purchase music rights, but that would be perceived as mercenary. You could go in for charity work, but then it would seem like you were trying to hide something. Investing in pharmaceutical research is so blah, and it would put you adds with the universal healthcare agenda which as an off-beat billionaire you naturally support.
You’ll spend nearly an hour and a half laying there, swinging back and forth awkwardly, listening to the creak of the carabineer in the eyebolt before inspiration strikes you and you phone your secretary’s assistant to make an appointment at an auction house selling pointlessly expensive worthless memorabilia.
Within 36 hours you’ll have flown to Vienna, Austria, idle rich capital of the world, and seated yourself in a luxuriously appointed 14th century palace which has been converted to serve an auction house for the rich and bored.
Most of the items will be uninteresting. Catholic reliquaries, celebrity semen and ovum and Angelina Jolie’s first strap-on will all be paraded across stage without eliciting even the tiniest bit of excitement from you. When lot 26B comes along, though, all that will change.
You’ll leap out of your chair, shouting “ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS!” the way you always wanted to. The auctioneer will inform you that there’s no need to shout and that bidding starts at a paltry two-hundred thousand dollars, but you’ll tell your man to strike him in the face and shout your offer again at the top of your lungs.
After a brief fine and the most exciting check-writing you’ll have experienced in a while you’ll leave the auction house with your purchase, content in the knowledge that you’ll appear briefly on a few news stations tonight and give a few people bemused smiles with your antics.
When you get home you’ll check to see if the can of shaving cream from Jurassic Park opens the way it did in the movie. You’ll be overjoyed when it not only does but also contains tiny nodules containing what you assume to be a representation of “dino-DNA.” You’ll share the news with a bored Megan Fox, who will inform you that she never saw that movie because “dinosaurs are for nerds.”
You’ll give her a quick “eat shit” look before retiring to your Egyptian-style antechamber where you’ll be fellated by a woman who looks just like a young Ally Sheedy. After she finishes the two of you will talk about Jurassic Park at length and years from now, long after the two of you have married and raised your children, you’ll recount this meet-cute story for your first son’s in-laws to be as they shift uncomfortably, surrounded by your army of cloned dinosaurs.
Congratulations on Buying the Can of Barbasol from Jurassic Park!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Congratulations Horny Astronaut!
You’re an astronaut and you just can’t keep it in your pants.
On planet Earth that translates to you being kind of a dick and sleeping around. It irks your wife to no end, but she knows she’s your emotional rock and acknowledges that as an astronaut you have certain privledges and do bring in a lot of sweet sweet cash money so she puts up with it. She also knows you have a tiny penis, so she can laugh at you and the slough of embarrassed women you work your way through.
But in space it’s a totally different story. Up there in the big black yonder there are no coeds with low self-esteem, no prostitutes whose patience is yet to be exhausted. In fact there usually aren’t that many women at all, and your tiny penis makes you a poor match for straight female astronauts and gay male astronauts alike.
So today, on your twelfth day on the international space station, you’re going to get super horny. You won’t have beat off since you arrived, since privacy is in short supply up there, and exposing yourself to anyone would result in peals of laughter that would haunt you for the rest of your month long stay.
That’s why you’re going to engage in an ill-advised form of discrete masturbation using a tiny airlock and a bag. In your head it was going to “suck you off” literally, and the cold was going to stimulate your dick something amazing. But in reality it’s going to all but rip your penis off.
The resident physician will save your pound of flesh, but you’ll be disfigured, cursed from now on with a measure of self-control and a normally sized penis. You’ll want to phone your wife immediately, but phone calls from the international space station are super expensive so you won’t get the chance for a few more months.
Odds are nothing terrible will happen before then, though, so kudos on fixing most of your major life problems while in orbit!
Congratulations Horny Astronaut!
On planet Earth that translates to you being kind of a dick and sleeping around. It irks your wife to no end, but she knows she’s your emotional rock and acknowledges that as an astronaut you have certain privledges and do bring in a lot of sweet sweet cash money so she puts up with it. She also knows you have a tiny penis, so she can laugh at you and the slough of embarrassed women you work your way through.
But in space it’s a totally different story. Up there in the big black yonder there are no coeds with low self-esteem, no prostitutes whose patience is yet to be exhausted. In fact there usually aren’t that many women at all, and your tiny penis makes you a poor match for straight female astronauts and gay male astronauts alike.
So today, on your twelfth day on the international space station, you’re going to get super horny. You won’t have beat off since you arrived, since privacy is in short supply up there, and exposing yourself to anyone would result in peals of laughter that would haunt you for the rest of your month long stay.
That’s why you’re going to engage in an ill-advised form of discrete masturbation using a tiny airlock and a bag. In your head it was going to “suck you off” literally, and the cold was going to stimulate your dick something amazing. But in reality it’s going to all but rip your penis off.
The resident physician will save your pound of flesh, but you’ll be disfigured, cursed from now on with a measure of self-control and a normally sized penis. You’ll want to phone your wife immediately, but phone calls from the international space station are super expensive so you won’t get the chance for a few more months.
Odds are nothing terrible will happen before then, though, so kudos on fixing most of your major life problems while in orbit!
Congratulations Horny Astronaut!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Congratulations on Flying Into Another Plane!
Today’s the day! You’ve been begging your parents to let you do this for months, nay, years, and today it all comes together! On today, the day of your sixteenth birthday, you’ll finally have your first flight lesson.
Your mother will drive you to the airfield along winding roads with all the sanctimony she brought to the trips to your Tae Kwan Do lessons. She’ll have the window down, juggling a lit cigarette with the Escape’s steering wheel. The two of you will be silent, though you’ll squirm in your seat a good deal more than usual.
Your mom will do her all to pretend you’re not there. If you could see inside her head you imagine you’d catch her thinking of herself as a chauffer. In your adolescent, sexually repressed brain the idea of a female chauffer will be slightly sexy, and you’ll do your best to force the thought out as quickly as it enters.
The appearance of the airfield will help, its long black land strip stretching out to the horizon. Your mother will park the car and open your door to let you out, running to the building which houses the flight prep class.
After a brief safety seminar you’ll be told that normally they don’t allow new students to fly on their first day, but because it’s your birthday they’ll be letting you take out a Cesna. You’ll leap up from your seat and cheer for joy, causing the one other girl in the class to roll her eyes. To her credit, you will look a little faggy doing it.
Then the instructor will take you out to a specially rigged Cesna, which is supposed to have its two sets of controls rigged so that the “pilot’s” set doesn’t work and the co-pilot’s does. But your mom picked a flight school with an alcoholic mechanic to save a few dollars and you’re going to board a plane where there’s been a mixup and the opposite is true.
As such when you take off, your despondent potential lesbian crush seated behind you and your needlessly creepy flight instructor by your side, you’ll have full control of the plane. By the time the flight instructor realizes that you, with your natural piloting skills, have successfully taken off and are carrying out the maneuver he wanted “you to do” instead of him it’ll be too late. You’ll collide into the one other plane in the air space around the airfield, piloted by another birthday girl who was undone by a drunken mechanic.
Congratulations on Flying Into Another Plane!
Your mother will drive you to the airfield along winding roads with all the sanctimony she brought to the trips to your Tae Kwan Do lessons. She’ll have the window down, juggling a lit cigarette with the Escape’s steering wheel. The two of you will be silent, though you’ll squirm in your seat a good deal more than usual.
Your mom will do her all to pretend you’re not there. If you could see inside her head you imagine you’d catch her thinking of herself as a chauffer. In your adolescent, sexually repressed brain the idea of a female chauffer will be slightly sexy, and you’ll do your best to force the thought out as quickly as it enters.
The appearance of the airfield will help, its long black land strip stretching out to the horizon. Your mother will park the car and open your door to let you out, running to the building which houses the flight prep class.
After a brief safety seminar you’ll be told that normally they don’t allow new students to fly on their first day, but because it’s your birthday they’ll be letting you take out a Cesna. You’ll leap up from your seat and cheer for joy, causing the one other girl in the class to roll her eyes. To her credit, you will look a little faggy doing it.
Then the instructor will take you out to a specially rigged Cesna, which is supposed to have its two sets of controls rigged so that the “pilot’s” set doesn’t work and the co-pilot’s does. But your mom picked a flight school with an alcoholic mechanic to save a few dollars and you’re going to board a plane where there’s been a mixup and the opposite is true.
As such when you take off, your despondent potential lesbian crush seated behind you and your needlessly creepy flight instructor by your side, you’ll have full control of the plane. By the time the flight instructor realizes that you, with your natural piloting skills, have successfully taken off and are carrying out the maneuver he wanted “you to do” instead of him it’ll be too late. You’ll collide into the one other plane in the air space around the airfield, piloted by another birthday girl who was undone by a drunken mechanic.
Congratulations on Flying Into Another Plane!
Monday, November 9, 2009
Congratulations on...Oh Shit! Bats!!!
We had some awesome investment advice brewing for you, a real solid counter to that get rich quick scheme you got off that other, inferior future predicting website run by a certain fake Jamaican (Famaican?) who will remain nameless. But when we tried to clarify just what stocks and/or bonds you needed to purchase today we were assaulted by visions of bats swarming all over you.
The vision was so overwhelming and freaky that no one here in the office wanted to investigate it more closely. As a result we can’t tell you just where or how it will happen. But our advice to you is to go caving today, because if you’re not caving when you’re assaulted by bats then it’s probably going to take place in your home. And if the bats are in your home they’re probably going to be rabid or sick or something. At the very least they’ll be part of a local gang and they’ll probably take all of your shit.
Just visit Carlsbad with your girl. Even if it’s kind of freaky it’s better than being robbed by bats.
Congratulations on...Oh Shit! Bats!!!
The vision was so overwhelming and freaky that no one here in the office wanted to investigate it more closely. As a result we can’t tell you just where or how it will happen. But our advice to you is to go caving today, because if you’re not caving when you’re assaulted by bats then it’s probably going to take place in your home. And if the bats are in your home they’re probably going to be rabid or sick or something. At the very least they’ll be part of a local gang and they’ll probably take all of your shit.
Just visit Carlsbad with your girl. Even if it’s kind of freaky it’s better than being robbed by bats.
Congratulations on...Oh Shit! Bats!!!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: To Live and Die in a Brutal Land!
Brutal Legend is quite possibly the best game I’ve played this year. It’s certainly the game I’ve enjoyed playing most this year, although like any great game it’s riddled with flaws. And I’m ashamed to say it’s a game I very nearly didn’t play. While I’d heard great things from publications I trusted I found it to be a hard sell. Money is tight and time is short at this time of year. Was it really in my best interest to drop $60 on a game that I had at best a vague understanding of?
A game which, while made by a designer I trust more than my mother, hadn’t really announced its attentions first hand, which had instead relied on third parties to dribble out little bits and pieces about just what kind of game it is, stepping in only to make cryptic statements such as “it’s not an RTS” when clearly it is. A game where the developer hardly mentioned the meticulously constructed multiplayer portion for which the single player game is a sort of incredibly elaborate and fun tutorial. EA’s marketing machine has done a great job of letting us know what the atmosphere of the game is like without letting us know what kind of a game it will be, and bully on them for it. Atmosphere is a big part of what makes Brutal Legend great. But in a medium where people still buy games based on their generic classification it’s a bit mystifying, and it makes it hard for consumers to make a choice when so many known entities they’re already excited about are coming out.
Which is an absolute shame, because Brutal Legend is an incredible game. It’s what gaming needs more of, and if it wasn’t for Toys’R’Us’ wonderful buy-two-get-one-free sale I never would’ve purchased it. Thanks for having my back for the last twenty five years of my life, TRU. Here’s hoping you outlast the reprehensible people at Game Stop and become a socially acceptable place to buy video games for nerds in the years to come.
Brutal Legend, from the moment you insert the disc, makes no apologies for what it is. The opening scene is a totally genuine portrayal of the people who made the game, the sort of people who take delight in the act of just walking through a record store and poouring surreptitiously at the wondrous items we have no intention to buy. It lets you know who the game is for, who the game is really about, before you’ve even open up the album jacket and peruse the awesome start menu.
Brutal Legend wears its heart on its sleeve in every sense of the world. It is unabashed in its affection for both its subject matter and its characters, but it remains willing to laugh at them. It treats both metal and its enthusiasts with the aplomb and humor they deserve. It’s like a version of Metalocalypse where the characters are real, relatable people instead of hilarious caricatures. It’s nothing like looking into a mirror, but it is like reading a book or watching a movie in that, in a strange twist, a cast of video game characters are up to snuff.
But we’d expect little else from Tim Schafer, and indeed this has been a cornerstone of the marketing campaign surrounding Brutal Legend. As mentioned earlier the characters of the game seem to be used as selling points more than the game itself, with Jack Black appearing in character at press conferences and vamping as Eddie Riggs on Metalocalypse. From Monkey Island to Brutal Legend this has always been a strength of the titles Schafer has worked on and as much a reason to purchase them as the games these characters inhabit.
Unfortunately in the case of Brutal Legend the game itself is kind of a mess. Yahtzee’s hyperbolic review goes a bit far on this front, as expected, but there are some serious issues with the game’s mechanics and controls. As a brawler it lacks significant depth and character advancement is tied to world exploration, a dangerous if ambitious choice. As an open world exploration game the driving controls are frustratingly sloppy and far too many areas can only be accessed by a single route for plot purposes, even if you disregard the various “invisible walls” the game condescends to inform you of with a flow breaking game notification. And there’s no representation on your map for the various areas you’ve explored and most of the collectibles you’ve found, with Metal Forges constituting the sole exception to the rule. Along with the inability to play a waypoint at any location that isn’t a “plot event” and the total absence of any sort of useful map during the completely-but-apparently-not-RTS sequences it seems like the game has a serious problem with maps in general.
As for the RTS game itself, it’s overwhelmingly new and different, with demands that players of traditional RTSes have rarely had cause to consider. Your character becomes a resource himself, and how you spend your time with him is critical. Will you fly around and see what your enemy is getting up to? Take the fight to the other stage and drop a zeppelin on them for good measure? Or will you snatch up all the resource points you can and hope for the best? The way you manage your avatar is as important as the way you manage your fans and units. It’s almost as if the RTS’ golden standard of “actions per minute” as a means of measuring player skill has been represented mechanically. And since RTS games are, to be fair, incredibly hard, it isn’t tough to see why many reviewers who stepped into the game expecting God of War were baffled by the entire thing when they found Sacrifice staring back at them.
But I’d still literally recommend Brutal Legend to anyone, and I mean anyone. I’d recommend it to people who don’t even traditionally play games, and only partially because I want Tim Schafer to have the sort of financial clout to be able to do whatever the fuck he wants. It’s a great introduction to what it means to be a gamer, to put yourself into the shoes of another individual and simultaneously laugh at and cry with that character. It’s pretty easy, although along with the aforementioned difficulties it is also hurt by a general lack of documentation and explanation. Melee a Bride to death to see what I mean.
But it captures what it means to inhabit a new world and a new space perfectly. The world of Brutal Legend is the most vibrant one I’ve experienced this year. Go fuck yourself, Grand Theft Auto 4’s rendition of New York. Brutal Legend takes all the energy you put into making a giant generic cityscape as based on New York as Law and Order is based on actual events and turns it into a world which is, as Schafer promises, ripped from album covers and lyrics. The result is something amazingly immersive which, despite being littered by celebrities, is never overwhelmed by them. Lemmy from Motorhead cracking a joke about drinking a lot and generally being himself seems perfectly natural in Brutal Legend. Ozzy Osbourne’s Guardian of Metal, as well his smaller, more humorously referential character, are both spot on, and feel less like attempts to shoehorn Ozzy into the game and more like categorizations of him within the hierarchy of metal. To continue would be to list off the many talented musicians who lent their voice to the game so I’ll stay my hand. But not before mentioning that many comedy greats make appearances, with Brian Posehn representing my personal favorite in The Hunter. If you’re a fan of The Comedians of Comedy you’ll find a lot to love here.
And with that reference I should make an admission: I’m not much of a metal fan. I liked metal well enough during my youth, but that sentence should betray my ignorance of both the culture and the subject matter. This game made me love metal a lot more. As I said before its genuine affection for the culture and its willingness to display both the breadth of the music, its adherents and the art and culture tangential to the music can easily serve as a primer on what to follow within metal as a genre. Even if your exposure is solely that of the pop culture wallflower you’ll leave this game air guitaring with your controller. You’ll consider the appropriateness of various metal classics in relation to your daily life and you’ll realize just how important Lord of the Rings was the metal as a culture.
To go any deeper into the game would be to issue forth spoilers, and I really don’t want to do that. The sense of discovery that Brutal Legend conveys is one of its greatest strengths, and it’s the rare sort of exploratory game that actually has me sitting down and exploring the world in my sweet ass car. Each time you find a new dragon statue or one of the “legends” which fills you in on the history of the Brutal Land it’s a satisfying and enriching feeling which adds more than just texture to the world. So I’ll leave you with a plea: come play Brutal Legend, not because it’s the cleanest experience, but because it’s likely the most worthwhile way to spent $60 and ten to fourteen hours on your life which has come out this year. See you at the Sea of Black Tears.
A game which, while made by a designer I trust more than my mother, hadn’t really announced its attentions first hand, which had instead relied on third parties to dribble out little bits and pieces about just what kind of game it is, stepping in only to make cryptic statements such as “it’s not an RTS” when clearly it is. A game where the developer hardly mentioned the meticulously constructed multiplayer portion for which the single player game is a sort of incredibly elaborate and fun tutorial. EA’s marketing machine has done a great job of letting us know what the atmosphere of the game is like without letting us know what kind of a game it will be, and bully on them for it. Atmosphere is a big part of what makes Brutal Legend great. But in a medium where people still buy games based on their generic classification it’s a bit mystifying, and it makes it hard for consumers to make a choice when so many known entities they’re already excited about are coming out.
Which is an absolute shame, because Brutal Legend is an incredible game. It’s what gaming needs more of, and if it wasn’t for Toys’R’Us’ wonderful buy-two-get-one-free sale I never would’ve purchased it. Thanks for having my back for the last twenty five years of my life, TRU. Here’s hoping you outlast the reprehensible people at Game Stop and become a socially acceptable place to buy video games for nerds in the years to come.
Brutal Legend, from the moment you insert the disc, makes no apologies for what it is. The opening scene is a totally genuine portrayal of the people who made the game, the sort of people who take delight in the act of just walking through a record store and poouring surreptitiously at the wondrous items we have no intention to buy. It lets you know who the game is for, who the game is really about, before you’ve even open up the album jacket and peruse the awesome start menu.
Brutal Legend wears its heart on its sleeve in every sense of the world. It is unabashed in its affection for both its subject matter and its characters, but it remains willing to laugh at them. It treats both metal and its enthusiasts with the aplomb and humor they deserve. It’s like a version of Metalocalypse where the characters are real, relatable people instead of hilarious caricatures. It’s nothing like looking into a mirror, but it is like reading a book or watching a movie in that, in a strange twist, a cast of video game characters are up to snuff.
But we’d expect little else from Tim Schafer, and indeed this has been a cornerstone of the marketing campaign surrounding Brutal Legend. As mentioned earlier the characters of the game seem to be used as selling points more than the game itself, with Jack Black appearing in character at press conferences and vamping as Eddie Riggs on Metalocalypse. From Monkey Island to Brutal Legend this has always been a strength of the titles Schafer has worked on and as much a reason to purchase them as the games these characters inhabit.
Unfortunately in the case of Brutal Legend the game itself is kind of a mess. Yahtzee’s hyperbolic review goes a bit far on this front, as expected, but there are some serious issues with the game’s mechanics and controls. As a brawler it lacks significant depth and character advancement is tied to world exploration, a dangerous if ambitious choice. As an open world exploration game the driving controls are frustratingly sloppy and far too many areas can only be accessed by a single route for plot purposes, even if you disregard the various “invisible walls” the game condescends to inform you of with a flow breaking game notification. And there’s no representation on your map for the various areas you’ve explored and most of the collectibles you’ve found, with Metal Forges constituting the sole exception to the rule. Along with the inability to play a waypoint at any location that isn’t a “plot event” and the total absence of any sort of useful map during the completely-but-apparently-not-RTS sequences it seems like the game has a serious problem with maps in general.
As for the RTS game itself, it’s overwhelmingly new and different, with demands that players of traditional RTSes have rarely had cause to consider. Your character becomes a resource himself, and how you spend your time with him is critical. Will you fly around and see what your enemy is getting up to? Take the fight to the other stage and drop a zeppelin on them for good measure? Or will you snatch up all the resource points you can and hope for the best? The way you manage your avatar is as important as the way you manage your fans and units. It’s almost as if the RTS’ golden standard of “actions per minute” as a means of measuring player skill has been represented mechanically. And since RTS games are, to be fair, incredibly hard, it isn’t tough to see why many reviewers who stepped into the game expecting God of War were baffled by the entire thing when they found Sacrifice staring back at them.
But I’d still literally recommend Brutal Legend to anyone, and I mean anyone. I’d recommend it to people who don’t even traditionally play games, and only partially because I want Tim Schafer to have the sort of financial clout to be able to do whatever the fuck he wants. It’s a great introduction to what it means to be a gamer, to put yourself into the shoes of another individual and simultaneously laugh at and cry with that character. It’s pretty easy, although along with the aforementioned difficulties it is also hurt by a general lack of documentation and explanation. Melee a Bride to death to see what I mean.
But it captures what it means to inhabit a new world and a new space perfectly. The world of Brutal Legend is the most vibrant one I’ve experienced this year. Go fuck yourself, Grand Theft Auto 4’s rendition of New York. Brutal Legend takes all the energy you put into making a giant generic cityscape as based on New York as Law and Order is based on actual events and turns it into a world which is, as Schafer promises, ripped from album covers and lyrics. The result is something amazingly immersive which, despite being littered by celebrities, is never overwhelmed by them. Lemmy from Motorhead cracking a joke about drinking a lot and generally being himself seems perfectly natural in Brutal Legend. Ozzy Osbourne’s Guardian of Metal, as well his smaller, more humorously referential character, are both spot on, and feel less like attempts to shoehorn Ozzy into the game and more like categorizations of him within the hierarchy of metal. To continue would be to list off the many talented musicians who lent their voice to the game so I’ll stay my hand. But not before mentioning that many comedy greats make appearances, with Brian Posehn representing my personal favorite in The Hunter. If you’re a fan of The Comedians of Comedy you’ll find a lot to love here.
And with that reference I should make an admission: I’m not much of a metal fan. I liked metal well enough during my youth, but that sentence should betray my ignorance of both the culture and the subject matter. This game made me love metal a lot more. As I said before its genuine affection for the culture and its willingness to display both the breadth of the music, its adherents and the art and culture tangential to the music can easily serve as a primer on what to follow within metal as a genre. Even if your exposure is solely that of the pop culture wallflower you’ll leave this game air guitaring with your controller. You’ll consider the appropriateness of various metal classics in relation to your daily life and you’ll realize just how important Lord of the Rings was the metal as a culture.
To go any deeper into the game would be to issue forth spoilers, and I really don’t want to do that. The sense of discovery that Brutal Legend conveys is one of its greatest strengths, and it’s the rare sort of exploratory game that actually has me sitting down and exploring the world in my sweet ass car. Each time you find a new dragon statue or one of the “legends” which fills you in on the history of the Brutal Land it’s a satisfying and enriching feeling which adds more than just texture to the world. So I’ll leave you with a plea: come play Brutal Legend, not because it’s the cleanest experience, but because it’s likely the most worthwhile way to spent $60 and ten to fourteen hours on your life which has come out this year. See you at the Sea of Black Tears.
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