ThunderPeel2001

Brütal Legend overload...!

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I'm sure glad they included the "show everything on the map", that's one way to get ME to buy the DLC!

Ever since The Saboteur simply had this "Map that shows all" in the game itself, I hope EVERY game has it, at least as an unlockable!

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But the main thing I'm interested in is the last addition: The Occulus of the Lost -- basically something that shows where all the undiscovered items left on the map are.

I wasn't interested in the DLC before, but now I am. Yay!

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I wasn't interested in the DLC before, but now I am. Yay!

That's precisely how I felt. Odd they haven't made more of a big deal out of it... it's a major addition to the game!

I'll pick it up this weekend and post back my thoughts.

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Well I picked it up and I have to say that the Occulus of the Lost makes driving around the landscape listening to metal a LOT more fun! :tup:

Only a few more things to go now 100% -yuk yuk-

Also: How do you change the effigies????

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If anyone is interested in picking it up on the cheap, you can get TWO copies of Brutal Legend for 26 bucks shipped... although it might be OOS when you read this.

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If VGChartz is to be trusted, Brütal Legend has sold more than 1M copies (360 + PS3). Is that a record for Tim Schafer? Cause for celebration? Or is it not enough, considering the probably expensive ad campaigns?

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If VGChartz is to be trusted, Brütal Legend has sold more than 1M copies (360 + PS3). Is that a record for Tim Schafer? Cause for celebration? Or is it not enough, considering the probably expensive ad campaigns?

I think Full Throttle sold about the same (if memory serves).

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really? because 1M back then was really a shit load

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really? because 1M back then was really a shit load

Yeah, that would be pretty incredible, especially for a PC adventure game in any era.

1 million copies doesn't mean much anymore though its kind of the default break even mark for a lot of games. Though I'd imagine with music licenses, celebrity voice acting, Brutal Legend probably was pretty expensive.

I still think it was a pretty good game that needs more of a chance to shine by building on what it did right for a sequel, I just hope it gets that chance.

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really? because 1M back then was really a shit load

There was an interview with Tim Schafer were he discussed sales figures, but dang if I can't find it. :(

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Thunderpeel's right. I'm very sure Full Throttle sold a million, since Grim Fandango is regularly counted as only selling half a million copies, which was considered a bomb to LucasArts. I also couldn't find the recent interview where Schafer doled out the numbers on all of his games, but I bet Thrik or Kroms could dig it up. It was linked to from Mixnmojo.com, which has recently bombed. Tim Schafer is noted for saying Full Throttle sold very well for the explosion on the cover, though.

Also I just finished this game a few days ago and I'm going to write a long post on it soon when I gather my thoughts. Maybe tomorrow. There's a lot a liked and there's a lot I didn't like. Overall, I had fun though.

What sucks is I'm currently locked out of my game, preventing me from getting 100% completion, which is somewhat okay because I beat the last 15% completely of the game all in one night, so I don't have to suffer like those that made the mistake of quitting the game right before the last battle, only to find out they couldn't finish it and resolve the story. I just really need to gather a few more pieces of concept art. This is apparently a problem only with the PS3 version and happens only near the end of the game. When you quit and save after all that progress, continuing the game only results in the loading screen looping forever.

Checking the Double Fine Action Forums, it seems the developers are aware of this problem, but it's been a month and a half and still no patch. :(

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Alright, so I meant to write what I thought of the game a lot sooner then put it off since it was going to be a long wall of text, but I guess I'd better do it now that I ended up getting all of the trophies last weekend (sort of got lucky... you'll see) or I'll never do it. The load game bug sucks and I still can't currently get back into my game until the promised patch is finally released, but apparently this has been promised for nearly four months now. I had to reload an earlier chapter before the game quit loading and just play the game until I finally had 100%. Luckily after playing some multiplayer, this went by really quickly the second time around, taking maybe only an hour or two to finish the last 15% of the game.

In the single player mode, this game was definitely cut short. I was left wanting more in a bad way. It seems like whatever was planned was just never fleshed out in terms of both gameplay and story. For instance, I found it really bizarre that

the Tainted Coil did not have a sort of base you had to infiltrate and kill Doviculus. Instead Doviculus came to you at the end, causing you to only have one true Tainted Coil stage battle. The only other time you see his troops in a fighting situation is if you feel like taking them on when revisting the first third of the map later in the game. They never appear in the side missions.

Every faction and every character in the game except The Tainted Coil had some sort of base or area for you to conquer. I guess you could count the beginning but that didn't seem like it was their definite area since it crumbled away and all. I was under the impression the whole time playing that I would have to get around the area where the volcano was in order to take Doviculus on. Never happened.

I enjoyed the story and it's little twists even if it felt like there were chunks missing. I was under the impression from this thread that Ophelia

would not end up with Eddie at the end, but luckily I was wrong.

That's what I get for reading everyone's spoilers before actually playing the game itself. That ridiculous

half-cliffhanger

was pretty lame as well.

The gameplay seemed all sorts of disjointed though. I recommend anyone playing to just go ahead and use this map as they go:

http://images.roosterteeth.com/images/4ad6590960ef2_bighugemap.jpg

I like to try to collect all the shit in games like this. In Zelda games I always try to accomplish everything possible in the Overworld until I hit a standstill and then go to the next dungeon. I was trying to explore the Brutal Legend map myself in the first third and find what I could on my own, but I was just getting incredibly stressed out. Over and over I was just driving off cliffs on accident or dying somehow by just exploring and hitting a dead end or a bottomless pit. My car kept getting stuck between trees. It was just no fun to try to find things without some sort of beacon or radar. I know you can get that particular car add-on after you beat the game AND buy the DLC, but that's pretty cheap if you ask me, since the major reason for getting the serpents is to just have some boosts during the battles, without the legends it's very hard to understand the story, and some of the solos are just too cool to miss.

My major gripes with the game used to be just how repetitive the side missions were and how difficult the RTS stuff was, but at least the latter I found out was not so bad at all. I was playing fine on Brutal mode, but once I spent like four hours trying to defeat Lionwhyte in his pleasure palace, I realized I was doing something wrong. I am also very inexperienced with RTS. Looking up Tim Schafer's article on using double teams to your advantage helped me get to the end of the game, but really my major problems were just being way too slow with the solos and commands, not knowing what I could do that was the most powerful for my army, choosing to spawn my troops at random, and spending too much time trying to capture geysers instead of making my main focus the enemy's stage.

After starting the multiplayer where nearly everyone either an aggressive asshole or just plain expert and losing a bunch of times, I checked out some guides and started aping what these assholes did to win. So when I had to replay the last section of the game, especially parts I had trouble on against the Drowning Doom, I suddenly found it all to be a breeze and everything clicked.

Part of the game's problem is that the campaign mode is supposed to be a tutorial for multiplayer. In the meantime, nothing in game really holds your hand and lets you know what are good strategies to use or when the best time to use certain solos are. There's so many other modes of play that the game has to focus on as well even though the meat sort of should have been the RTS stuff. So I had to read the statement initially where Schafer says the double teams are extremely important? Well yeah, that's true, but why didn't the game ever make this clear?

I think Brutal Legend just needed to be longer and more repetitive (I can't believe I'm asking for this) in terms of the RTS stuff instead of just giving you one off battles to try out new members of your team each time your army gets bigger. I never once felt prepared or like I had much of a clue what I was doing while playing campaign mode with the RTS stuff and it really doesn't help that there's no way in game to actually practice. You could practice ambushes everywhere, but no dice on just messing with geysers. I guess I could have went over to the AI stage battles on retrospect, but it didn't cross my mind since I usually see multiplayer as something to hit once you are done with single player.

So all that complaining aside, I think once you get the hang of all the RTS stuff in multiplayer, you start seeing how fun it actually is and how well it truly works. The game makes it such a hard shell to crack to get to that point, though. Once I started playing alright online and getting in the thick of all of my units and destroying the other player, I could see how awesome it felt to command all of these characters successfully. It's really too bad that a lot of this fun is confined to multiplayer. I would love to play a co-op game as well against another two other players if I ever get around to it.

The only major gripe I have with the multiplayer is just the matchmaking. I've heard there are more players on the 360 version, so maybe all of this is alleviated there, but it seems like the only people I usually get to play against are just assholes who are complete experts on the game and have something like 75% wins or more. Hardly ever have I gotten matched up with players who are at the same skill level as me or below me. I think this scares a lot of new players off because how do you successfully get better if every player currently available demolishes you online? If I surrender a game I already know I'm going to lose because the guy's avatar is at my stage first thing in the game comboing and soloing efficiently and completely killing me and everyone coming off my stage, I'll get paired with the same guy the next game since no one else is online.

Then there are times when clearly no one is online at all.

I never figured out how to play Drowning Doom well, so I usually use Tainted Coil since they seem to fit my play style the best and are actually relatively simple to command even though they seem more complicated. Only problem is my initial Battle Nun that needs to give birth is always a major weak point so that winning or losing seems to balance on them living very early on in the game. If I'm not able to defend my initial one or two nuns well, I'm almost always guaranteed a loss. Again, this is usually not a problem unless playing a super aggressive asshole, but even if I switch to Ironheade, who does not have that major weakpoint, the next match I'll still be demolished by the same guy more often than not. I was stuck once a few times with this crazy mother fucker who would just use his car first thing in a match and was just an expert at maneuvering it to completely run me and everyone on my team over without a hitch. He was too fast for me or my team to destroy his car.

But yeah, full disclosure I got most of my online wins by getting stuck between these two goofballs surrendering to eachother online one night. No one else was on and I kept getting paired with one of them and they kept surrendering.

EDIT: When I was planning to type this a couple of weeks ago, I was going to say how useless it was to put defenses on your stage when they do nothing to prevent you from losing, but then I realized this is more for online when people rush your stage early on and you can kill their low level troops by yourself with your stage components without ever having to summon any of your guys. This is not useful in the single player game because the AI never pulls any kind of trickery like that and only seems to storm your stage when they have gotten powerful enough to win.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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I'll echo a lot of that.

Overall I enjoyed it, though after tracking down every serpent using that map before the last battle, I felt it was long enough. If I'd rushed through, maybe that wouldn't have been the case, but the 3rd person RTS setup for battles just seemed deeply strange and ineffective to me.

Maybe they'd have been able to tune it up a lot more if Activision weren't tying up senior Double Fine people with a lawsuit for most of the later stages of development.

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Maybe they'd have been able to tune it up a lot more if Activision weren't tying up senior Double Fine people with a lawsuit for most of the later stages of development.

Yeah the Game Developer postmortem seemed to hint that maybe a lot of the unfinished parts of the game were cut out because of the headache of the lawsuit, but I could be wrong for thinking this. I can't double check since it's no longer available online without paying.

I was hoping the Art of Brutal Legend book that was supposed to come out might have illuminated ideas for unfinished or unmade parts, but I guess I'll never know now since it was canceled and all.

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Yeah that's a really annoying aspect that casts a 'What could have been?' type shadow over the game. It does seem like things just needed more polish which is mental considering the development time, and I also thought maybe there'd be some ultimate demon island with the final battle(s).

I hadn't actually considered the first island until you mentioned it, but now I come to think of it the place you start off is named as the demon's home isn't it? Or is it just an overrun shrine to Ormagoden? Or both? :fart:

It's been long enough now that any grievances with the gameplay have been mostly forgotten though, and my memories of the game are mostly pleasant. It's the atmosphere and story I remember most which were spot on IMO. Unfortunately due to the gameplay being a bit of a slog I'm unlikely to replay it like I can with other Schafer games, even though I found the RTS gameplay kind of easy on normal (didn't fail once).

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Yeah that's a really annoying aspect that casts a 'What could have been?' type shadow over the game. It does seem like things just needed more polish which is mental considering the development time, and I also thought maybe there'd be some ultimate demon island with the final battle(s).

Yeah, I hate that too. It really could have been great if just given more polish or length. I don't think the RTS stuff is broken at all as some people claim. That seems to be the main reason everyone loathes it on the internet.

I hadn't actually considered the first island until you mentioned it, but now I come to think of it the place you start off is named as the demon's home isn't it? Or is it just an overrun shrine to Ormagoden? Or both? :fart:

I thought it was just supposed to be an overrun shrine to Ormagoden, like the druids were there to fetch the axe, but I could be wrong. In all of the cutscenes with Doviculus later on it seems to be taking place in the first area of the game.

If that's so, it's a very weird placement on the map for The Tainted Coil to be so close to Bladehenge, which initially seems to be a very well kept safe haven.

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excellent writeup.

The first mission has much more meaning/content/depth/length than the later missions. Especially the missions you got then you went on tour, they were all quite simple.

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Excellent review, you made great arguments for what was good and bad about the game and summed it up perfectly. I really wish they'd done a better job of explaining things to the user, and hiding the Legends was a dumb idea -- they're important to the plot.

You also make me want to find a good guide and learn how to actually start enjoying the RTS stuff. Any pointers?

Shame you're on PS3, wouldn't mind learning about this game with someone on the 360.

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Thanks Thunderpeel!

I really wish they'd done a better job of explaining things to the user, and hiding the Legends was a dumb idea -- they're important to the plot.

Yeah definitely. I don't like how in later key cutscenes Eddie assumes the knowledge from the Legends whether you have been finding them up to that point or not.

You might actually have an easier time finding a wider variety of players on the 360. I think the most interesting matches are the ones you still don't know if you are going to win or lose halfway through. I'm comfortable with people who play sort of similar to the "normal" AI. But, I think the best guides are these three:

http://kotaku.com/5382233/tim-schafer-explains-how-to-play-brutal-legend

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?p=2709461

http://roosterteethcomics.com/forum/viewTopic.php?id=2224654&page=2

I think you linked to the first one earlier in this thread, but almost all of the tips Erik Robson speaks of for each faction are nearly essential to follow. The second one I found on Penny Arcade first, but I couldn't find the direct link to that, so the LucasForums one is a copy and paste type deal. It's really comprehensive on breaking everything down but doesn't necessarily give good strategies. The third one has some helpful strategies to use for specific factions or areas in the initial few posts before Cantido reposts his guide afterwards.

On Tim Schafer's part in the first link he says he likes to keep his army together and not split up, but I either almost always get screwed by someone splitting up their units into two or I screw someone that way myself. I'm not sure why he recommends that. Even splitting off some units to go harass someone's stage early on can be really distracting to the opposing player, since it forces them to have to do something about it.

I found it's good to get in the habit of using the healing or strengthening solos early on when capturing initial geysers that you know the enemy is also going to go well. The main game never even really explained the point of these solos outside of freeing guys from the mine. Sometimes having the Battle Cry attack multiplier going on or some kind of healing multiplier will make all the difference when you are fighting over the same geyser with an enemy team with roughly the same units.

I'm terrible at stages where there's only one geyser that's not at your base to fight over, I tend to panic too much and screw it up. The only one I'm okay at is the feeding pit where the other two geysers are hard to get to because of the big worm. If I'm playing a team with motorcycle type guys, at least one, it not all, will easily get past the worm. I don't know what to do with Drowning Doom on that level because no one on their team seems fast enough to get to the geysers without dying except the crawling head and if she dies you have to make a whole new one.

Some people online are also great at doing the harm the "handicap the other avatar solo" *while* I'm in the middle of fighting them one on one and just end up killing me and my major units. I have no idea how to learn how to multitask that well.

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Yeah, I remember thinking that playing the multiplayer AI was far more enjoyable than doing the story RTS stuff... I actually began to realise there was a well balanced game in there, but then I gave up and forgot about it.

Thanks for the links, I hope I won't just get stuck playing against some super god who kicks my ass.

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Hoo! Love that adventure game version. Sweet graphics!

Just got 100% completion on this the other day, too :tup:

I can confirm that playing the game officially makes me nauseous. Seriously. I've no idea why, but it does. I can play it longer if I turn off the sound... Going around getting the achievements has actually been quite enjoyable (not the 100% one, that was a pain in the ass, the other ones).

I don't know if I'm building up an immunity, or if having the audio turned off helps, but I've actually enjoyed playing it again.

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Was it the music constantly playing that made you nauseous or the colors on the screen and how everything moved?

I don't remember feeling sick in Brutal Legend, but I'm sometimes prone to it. I felt sick in a few instance in Psychonauts just because I constantly felt I was trying to take in so much in a 4:3 screen. Widescreen has really helped 3D games for me.

I do remember getting routinely angry trying to manuever that stupid car around in some areas, but a lot of that was my fault for being way too thorough and a lazy jackass who refuses to get out of their car to get closer to anything. NO I MUST DRIVE UP TO IT. So I just ended up getting stuck between things way too often and inching my way out of tight spots as well as falling off various cliffs at routine rates.

You're on 360, right Thunderpeel? I'm guessing the fatal bug in the PS3 version still hasn't been patched.

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