Tim Schafer talks Brutal Legend, critical response, and DLC

Yes it could! It could use a jump button. DLC that Schafer!

*snap*

i agree. for me, there was just too much to worry about when it got to the bigger battles and it took the fun out of the battling.

i was fine with the RTS elements, i just didn't think that the game itself was as creative or well-made as his other stuff. you could tell from the way the side missions were recycled that it just wasn't all that inspired. psychonauts was an unbelievably clever game, was funnier, and it was also a lot longer! a 6 hour campaign from tim schafer was VERY disappointing.

I'm sorry to hear that :( The stage battles where so MUCH fun! The MP is so refreshing from what's out there that makes it even better...

I just wished that Schafer release a patch that fixed the PS3 version of the game... we can't even win the platinum trophy! (Unless you win 50 MP matches without getting out of the game)

That's the majority of the game!

This. I'm not an RTS fan, esp, on consoles. The demo was awesome and I preordered based on it but soon realized, the demo is not indicative of the main gameplay. Facepalm. I actually felt kind of ripped and wished I'd waited for it to be @ a greatest hits price or in the used bin.

Agreed, the game's got more heart than anything I've played in years and that alone puts it right at the top of my list for 2009 (maybe just behind Batman). Escaping from a collapsing building in a car made from the metal flesh of a fire god while 'Through the Fire and the Flames' plays on the car stereo? Most fun I've had for years! So glad I traded in the overhyped MW2 for this.

I loved the demo and was excited to get this game, but comments like this on forums and from reviews put me off. Fortunately I just bought Psychonauts on Steam last week, so Tim's still getting some money from me this Christmas :)

S-A-M-E situation .. totally agree

Those are definitely not oft-compatible genres. The demo content was a mistake.

I'm really glad I waited for the reviews before I bought. I loved the demo, but if I bought an RTS thinking I was getting a hack-n-slash, I would have been furious. Just an awful way to market the game.

Guys, stop beeing afraid!

It's not and all RTS! Yes it's got RTS elements and yes you have to manage your troops, but it's not as deep and complicated as in Command and Conquer or Starcraft!

You don't even have to do that much of micro-management of troops, i bet you guys heard "Oh, it's an RTS" and got afraid of it beeing C&C Style, it's not that!

The single player stage battles are even easier and not at all totally RTS, so please, give the freaking game a try in it's full, buy it!

Definitely rent it. The RTS elements are really small and most of it is button mashing and awesome solos. Its one of my favourite games of 2009 because of the humor and energy that it has going for it.

I will get it when it gets cheaper. I understand that it's more watered down RTS elements than full on command and conquer, but I don't care. I expected a hack and slash, and I don't want any micromanagement in that. From what I've read it trys the mix the two elements and gets neither one perfect. I really want to play the game but $60 or even $40 is too much for a game with a play style I'm not fond of. The other thing that wasn't revealed to me about Brutal Legend until right before it launched was the open world. Not a bad thing, but I tend not to like open world games. I get bored and it feels like the open world and sidequests are just something that keep you from the meat of the game. I'm sure it's a good game but between the open world and rts elements, two genres I don't like, I can't put my money down on it. If it was god of war with metal and jack black, I would have bought it day one, but why would I buy a game invested into genres I don't like?

I got the demo and loved t the first time I played, but then after a second play through I just thought: 'Well that sucked.'
If I hadn't played it again I would have bought it on day 1.

The crappy thing is for my tastes a game that played more like the demo all the way through would have been AMAZING. That's what makes the game so disappointing, I saw the potential but then it took the gameply in the totally opposite direction of what I would have liked. I ended up going into it expecting way too much and wanting to play the game that I played the demo for, otherwise I would have waited for it to be a budget title adn would have been perfectly happy with it with lower expectations and price.

@ Maulok

I loved the demo too, but alas I won't be purchasing since I read about the RTS element.

An 82 average for this game is FAR too kind. It's more along the lines of a 55-60.

That's really cute, tmac, but totally not the point

It's tepid for a lot of reasons...

Tepid when compared to Psychonauts:
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbx/psychonauts?q=Psychonauts

It's tepid because this game was really shaping up to be a Game of the Year candidate, yeah Call of Duty will win not matter what, but at least it was looking like a candidate... at least a winner in action game of the year, but it's not an action game it's a real time strategy game.

It's tepid because Psychonauts was an awesome platformer... so far Tim Schafer has changed the face of point and click adventures, platformers, and now everyone was like "He's taking on the 3rd person beat em up genre too?", and look at the game's theme. Heavy Metal. The game screams with potential for one of the best Devil May Cry / God of War style beat em ups, just based on the theme alone... mix that in with Jack Black humor and the open world environment... you have the makings of one of the best games of that genre ever... then it falls flat, and becomes an RTS for 70% of the game.

Expectations where high on this game... alot of it came from Tim's reputation, EAs hype machine, and the legal battle that ensued over the games rights cause Activision thought they let something of pure awesome go and were pissed. Not to mention the demo confirmed everything we believed, just the demo doesn't warn us that hardly anything you do in the demo you get to do afterward... That's where the tepid reviews come from.

This game is a Chocolate Donut stuffed with pepperoni instead of Vanilla Pudding... Pepperoni is good yeah, just not what I expected this donut to be stuffed with, and because it is stuffed with pepporoni means now I got flavors that don't go well together.

82 is pretty tepid nowadays with the current massive score inflation.

Didn't the Dead Space guys say anything below an 80 made the bosses unhappy? An 82 isn't that great then.

But I haven't played the game so i can't say anything about it.

All of those favorable reviews are raving over the heavy metal theme of the game... not the gameplay.

A pepperoni-stuffed chocolate donut sounds oddly appetizing.

Schafer changed the face of platformers?

I think that was already done by Miyamoto, twice.

I'm pretty sure schafer didn't change the face of anything

It was NOT a genre shift, it was an "RTS/Hack n Slash" from the day it was born.

People think it was a "genre shift" because of the not-so-well-conceived demo...

Brutal Legend continues to be one of the freshest games this year and it's MP its LOADS of fun...

Thanks man, someone that's not afraid of unique Gameplay twists...

+1

@Ashkental: I don't think that it's a matter of fear. Some people just aren't into RTS's.

True brad, but then again the game doesn't exactly play like a conventional RTS. Its much more active and aggressive than most RTS games, and its a well-made console RTS as well, which is simply amazing considering how many RTS games have to gut themselves just to work on a console controller.

"Yall just hyped yourself up over the game without really looking into it past the demo."

Here's the thing. The purpose of a demo is to demonstrate the game (hence the name 'demo'). A consumer tries the demo, and on the basis of the gameplay in the demo, should be able to judge whether or not the game features the type of gameplay that the consumer finds appealing, thusly making an informed purchase. Playing a section of the game should trump any pre-release hype that a game has received.

The demo for Brutal Legend failed miserably in terms of providing an accurate representation of gameplay. It was, however, a huge success in that it got people to buy the game.

Snooter, thats why I said that the demo could of been improved, and that the beginning of the game didn't reflect the entirety of its nature. But at its core, the singleplayer is light in terms of the RTS aspect, as a simple zerg of upgraded units with some healers thrown in can win just about every part of it. Your main character, and how you interract with your units, plays much more of a role than the mass itself.

But!
The demo shouldn't be the only way you get info about the game, especially if you are considering purchasing it.

sure, it means perplexed, but not perplexed as in you have a hard puzzle in front of you that you can't figure out, but more so perplexed as in having difficulty coming to terms with something adversarial.

the usage of it was perfectly fine.

David,
You're wrong here. The sentence makes no sense if you replace "nonplussed" with "perplexed":

"Brütal Legend may have sold less than thrillingly during the game's first month on shelves, but Double Fine head Tim Schafer remains perplexed."

It implies that the expectation was for it to sell less than thrillingly, and despite that coming true, Tim is confused as to why it didn't do even worse. In this case, the writer seems to think that "plussed" (not a word, I know) means dejected or crestfallen, or ready to give up, and thus "nonplussed" means the opposite. Next he's going to write about how this begs some question... *cringe*

I was actually going to comment on the exact same thing; I'm glad I searched the comments first!

You are correct. I do not think the word means what the author thinks it means.