Tuesday 29 September 2009

Tim Schafer: We are not worthy of your radness

Look at him there. The man who brought us Grim Fandango, Day of The Tentacle, Full Throttle, Psychonauts and now Brutal Legend. His radness cannot be quantified.

I could perhaps write a biographical piece here, documenting Schafer's radness over his game development career. But right now, all I want to do is spill my metaphorical gamer-jizz all over your internets, because now that I've played Brutal Legend: I'm hyped.

If you need me to tell you that Brutal Legend is a metal fantasy hack n' slash featuring Jack Black, Rob Halford, Ozzy and Lemmy (amongst others) then I just did. You're welcome. Now despite the size of my nerd-boner, I'm not going to blow smoke up your collective arse: as far as gameplay is concerned, Brutal legend is a decidedly so-so affair. Slash, slash, block, dodge, roll, slash, slash slash, slash, guitar riff........wait......guitar riff!? That's not standard hack and slash attire Mr. Schafer! What on earth are you doing? I feel I can answer on his behalf and further my schizophrenic outbursts when I say "I just wanted to make a game that was rad." Well, sir, you seem to have succeeded.


You see, it's not the gameplay that we should be looking at. Whilst being very standard, it is quite playable and is presented with a love and affection for the subject matter not seen since Littlebigplanet. I know there are those of you who will take one look at the sub-par combat and turn thy noses upward. You can't be blamed, but ask yourself: what level of technical excellence are you holding out for? This game expresses more passion and creativity than any other game I've seen this year (perhaps with the exception of Scribblenauts). Sure I'd like groundbreaking gameplay too, but life's never perfect, is it?

HEAVY FUCKING METAL.

2 comments:

Death By Die said...

man, rarely does groundbreaking gameplay occur. its usually an amalgamation of a few elements thrown together and luckily enough works. some games dont need to have gameplay such as this, and brutal legend seems like one of them. I've never played a schafer game, much to my sadness, and if money allows it will be the game i buy to tide me over til mw2.

Anonymous said...

You've never played Schafer? Dude, get a scummvm and get Day of the Tentacle AND Grim Fandango. Simply awesome.

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