Anyway, despite the usual onslaught, Christmas was kind to me this year, particularly where gaming is concerned. My dear mother provided two excellent presents: Brutal Legend (more about that later) and 'Writing for Video Games' by Steve Ince. This is an excellent book for any aspiring games writer, and helped me develop a new-found respect for games writers and vow never to mock shonky dialogue again, as it underlined how mindbendingly hard this mode of writing is. Stories don't have to make sense if you choose to read the pages in a different order to the one they came in.
The only problem with this book was that I couldn't get over the cover. Not the big robot or the pirate cat, they're fine. Even the spookily lit eye is all right by me. No, it's the guy at the top. I'm not sure what he looked like originally, but the face they have superimposed on top belongs to Shane Lynch. Look - this is even virtually the same picture!What's all that about hey? All through the book it kept on nagging at me, like the little man in his hair.
Anyway, rogue Shane Lynch faces and Subbuteo men are not why we are gathered here tonight. We are united together this evening to hear a little story. It's the story of a man. A man with a dream. A dream of metal. And that man's name (okay, I'm going to stop writing like this now, because I'm even annoying myself.) was Tim Schafer.
The thing that was Brutal Legend's greatest strength for me has probably proved its greatest weakness in terms of sales figures. It's a fun game that looks beautiful and is so well-crafted it's easy to take for granted the fact that there are no major glitches. (That I've found. Yet.) The missions won't win any prizes for originality and there is a sense of trying to cram every type of game in - racing, shooting, strategy, fighting, puzzler. Everything is lovingly drawn and exquisitely presented, but I wouldn't have bought it for that reason alone. (Or asked my Mum to get it for Xmas) I wanted Brutal Legend because it was a comedy metal game. And therein lies the problem folks.
Because the Venn Diagram consisting of people who like Metal, Comedy Metal and Gaming results in a very thin crosshatched centre area with me, Tim Schafer and two guys from Sweden standing in it. The game is a niche within a niche within a niche. Sadly, many metal fans, (despite the fact that metal is self-evidently very silly) are incredibly worthy about the genre and get irritated by people who also like 'novelty' bands like Tenacious D or Gwar as if it somehow demeans the musical greatness of their forebears. And then, of the few metal fans who make the cut and can accept Jack Black as the lead in a comedy metal game, how many are gamers who will actually part with their hard-earned cash? We're back to me, Tim and the Swedes again. And Tim probably got a free copy.
Ultimately though, I guess with a great game, it's far easier to nitpick. (and I'm slightly bitter from being trounced in stage battles) I really hope this game does beat the odds and do well because it deserves to. It's full of heart, love and humour and it's very rare for those things to shine through in modern games.
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