I was first introduced to metal when I was in Primary 4 or so; I was at a friend’s house and he showed me a video of Metallica’s Enter Sandman. I hated it and never wanted to listen to it again – little did I know, those four horsemen would later become my favourite band. This lifestyle carried on through my earlier high school years; I still didn’t have much of an interest in music although I still listened to what was popular, but there was no specific genre that I stuck to or cared about.
It wasn’t until my 6th year in High School that the seeds of musical passion began to take root, when Metallica had just released their newest album “Death Magnetic”. With a lot of friends who happened to be metalheads, it entered my radar fairly quickly and I bought it on a whim. I was impressed. I eventually got round to buying a few more of their studio albums but I still wasn’t all that fuelled up about music – games were still the biggest part of my life. Not including school, I mean. Ahem!
It wasn’t really until the worlds of gaming and music collided with such games as Guitar Hero and Audiosurf that music really became a major part of my life. Games no longer had MIDI soundtracks and had either impressive orchestral scores or had you playing along to music with an instrument-shaped controller. Guitar Hero opened up a wealth of new musical wonder for me to explore and enjoy, while Audiosurf provided the tools with which I could enjoy that music to an even greater degree.
There was one game that stood out amongst the rest though, and is quite easily my greatest musical influence: Brütal Legend, Tim Schafer’s masterpiece that saw Eddie Riggs crusading through a realm forged upon the very stuff of metal. Admittedly it’s not a music game per se, but Brütal Legend took as much inspiration from music as any Rock Band game.
I’ll admit to singing/mouthing/headbanging along to some of the epic songs that are to be found in Brütal Legend, even if some of them were a bit beyond my vocal talents (Judas Priest’s Painkiller is particularly noteworthy in that respect). It blew my mind to say the least, and after hammering the game I raided iTunes for as many of the songs from the game as I could find. Ten quid well spent, if I may say.
Less than a year has passed and you can imagine the look on my face when I learned that Brutal Legend wasn’t getting a sequel. I was livid! I sent a message to Tim Schafer on Twitter expressing my shock and disbelief, but got no reply. I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that I may never see Eddie Riggs or his mighty chrome-plated Deuce again. I’ll probably still be like this for another few weeks or so, or at least until Double Fine is a bit closer to releasing some of the new games it’s currently working on.
They announced recently that they had four new titles in the works and so far they’ve announced Costume Quest, an adventure role-playing game set in a seemingly typical neighbourhood at Halloween. From what I’ve seen it looks to have a similar type of turn-based gameplay to the Penny Arcade Xbox Live Arcade games, and knowing Double Fine, there’ll be just as much humour. Costume Quest will by no means fill the gap in my heart that was reserved for Brütal Legend 2, but it will surely ease the pain.
R.I.P. Brütal Legend 2. You were taken from us too soon.
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