In spaces like this, figuring out where you're being attacked, or where your troops even are, is often too difficult. However, most of the stage battles take place in large arenas that penalize force concentration because of their open nature. The developers know this-in his open letter explaining how to play the stage battles, Tim Schafer emphasized keeping the army together. The personalized third-person perspective of the stage battles is basically incompatible with the idea of splitting up the army. The awkward input system Stone describes certainly contributes to the trouble, but another major contributor is inappropriate level design. Rather than giving the player a feeling of empowerment, the stage battles often result in confusion and dismay. That feeling is very metal, but it comes too rarely, if at all, because the implementation betrays the concept. When this works it can generate a tremendously empowering feeling of being a heavy metal warrior charging into battle at the head of your very own rock 'n roll army. Eddie is not an all-seeing eye gazing over his troops from a distance, but a personal force moving among the soldiers of metal. Brütal Legend, like heavy metal music itself, embraces a more medieval power fantasy, in which the general is the greatest warrior and leads his armies from the field. Conventional RTS gameplay relies on a modern idea of generalship, in which leaders command their armies from a great distance. Stone found it off-putting that these "stage battles" only allow Eddie to command troops that are near him, but this is actually the most fitting approach, given the heavy-metal aesthetic. The player controls a single hero, roadie Eddie Riggs, but the game's most intense fights require him to bring along an army of headbangers, roadies, bouncers and more. The game's much-maligned hybridization of third-person action and real-time strategy actually serves this dichotomy quite well. Whether a game conveys the core aesthetic of metal or not depends on its ability to deliver the contradictory experiences of empowerment as an individual and membership in a community. He can headbang alone, sure, but it's not really metal until a lot of people are headbanging together. A fan expresses his individuality through a particular way of dressing and reacting to music, but the general parameters of dress and behavior are dictated by a larger social group. Yet, like any form of fandom, metalheads also constitute a community united by their love of the music. The divergent aesthetic combining medieval fantasy and modern road machines is unified by the desire for power and recognition. This is an emphasis of the music itself, with its characteristic heavy beats and loudness, and also of the album art that inspires Brütal Legend's world. The defining aesthetic of heavy metal music is power. Brütal Legend had the elements to make great heavy metal gameplay, but failed because the execution of those ideas was botched. The game's core design, however, didn't bind it to this fate. Does the substance of the game, rather than just the style, reflect the heavy metal ethos in some way? In light of the story's flaccid melodrama and the weak tactical strategy gameplay, one can make a compelling case that it does not. But heavy metal is about more than album art. The game also cultivates an epic feel that fits the bombast of the music. Even the trees are metal, growing exhaust pipes in place of branches. Seeing the style is easy: the game's world is suffused with heavy metal imagery, populated by heavy metal musicians, and filled with the sound of heavy metal music. In his review of Brütal Legend, David Stone accuses Tim Schafer of creating a game that's more style than substance. WTF Pardon me, but I think about a third of the story has gone missing. HIGH Crashing a flaming zeppelin into the enemy stage at the end of a long battle.
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