Brütal Legend

[KestrelPi]

I'm not quite sure what the hard part would be about the controls. The strategy sections would actually be easier.

 

 

Yes, they'd be easier as long as they were willing to put in a lot of work -completely- overhauling the control scheme to suit mouse and keyboard setups. Just remapping the controls like with Psychonauts wouldn't work very well at all. That's my point.

[KestrelPi]

You mean like a Xbox 360 controller that works on every Windows computer?

 

Yes, but they can't expect everyone who buys the game to have one or to get one. Most people who do probably do because they already have an Xbox 360. So you can't just say 'Well, here's your PC port, uh, as for controls, get a 360 pad... otherwise... struggle.'

[LordTrilobite]

How about starting a pettition to release Brütal Legend for the pc aswell? if there isn't already one.

[Thrik]

Yeah, we've had sooo much success with petitions in the past.

[KestrelPi]

Actually, it's not just that I think it would take a lot of work to do a PC conversion, it's that I just don't think it's a very good idea. Brutal Legend will sell at least respectably, I think, but it isn't going to set the world on fire. I don't think a PC release will help it.

 

Who will it attract? Not strategy fans because they'll be expecting something a bit meatier. Not hack-n-slash fans as they probably already have consoles for that sort of thing anyway. So it will mainly be to capture people who have previously been Schafer fans but never got into consoles. That just isn't a very big audience and I don't think it's a wise investment.

 

Actually, that's just a side point because my main point was that I think the whole thing is very consoley. From the way it saves progress, to the way everything controls... just to top to bottom design of the thing is very much a console game.

 

I understand that some people prefer playing on PC. I understand that some people can't afford consoles. But the thing is they are a perfectly viable (and the most profitable) platform for games with dozens of great, great titles available for them. It's not just Brutal Legend you'll (maybe) be missing out on by ignoring them and there has to be a point where you should consider whether at least one of the major consoles might actually be a worthy investment.

 

I had a NES and then exclusively played on Amiga and PC up until around 2004. I'm glad I finally decided to put down some money on a console and I've been exposed to so many great games as a result.

[Thrik]

Yeah, I think at this point if you enjoy games then not owning a console is comparable to not owning a satellite/cable box for your TV if you like television. Even if you do wait for the films you like to come on regular television, chances are they'll be censored and not in HD.

[elTee]

I still think there's a good chance Brutal Legend will come out on PC, maybe on Steam or something, sometime next year. Double Fine certainly can't afford for the game to be pirated by curious parties, and a 360/PS3 release limits the amount of illegal copies that can be made. By the time the price has dropped on consoles and it's just another game from 'last year' that was quite good, they probably won't have anything to lose by porting it to the PC. Anyone who is interested in the game but didn't own a console could pick it up for $30, and the game won't even be that old.

 

Then again, if it never shows up at all I won't be that shocked.

[scabb]

Really enjoying Brutal Legend - pretty sure I'm on the last battle at the moment, looking forward to finishing it off tonight. I'm probably going to go for 100%, but Borderlands beckons! I like the stage-battles, but agree that you're not really given any idea of how to strategise. It took me a while to figure out that being very aggressive and constantly double-teaming is the way to play.

 

The side-missions are generally pretty cool, although they could have done with a little more dialogue, especially the "ambush" missions ("Who we ambushing?" "BAD GUYS!"). I am finding the racing missions ridiculously hard on Brutal, even with a fairly upgraded car. It was also slightly annoying how the hunter switched back to his original location and then sent me to hunt

the hexadons that are where he just was.

Thanks, Brian Posehn.

 

I do agree that a lot of stuff isn't explained. It's certainly not obvious how you upgrade units, and I didn't figure out how to unlock the legend-dragon-orbs until near the end - which was a shame, as a few of them are key to the main story. It's not metal to read the manual.

 

But yeah, great game. Full of ideas, loads of Schafer in there, and the actual gameplay isn't really comparable to anything else out there. It's not flawless, but neither was Psychonauts, and we all loved that, right?

[elTee]

Yeah the legend orbs stumped me for ages. I thought I needed a solo I didn't have, or something. So easy in the end ¬¬

 

My favourite side mission is the one where you drive the beer to the party - lots of fun and quite tricky! The racing ones are also great, but I didn't have as much trouble as it sounds like you are having with them.

 

I really love the stage battles in the end, now I can't wait to hook up a gold account and get online to play against some real people...

[scabb]

Think maybe I'm failing at racing because I only have one speed upgrade, and I'm on Brutal. He seems to drive flawlessly, and if I so much as knock him I spin round right round like a record baby. HE IS A DICK.

 

Yeah, I'll be up for a bit of online play in the coming weeks. Gamertag is 'scabbzo' if anyone wants their face melting.

[The Tingler]

The racing moments REALLY pissed me off. Why can he nudge my bad-ass car and send me flying and I can't nudge him back?

 

But the thing is they are a perfectly viable (and the most profitable) platform for games with dozens of great, great titles available for them.

 

Sorry Surplus, but are you saying there isn't any great games on console? Not least of which ones being released close to Brutal Legend? I think the opposite is true. Yes, PC has tons of games, but it's really getting snubbed this generation.

 

There isn't anything in Brutal Legend which wouldn't work just as well, or better, on PC. As I've pointed out before, Action Strategy is a predominantly PC genre, and combine that with the main Schafer fanbase and you've already got a decent audience.

 

I also don't get the controls argument. What part of them wouldn't work? Those 'action dials' for orders? Crysis had them. Solos? W A S D should do fine, or the arrow keys. Steering the Deuce? I thought it was already extremely hard to control thanks, and no reason why you can't have mouse steering.

 

As much as we'd like to think that Brutal Legend is Double Fine's attempt to reach a mainstream audience, it simply isn't. Heavy Metal. Jack Black (a real Marmite comedian). Action Strategy - which never took off because action fans didn't like the strategy and strategy fans didn't like the action. Fifa, Uncharted 2, Halo ODST, Borderlands, Dragon Age and Call of Duty. Take all those factors into account, and there's only a certain amount of people who will want it. They need a PC audience too.

 

And of course, there's my traditional argument for a PC release: if I want to play Brutal Legend again fifteen years from now, I don't want to have to buy it again. I can still do that with Day of the Tentacle, and all of Tim's other games. I might not be able to do that in three years' time with BL, let alone in 2025.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yeah the legend orbs stumped me for ages. I thought I needed a solo I didn't have, or something. So easy in the end ¬¬

 

There's one covered in snow that refuses to open

[KestrelPi]

Sorry Surplus, but are you saying there isn't any great games on console? Not least of which ones being released close to Brutal Legend? I think the opposite is true. Yes, PC has tons of games, but it's really getting snubbed this generation.

 

I think you'd better read over my post again... since I'm pretty sure I was saying the -opposite- of what you think I'm saying.

 

There isn't anything in Brutal Legend which wouldn't work just as well, or better, on PC. As I've pointed out before, Action Strategy is a predominantly PC genre, and combine that with the main Schafer fanbase and you've already got a decent audience.

 

I also don't get the controls argument. What part of them wouldn't work? Those 'action dials' for orders? Crysis had them. Solos? W A S D should do fine, or the arrow keys. Steering the Deuce? I thought it was already extremely hard to control thanks, and no reason why you can't have mouse steering.

 

First of all I think the action dials in crysis were a little lousy, but also there were far fewer options to pick from, so it required less fine precision when you need to make a split second decision (as you might need to do if you're trying to pick the right solo quickly without getting killed). I can't see that being anything but frustrating unless they re-did the menu system with PC in mind.

 

Then there's things like the system for giving individual orders which you yourself said was extremely fiddly. While on a gamepad you could just about get away (sort of) with such a convoluted and easy to forget way of assigning individual orders, this would surely be better done differently when you have a mouse and keyboard. And people would ask why you can't group units and assign them to hotkeys - even if they are missing the point.

 

And yes, while certainly the solos and various other bits of controls would -work- on keyboard, it seems to me that they feel consoley and very natural on a gamepad.

 

As much as we'd like to think that Brutal Legend is Double Fine's attempt to reach a mainstream audience, it simply isn't. Heavy Metal. Jack Black (a real Marmite comedian). Action Strategy - which never took off because action fans didn't like the strategy and strategy fans didn't like the action. Fifa, Uncharted 2, Halo ODST, Borderlands, Dragon Age and Call of Duty. Take all those factors into account, and there's only a certain amount of people who will want it. They need a PC audience too.

 

And of course, there's my traditional argument for a PC release: if I want to play Brutal Legend again fifteen years from now, I don't want to have to buy it again. I can still do that with Day of the Tentacle, and all of Tim's other games. I might not be able to do that in three years' time with BL, let alone in 2025.

 

Again, -what- PC audience? the PC audience aren't really hack and slashy action fans (because most of those will have consoles), aren't really strategy fans (because as you hint at they won't find what they're looking for in Brutal Legend) so that pretty much just leaves people who are Tim Schafer fans who want to play the game. With piracy also affecting PC sales much more heavily than the other platforms, and what I feel are a lot of tweaks that a PC version would need, I really can't see them jumping at the chance to get it out on PC.

[The Tingler]

One word for that last paragraph: Diablo.

 

Strategy point: Sacrifice, Giants, Battlezone 1 & 2, Uprising 1 & 2... and indeed, every other game in the same genre as Brutal Legend. BL is the only Action Strategy game on consoles I do believe.

 

And I'm still not sure what tweaks you're talking about. Hold a button, dial comes up, move the mouse in that direction, boom. Just as easy.

[s-island]

Final Fantasy was released on the NES back in 1987. If I want to play it today, I just boot up my PSP...

[elTee]

I've already made this point on Mojo, but eventually you have to pay for things again, and that's just a fact. You have to pay for films you own on VHS again, and now we're moving into the period where you have to buy your DVD films again. You can only play Day of the Tentacle on modern windows thanks to other people taking the time to make them work, or else you need to buy the updated version (or soon, I expect, the steam version.)

 

Consoles break like any other piece of hardware, and so do PCs. You can re-buy console games on future consoles through various means, and they're obviously cheaper. There are ALWAYS ways to play games/films you already own for free in the future, so long as you keep your hardware and look after it. The cost of rebuying them is essentially an act of paying for the convenience of not digging out your old console/other hardware.

 

Anyway, I enjoyed driving the deuce, and I think the difficulty in steering it was a design choice. I mean, it's a hotrod, all the power comes from the back - it's a straight-line vehicle. I loved it. But yeah, the races will be harder on Brutal setting, and I want to replay it on that mode soon - I went through it on normal so I could beat it in time to write a review in the end.

[The Tingler]

Zombies Ate My Neighbours...

 

EDIT: Sort of true with the Day of the Tentacle thing, and there are indeed plenty of games that just sulk and refuse to work now, but there's an equal amount that work perfectly even on Vista.

 

And yes, ScummVM and Dosbox help, but at least we can have those. Has anyone developed a program that lets you run Nintendo 64 cartridges on Wii?

 

Let's compare two classics caught in rights issues: System Shock 2 and GoldenEye. System Shock 2 was never released on budget, and if you want it eBay is your best bet: but you can still pop the CD into your modern PC and run it perfectly alongside Left 4 Dead and Crysis. GoldenEye will also never ever be released again, and if you want it, you have to actually dig out a Nintendo 64 and plug it in.

[elTee]

I have a Zombies cart from the old days, and I have my SNES that still works. If you don't already own it of course you need to buy it! I could rebuy it if it were available and it would cost whatever they charge. I'd have to decide if I'd rather pay, say, £5, or dig out the SNES for free. Cost vs. convenience.

[s-island]

SNES consoles still work. You're talking about wanting to replay it in 15 years. How do you know it'll be Windows 23 compatible? You will need to **** around with old computers and/or OSes anyway, just like with console games.

[The Tingler]

I'm saying you can't stick it in a modern console and play it. I have one PC and it plays all my PC games from the last 15 years. That's both convenient and costless. And yes, they will be compatible with Windows 23, because some bugger'll make them compatible if they weren't already.

[s-island]

You can stick it in a modern emulator and it'll work, which is incidentally what that "bugger" would have made.

[The Tingler]

Which is also known as "piracy", which a lot of people think doesn't happen with console games, which it bloody does. Gears of War 2 for example was the most pirated game of last year, which I'd like to think was payback for Cliffy B's comment about not releasing it on PC because there's too much piracy.

[KestrelPi]

One word for that last paragraph: Diablo.

.

 

Yes, but Brutal Legend isn't like Diablo at all and I highly doubt they could sell it as such, so I don't see it turning on that audience, it's an entirely different sort of hack and slash game. The hack and slash gameplay on offer here is much more like the stuff found in, say, God of War on the extreme side and something like Fable II or Zelda on the lighter side.

 

I'm starting to worry that I played a completely different game to everyone else because I'm frankly astounded that I'm the only one who seems to be questioning both how wise and how simple doing a PC version would be. Usually that would seem to indicate I'm missing something but it's just so obvious to me. You're telling me how they could map the controls, my point is yes, they could, and it would suck as a result. Unless they're going to put work into overhauling the control scheme and interface then it'll just be another console game obviously and misguidedly squeezed out onto PC with minimum effort and no consideration for how different the platforms (and expectations of the people who play them) are.

 

Edit: Another problem with the controls I've thought of is that having the sort of spotlight cursor scanning the landscape in order to highlight a spot to tell the units to go would be unnecessarily fiddly if it is just translated directly to mouse. At the very least I would expect them to come up with a mouse cursor so that you could just click on the spot/building that you want the spotlight to focus on.

[The Tingler]

I just like the argument "it's an entirely different sort of hack and slash game".

 

However, you're sort of right with the second paragraph though, and I see more what you're getting at. If they were going to release it on PC they would indeed have to make alterations, I agree. I think with the love and care Double Fine put into it I think they'd be happy to make the necessary changes and do it well.

[KestrelPi]

I just like the argument "it's an entirely different sort of hack and slash game".

 

However, you're sort of right with the second paragraph though, and I see more what you're getting at. If they were going to release it on PC they would indeed have to make alterations, I agree. I think with the love and care Double Fine put into it I think they'd be happy to make the necessary changes and do it well.

 

I'm sure they would. But it's not just up to Double Fine, is it? And I still have a big question about whether it's a wise investment of their time.