The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/20/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Action-Adventure

Platforms: Wii

Release Date: November 18, 2011

I’ve waited for this for a long time. While my analytics would beg to differ, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was the very first game I ever reviewed back in 2017. I never published this review to any online outlets, for it was an emotional mess of a review that lacked the organization, articulation, and polish I try to strive for when writing these days. I believe one of my college professors described this rough writing process as “unleashing the monster,” an analogous comparison to a rampaging beast with a writer’s free flowing, unflinching ID in the drafting process. Did I feel inclined to put in the extra effort to rant and rave about Skyward Sword because I needed to express how the game floored me? No, it was quite the opposite, as I loathed every minute of drudging through it for two years. Back then, only a negative experience could make me that zealous. I still possess this review somewhere in the catacombs of my Google Docs, but I’ve left it to my personal archives. Starting fresh with six years of writing refinement is the optimal way to approach this game for reevaluation. Finally, after replaying and reviewing every mainline console Zelda title prior to this one, I ache with anticipation. I finally get to rip Skyward Sword a new asshole and considering how it already stinks to high heaven, I’m about to make its already appalling stench tear a hole in the ozone. Actually, this is what I initially foresaw for this review: to echo my former one only in a more dignified format. However, after replaying Skyward Sword, my hostile fervor for this game has quelled quite a bit. Still, there is so much objective evidence in this game to fuel a diatribe on what is the most maligned Zelda game since Zelda II.

A lot of Skyward Sword’s makeup is a compromise between the previous two 3D Zelda titles, namely the graphical presentation. After consecutive bouts of controversy regarding the visuals of both The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, Nintendo appeased their havering fans by striking a balance between the light of the former game and the darkness of the latter. The result seen here could probably be described as Wind Waker’s cel-shaded brightness being baked overnight in a kiln. It’s a warm, water-colored maturation of the rounded, cartoonish puffiness seen in Wind Waker, deviating from the sharp and damp moodiness of Twilight Princess. My personal quibble on Skyward Sword’s aesthetic is that its milky tint verges on a strong resemblance to Disney’s hand drawn animation, a look too saccharine for my liking. I’ve always adored the exuberance of the Wind Waker’s visuals and am disappointed that Skyward Sword’s animated aesthetic isn’t a bodacious piece of eye-candy. While not as strikingly lurid as The Wind Waker, the balance between animated expressiveness and stark realism should at least prove not to piss off the irresolute Zelda fanbase at first glance.

Skyward Sword also makes a compromise between Link’s age. Previous Zelda titles alternate between a pre-adolescent eleven-year-old Link and a barely legal adult Link of 18/19, with Ocarina of Time as the game that formally established this dynamic and the sole title where Link’s age is relevant from a thematic standpoint. Skyward Sword introduces “teenage Link” at the age of 15 or 16. He may fit the stature of a fully grown Link, but is treated with a sense of condescension as a child. If that sentence doesn’t summarize the teenage experience, I don’t know what does. This source of angst is conveyed via Link’s life as a sophomore student at the boarding school Knight Academy on his airborne home of Skyloft.

Regarding the incongruous Zelda timeline, Skyward Sword’s placement is at least easy to follow because it is set far before every other title released before it. That’s right: Skyward Sword is ostensibly the very first Zelda adventure to ever occur. Because of its relatively humble beginnings, Zelda’s name hasn’t the slightest regal connections. She’s merely Link’s peer at the academy and Link’s lifelong friend. The only level of prestige she bears is being the daughter of the academy’s headmaster Gaepora, who evidently was reincarnated as an owl in the distant future. Zelda is just a sweet, giddy teenage girl whose friendly affections for Link are portrayed through the opening sequence where they interact in anticipation for the annual Wing Ceremony. Both Zelda and Link are also caught up in a love triangle with fellow classmate and local beefy, broad-shouldered chad Groose. His palpable envy for Link’s relationship with Zelda becomes a liability when Groose sabotages Link’s chance to win the grand prize of an event with Zelda by stashing his Loftwing, this game’s feathered Epona companion. I’ve always shared the sentiment that this opening sequence proves to be the best that 3D Zelda has offered yet. Not only does it effectively introduce a recurring setting along with the dynamics of characters new and old, but Skyward Sword marks the first time where Link and Zelda resemble real human beings. Their interpersonal relationship is adorable and seeing them interact domestically with each other makes their characters surpass their typical avatar leanings with paramount implications, even if Link is reserved to his grunts and yelps as usual. Perhaps the volatile teenage period adds a certain coming-of-age edge. It certainly beats the drag of an introduction presented in Twilight Princess with Link performing farm work by a country mile (no pun intended). What’s most impressive is that the stoic, bland Zelda character finally evokes a sense of wanting to protect and save her from the player.

However, the introduction is unfortunately the extent of Skyward Sword’s magnificence, as everything plunges downward similarly to how the capturing of Zelda ultimately sets signals the remaining duration of the game. Where do I begin in detailing the scrolling laundry list of issues I have with Skyward Sword? Well, I’ve already mentioned Skyloft, the society situated in the sky, for starters. The hometown of the teenaged iterations of Link and Zelda is a quaint, rustic village with fluffy, white clouds obscuring all other land masses potentially surrounding it. The unassuming folk of Skyloft operate their remote community modestly, living in single room wooden cottages around the interior perimeter with the bare essentials of home decor. The meager amount of energy this community collectively uses is powered via the windmills placed all over the isle, an ingenious source of inexhaustible energy considering their high altitude location. The windmills provide energy to a few notable buildings, namely the one-stop-shop Bazaar tent at Skyloft’s center and the Knight Academy dormitories at the isle’s northwestern peak. Overlooking the cascading lake basin off the eastern side opposite the tower in the plaza is the specially designated Isle of the Goddess, where the winged statue of the goddess Hylia casts a benevolent shadow over Skyloft’s denizens. The statue also acts as a giant effigy for the community as she’s a spiritual figure regarding Skyloft’s origin along with the rest of the outside world. One may interpret the aspects of Skyloft’s communal identity as being overly pristine to the point of suspecting something darker underneath (not referring to the friendly monster Batreaux residing under the floorboards of a stable) the suspended surface, but it really is as idyllic as it sounds. There is nothing inherently wrong with Skyloft in regards to its layout or atmosphere as I was charmed by its tranquil coziness. The problem lies in how the game uses Skyloft in the grand scheme of things as it exemplifies the closest definition of a hub in a Zelda game. Really, Skyloft isn’t too different from the lively areas from the previous games such as Windfall Island or any depiction of the Hyrule epicenter around Zelda’s castle. Still, those were notable destinations on the map that Link only routinely visited on his own volition for side quests past the few obligatory story situations. Having to revisit Skyloft to restock on Link’s various wares and resume the rhythm of the narrative interspersed between the dungeons feels like Link is constantly tethered to his humble beginnings. A substantial factor of the hero’s intrepid journey is leaving the nest, which the previous games conveyed wonderfully. Revisiting Kokiri Village or Grandma’s house on Outset Island once after completing a sizable portion of the game causes a sensation that washes over the player on how much Link has grown. Being forced to visit home again and again is a half-measure that dilutes that epic effect of adventuring.

The Skyloft hub isn’t an awkward nitpick of slight streamlining found in Skyward Sword: it’s indicative of how the entire game flattens the 3D Zelda design into a fucking crepe. Let’s extend my grievance of Skyloft one meter beyond to the fluffy, crystalized masses of condensation that pillow the floating commune. Ideally, the surrounding sky should act as the game’s vast, vacant open area like the Great Sea from Wind Waker. The blue sky up above is as seemingly immeasurable if not even more so than its watery parallel down below that divides the continents. That sense of wonder with any potential discovery in this sprawling space is arguably heightened by the fact that Link’s sight is heavily shrouded by the viscous, white liquid accumulations. Therefore, exuding that grandiose scope of adventure should be a breeze according to regulation. However, my disappointment is the immeasurable factor pertaining to Skyward Sword’s wide open range of boundless air because of how confined the skies truly are. Nintendo really emphasized the “limit” in “the sky’s the limit,” misinterpreting the age-old idiom and twisting the meaning of the expression. Any of the notable destinations situated outside of Skyloft like the Lumpy Pumpkin tavern and that island with the bamboo shoots (there are so few distinctive spots) still feel like they are in the windy civilization’s jurisdiction, short ventures off the mainland with the same direct curtness as going to a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes. That kind of trip needs to be brief in order to curb the intense cravings immediately. In a game like Zelda with no routes to any addictive substances, that sensation of basking in the free-flowing excitement of an uncharted adventure felt in Wind Waker is practically gone. The context of immersion is the only instance in which I will forsake convenience in a video game. Also, why do the clouds look so sickly? The golden, popcorn-butter tint disgusts me enough to become inclined to lecture the yokels of Skyloft on emitting greenhouse gasses. At least Link’s Loftwing animal mate soars through this semi-toxic sky gracefully, retaining some assets from Epona while adding some surprisingly smooth motion control flying features.

To add another layer of irony to how restricted the sky is, Skyward Sword’s world expands exponentially once Link dives down to the surface world underneath the clouds. Besides volumizing the scant area of the world map, the surface world is especially intriguing from a narrative standpoint. You see, the humble people of Skyloft are a bit ignorant. No, this isn’t another stab at how they’ve polluted their air quality, but how they’ve put the surface world on a pedestal. The clouds around Skyloft are so thick that the surface world is but a mythical realm told in stories of legend around their campfires. Even with breeds of horse-sized birds at hand, no one has thought to use their innate soaring prowess to penetrate through the wispy divider because of some silly indoctrination passed down several generations. Link’s call to adventure gives him the golden opportunity to break through the forbidden barrier and become the first human resident of Skyloft to explore the surface world, Zelda withstanding on account of her captivity. The surface world is divided into three districts that vaguely resemble some notable geographical tropes from series past while connecting the areas to the future Hyrule by sharing the names of the kingdom’s provinces mapped out in Twilight Princess. Faron is still a deep forested realm, but with the atmospheric mysticism dialed back compared to Twilight Princess due to the sun’s rays not being filtered through the blanketing leaves of the many trees. Eldin is the site of an active volcano like the familiar Death Mountain, only with a streaming lava moat around its perimeter as an uninviting defensive measure as opposed to falling rocks. Lastly, the Lanayru desert fills the void of what will eventually become Gerudo, and there’s even a species of dragonfly here that references Hyrule’s arid valley of sand. Lanayru is also my favorite of the three areas because of its gimmick involving hitting a purple crystal to transform the barren quicksand pits into a fertile patch of grassland over a certain radius.

From the perspective of a Skyloft resident, I’m sure the terra firma of the surface world is jaw dropping beyond comprehension. As a seasoned Zelda veteran like myself, however, the surface world is relatively dull. While shifting the landscape of Lanayru is neat and all, this desert still displays the same prevalent design issue like its woodsy and molten borders, and it's that all of these areas are as boxed in as the sky above them. Considering how thematically polar all of these areas are, it’s not surprising that there is a significant layer of division between them unlike the districts of Hyrule. The sky's the mediator between these three areas as it is the only means of transport between any of them. Link will dive off his Loftwing and use his trusty sailcloth to negate the violent impact of his crude arrival’s velocity, and return to flying around Skyloft by requesting the option at one of the various bird statues. Never will Link find a method of transporting between the three realms more organically by foot or by any grounded vehicle. It’s the sky’s way or the highway. Because of the hub world acting as a transit station between each area, the surface world feels so disconnected. The traversal process feels no different than being transported via a magical painting hanging from Peach’s Castle in Super Mario 64, something that ruins the much-needed interconnectivity of a Zelda world. Funny enough, the color signifiers of each area seen from the sky are displayed like a scalene triangle, a sense of organization that would have some sense of cohesion. However, given how short the distance is between them in the prohibitive sky hub, it inadvertently makes the surface world seem pitifully small.

The singular areas themselves are designed like playgrounds. They each offer enough ground for Link to excavate, but the parameters are far too defined. Besides a way to establish boundaries between each area, this enclosed construction makes the consistent objective for each area feasible. However, it does not make them enjoyable. Before Link enters the area’s dungeon, he must undergo the “dowsing” process which involves using his sword as a radar to ascertain the location of a myriad of collectables. The initial scent trail to follow is Zelda’s, but who is the game trying to kid thinking rescuing her will be that quick and effortless. Utilizing the sword as a dowsing rod will be put to use to find five of the same objects located across the map that have some semblance of context with progressing through to the dungeon. Having to play a game of metal detecting with this feature is especially aggravating because in order to locate the objects, the player has to compromise the third-person view in favor of Link’s first-person perspective with a beeping glowing purple reticle at the center. Apparently, this process also requires rigorous concentration, which is why Link’s movement is reduced to a glacial tiptoe when seeing through this mode. The physical and narrative pacing during these sections is slower than molasses and having to perform these tasks before EVERY dungeon is maddening.

But who is the person/thing that mandates this grating tedium? I’m glad I finally reached my segway into discussing Fi, because she was and still is the primary source of my source of frustration with Skyward Sword. On the fateful night of Zelda’s capture, Fi beckons Link to follow her to the basement level of the Isle of the Goddess to uncover the Goddess Sword (the beta version of the Master Sword) and unsheathe it from the marble casing. The levitating arcane being that led Link to this location is the spiritual soul residing in the mythical sword, and she is obligated to aid the prodigal Link to victory against the universe's dark forces. The player is going to wish that Link settled for a knock-off forged by the local Skyloft blacksmith because pulling the sacred sword and receiving Fi as an auxiliary prize feels like a curse. Fi’s idea of assisting Link is to mollycoddle him like an overbearing parent. Her constant interruptions just to play the role of Captain Obvious in every situation are an insulting slight to every player’s intelligence and shows she has zero sense of self-awareness. But how could Fi conceivably be cognizant about how useless and annoying she is given her state of existence? She’s essentially a glorified AI Nintendo implemented to facilitate the new crop of gamers that the Wii garnered with its unparalleled accessibility. She’s C-3PO if the effete, metallic know-it-all was dipped in cotton candy wax, swallowed a vocoder, and wore a cloak and fishnet stockings combo to signify the gender swap. Half of Fi’s input is telling Link her approximate percentage odds on any given scenario. Need I point out the obvious reference? Unlike Han Solo who will tell C-3P0 to shut his fucking mouth unit, Link will be forced to comply with paragraphs of text that moves along like black sludge without any objection. Fi skating on the air when Link reaches his goal at the end of a dungeon attempts to make her more personable via acts of gaiety, but the scene is uncomfortably uncanny like a holographic dead celebrity in a commercial. I want to pull a Tonya Harding and bust up her knees to make it stop. If the Fi-possessed Goddess Sword is the unevolved version of the mighty Master Sword, then the significant improvement is simply made by performing an exorcism to permanently rid the blade of its condescending spirit. Nintendo somehow managed to craft a partner character worse than the infamous Navi, and I use the word “character” tentatively when describing Fi.

Another aspect of Skyward Sword that practically shares an equal billing of vexing incompetence with Fi are the controls. We initially weren’t afraid of contesting with the radical peripheral of motion controls because Twilight Princess made them work with relative simplicity when the Wii console launched. However, one could still argue that Twilight Princess was initially designed as the Gamecube’s swansong and the motion controls for the Wii version were tacked on. Skyward Sword is the only mainline Zelda title exclusive to the Wii with the motion controls in mind. Sometime in the middle of the Wii’s lifespan, Nintendo decided to amplify the Wii’s true motion control capabilities by introducing the Wii Motion Plus appendage wedged between the Wiimote and the nunchuck. Now, the kinetic involvement in using the motion controls would feel eerily closer to reality, or at least that was the ideal result. While the additional fluidity of the add-on sounds fun in practice, Nintendo did not consider that a game like Zelda involves a deeper, more complex gameplay schema than the party sports showcase Wii Sports Resort and the hack-n-slash sequel Red Steel 2. When the extensive range of motion is mixed in with analog control and a use for each button on the controller, the multifaceted amalgamation can make the general controls awkward, to say the least. Link’s unsheathed sword stance sees him pointing it outward like an amateur fencer, making me worry that one clumsy trip will cause him to get impaled. Of course, Link can’t throw too much caution to the wind when moving because he now has to contend with a new stamina gauge which is both colored and shaped like a lime. It depletes quickly when Link is sprinting or executing the roll move (making the player use it sparingly now), but it also accounts for advanced sword skills like the diagonal and horizontal spin dash. I guess Link’s stamina was a new consideration to aid in the kinetic immersion of the enhanced motion controls but besides a few neat puzzles, I’m not certain the implementation was entirely necessary.

Putting Link’s energy into better consideration will be tested on the field with the familiar range of enemies like the flying Keese and the gelatinous Chuchus. The common Zelda enemies that the game overloads on Link are the Moblins/Bokoblins. The ugly, mangy swine shaped in Ganon’s image are the most humanoid of Hyrule’s storied bestiary, which means they are the prime candidate for testing the player’s dexterity with the Wii Motion Plus controls by blocking Link’s sword swipes with rough-hewn cutlery. Their defensive maneuvers are surprisingly responsive and their numbers can get overwhelming when one with a horn calls in the cavalry to deal with Link intruding on their territory. The Lizalfos enemies also appear to challenge the controls even further with greater agility and sturdier defense, but much less frequently as they are endemic to the Eldin region. For the most part, the combat controls with standard enemy encounters are tolerable. The controls become an unyielding chore regarding the forward stab maneuver outside of the four cardinal directions. Executing this move always seems like a stroke of luck and in instances with the totem pole laser and the scorpion boss battle, the player can be punished unfairly if the controls decide to waver. Overall, the level of player involvement does somewhat fulfill my wish for 3D Zelda’s combat to engage the player with substantial difficulty. Still, with the context of Skyward Sword’s motion controls, it’s like being grateful that my brisk morning walks are more strenuous now that I’ve contracted polio.

One aspect that gels well with the motion controls are the bevy of new gadgets at Link’s disposal. The item lineup in Skyward Sword dials back on the audacious factor that made the ones from Twilight Princess so entertaining, but more than compensates for their more frequent usage and utility. The Beetle is a mechanical drone in the shape of the insect of its namesake, fluttering around like a remote control biplane to navigate through tight, out-of-reach crevices and drop bomb plants on rocks and enemies from up above. The Gust Bellows blasts away hefty mounds of sand that have accumulated from Lanayru’s fallow decades while the whip allows Link to latch onto switches from a distance and snatch trinkets from enemies. Bombs have been integral items since the dawn of the series, but Skyward Sword marks the first time where Link can roll them like explosive bowling balls. All of these nifty tools were significant proponents to making the first three dungeons as engaging as they were. I thoroughly enjoyed cutting down spider webs with the Beetle in the Skyview Temple, rolling bombs down chutes to blow up the sea lava monkeys in the Earth Temple, and rotating pulleys on platforms in the Lanayru Mining Facility with the Gust Bellows. They all elevated dungeons that would quite frankly be far less memorable without them. Each of these items can also be upgraded at the blacksmith’s bench in the Skyloft Bazaar using the various materials that enemies leave behind, building on their range of utility even further.

The second half of Skyward Sword is signaled similarly to its 3D Zelda predecessors. Once the first quest of piecing together three essential artifacts is complete, another version of the previous arc is presented with a whole new slew of dungeons to excavate. The narrative context that discerns Skyward Sword from the others is that the latter arc is spurred by the need for Link to enhance the Goddess Sword. The “skyward sword” alluded to in the title does not refer to the relative elevation of the sword’s burial site, nor is it a phallic innuendo. Link’s most strapping skill with this sword is the Skyward Strike, achieved by pointing the Wiimote upward and holding it to charge solar or holy energy to release it as a ranged vertical slice. This move functioned well when it came to activating the winged triforce icons, but its tepid burst is indicative of its vestigial state of weakness that Link must enhance to crack open a time gate where Zelda is taking refuge. Summoning the sacred flames also involves the harmonious strumming of a divine harp, this game’s instrument that can be played with the Wiimote, and the plans are conducted out of another temple in the (not so) far off reaches of the cloudy domain of Thunderhead. So far, Skyward Sword does enough to deviate from the tried and true Zelda quest line by altering the context a bit.

The dungeons featured in the second half of Skyward Sword are the most exemplary sections in the game. Behind the glistening waterfall at the edge of the river in Faron Woods lies the Ancient Cistern, a sanctified temple illuminated in the divine, bright light of the Gods. This Hindu-esque holy garden with blooming lotus flowers and lily pads resting on the surface of its majestic pool of water at its center is a stunningly gorgeous scene, the exemplary case of the game’s impressionistic visuals finally flourishing. Before one gets the impression that Link has been raptured away to the promised land, the heaven depicted here has no Earth as a median point to prevent Hell from being its conjunctive neighbor. The Ancient Cistern’s basement is a contrasting underworld cave with a moody blue stillness, coagulated streams of blood, and hordes of condemned, Bokoblin zombies. The basement section of the cistern doesn’t exactly compete with the same level of visual splendor as its opposite side, but the contrast is still conveyed effectively. Using a boat in Lanayru with a time-crystal attached, Link and one of the native plucky robots set sail on the once-bountiful sea, manipulating the effects of the purple gem to emulate its former prosperity. A cloaked pirate vessel simply referred to as the “Sandship” has taken the crew of the Lanayru robot with the sea captain’s hat hostage, and Link must rescue the lot of them while attempting to uncover the next sacred flame somewhere on board. Not only is a pirate ship a unique and exciting setting for a Zelda dungeon, but the motif of working in tandem with the unfruitful present and cultivated past of the area makes for some wickedly clever puzzles here. Shish Kebabing thorny water plants to make for magma platforms and clawing at the backsides of humongous centipedes in the Fire Sanctuary is also cool, I guess. I’d place the former two dungeons side by side with some of the series finest, along with the fight against the golden Shiva golem Koloktos at the climax of the Ancient Cistern. Tearing him limb from limb with the whip and brutally breaking open his core with his own giant scimitar sword feels incredibly cathartic. Unfortunately, the kraken Sandship boss Tentalus is not worthy of its ostentatious “Abyssal-Leviathan” title. It looks like a goofy Monsters Inc. extra with a weak spot so conspicuous that even Fi never bothered to point it out.

The caveat to experiencing Skyward Sword’s best sections is that Link will have to endure a smattering of busy work on the way up to them. I could’ve started discussing the game’s pension for padding during the passage on the dowsing fetch quests, but stalling between the meat of the game persists to an especially egregious degree in the second half. I’m not referring to collecting the Sacred Tears across each area as I enjoy the more contained and gamified version of what was presented in Twilight Princess with genuinely harrowing stakes. What I don’t approve of is the portions that occur between the Sacred Tears scavenger hunt and entering a dungeon, minus the thrilling minecart rollercoaster segments in Lanayru. Skyward Sword is already pushing the revisitation of these areas for a second time, so you can imagine that blowing through the first dungeon again is skating on thin ice with my patience. Escorting a particularly arrogant Lanayru robot through the fiery cliffs of Eldin to douse the flames around Fire Sanctuary wasn’t exactly a highlight either. To make the vein on my head pulsate even more with the growing irritation, the final quest to collect the three pieces of the Triforce is the epitome of inanity. What herculean objectives must be met to collect such consecrated pieces of Zelda lore? Swimming for music notes in a flooded Faron, another handicapped stealth mission in Eldin, and growing a peach from a tree that grows in Lanayru. By this point, one could get the impression that the game is fucking with them with all this repetition. On top of all of that, Link must attend to repressing The Imprisoned in the Sealed Grounds every so often. The scaly, nightmarish monster with a throng of razor-sharp teeth shakes his rooted encumbrance to wreak havoc on the Sealed Grounds as chronically as a bad case of gonorrhea, and Link must send him back to a state of concealment THREE times throughout the game. Was all of this content necessary? The extensive padding just bloats an already lengthy game to the point where my sanity is bound to burst.

Link also fights Skyward Sword’s main antagonist three times, but the narrative staves off from exhausting his encounters. The surprising part about this pervasive villain is that it isn’t Ganondorf. Sure, a flame-haired prototype of Ganondorf named Demise is the looming threat over Skyloft and the epic final boss of the game. Still, the technical definition of an antagonist is the strongest counteractive force against the protagonist, and this description more appropriately fits Demises apprentice Ghirahim. This androgynous, thin white duke of evil initially acts as the first roadblock as his fight will demand a reasonable level of proficiency with the motion controls. His second fight in the Fire Sanctuary will act as another checkup, and the third fight before the final boss is the penultimate culmination of motion controlled prowess. While his fights verge on being unfair because the controls are inherently finicky, I still appreciated Ghirahim as a character. It’s refreshing for a Zelda game to feature a villain that is a constant physical impediment to progress rather than the dark omnipresence of Ganondorf until Link faces him at the very end. That, and Ghirahim’s devilish charm adds a charismatic layer to his sadism as he waves his snake-like tongue around Link’s ear and threatens to torture him so ruthlessly that “he’ll grow deaf from the sounds of his own shrieks of pain.” A genuinely bone-chilling threat if there ever was one. One highlight moment with Ghirahim is his untimely end when Demise uses his puppet one last time to forcefully extract the weapon inside him. Even though his master has murdered him after the lengths he went through to resurrect him, he still accepts his fate with psychotic glee. The man is fucking daffy.

Discussing Ghirahim’s strengths as a villain reminds me of the compliments I gave Skyward Sword at the beginning. I realize that Skyward Sword’s true substance lies in all of its characters, their interactions with one another, and the growth that occurs by the end of their adventure. Zelda is no longer the rosy-cheeked little girl she once was after braving the dire implications of her eminent destiny. She’s matured greatly through this whole ordeal, and the player can determine this even without the weighty logs of exposition she delivers. Impa, Zelda’s Sheikah protector from Ocarina of Time, returns in two forms of time, with her elderly form assisting Link in the present and her younger form for Zelda in the past. When she disintegrates from old age at the end, the moment is profoundly bittersweet because of the time in which Link got to interact with her. Really, the outstanding case of character growth in Skyward Sword may come as a shock to the uninitiated, and that is regarding Groose. At the middle mark of the game, this school bully stereotype (complete with his own two little cronies too) learns that he’s not the center of the universe. I mean this quite literally as the wizened soothsayer Impa states matter-of-factly that Groose is not destined to save Zelda like Link. This revelation that his hopes with Zelda are fruitless causes a moment of clarity to occur. With his biggest insecurity reaching a point of closure, he gets over himself and starts making himself useful as a supporting character to the cause. By the end, this meathead douchebag with a stupid hairdo actually became a loveable big lug of a guy who became Link’s friend. Has the franchise ever reached a positive character arc of this magnitude before? Impeccably, this is a first.

Well, Ocarina of Time: I hope you’re happy. How can you still flaunt your impact with a sense of pride when Skyward Sword is a product of your legacy? While Wind Waker and Twilight Princess both came with minor deterrents, I still defended them as worthy successors to Ocarina of Time with great fervor. Now, because of Skyward Sword, I am marching alongside my dismayed Zelda fan brethren waving a picket sign that says, “NOT MY ZELDA” in bold red letters. I suppose a 3D Zelda title that is a slave to its design philosophy was bubbling up on the surface for quite a while, and Skyward Sword was the boiling point. Skyward Sword is rife with uninteresting filler content, a shoddy use of the motion control scheme, and overstays the welcome of all of its areas. It has a partner character as grating as Navi, gameplay more repetitive than Majora’s Mask, a Triforce quest as insufferable as Wind Waker, and has a more sluggish sense of pacing than Twilight Princess. Skyward Sword is a wake-up call that what Ocarina of Time established for the series has finally run its course. I’m glad I played it again after all these years as its positive aspects started blossoming in my mind. Yet, Skyward Sword possesses too many objective flaws to forgive and gloss over.

Kid Icarus: Uprising Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/14/2023)

[Image from gamerevolution.com]

Kid Icarus: Uprising

Developer: Project Sora

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Third-Persona Shooter

Platforms: 3DS

Release Date: March 22, 2012

One cannot underestimate the impact of being included in the character roster of a Super Smash Bros. game. Really, everyone wants their favorite franchise represented in Nintendo’s gilded crossover fighting series. Representing them in the fray with some of the most popular and impactful video game characters of all time is more than enough affirmation that a character along with their franchise is worthy enough to be in the upper echelons of the video game canon. However, the echoes of people clamoring for a franchise that has yet to receive an invitation to join the Super Smash Bros. ranks implies that this franchise is already celebrated enough. Does the series or its fans really need the vindication? The actual magic of Smash Bros. is how it can revitalize interest in a dormant IP whose fans have forsaken them due to an idle presence over a long period. For some reason, director Masahiro Sakurai seemed to overtly catalyze this effect with Kid Icarus. The franchise's starring angel Pit made his Smash Bros. debut in the Wii title Brawl, and his fresh presence was more pronounced than any logic would allow. By all means, Pit should’ve been a Smash Bros. benchwarmer in the same minor league as the Ice Climbers and Mr. Game and Watch. He should’ve had a subsidiary presence in Brawl due to his inclusion being a historical lark to remind us of Nintendo’s storied past. Yet, Pit is present throughout the entire Subspace Emissary campaign, and he’s paired up with Mario, Link, Yoshi, and Kirby: THE prime contenders for a Mount Rushmore of Nintendo characters. Sakurai ostensibly saw a potential in Pit that had been undermined by decades of inactivity and felt keen to put the fallen angel front and center among Nintendo’s mascot elites. I agree with Mr. Sakurai, as the varied gameplay mechanics and rich, ancient Greek mythos gave Kid Icarus more to expand on as opposed to the other NES franchises that Nintendo decided to abandon. By some miracle, Sakurai got his wish to situate himself at the helm of jumpstarting the cryogenically frozen Kid Icarus franchise and steering it in the direction he saw fit. Kid Icarus: Uprising is Sakurai’s monster to his Dr. Frankenstien, doing the seemingly impossible by resurrecting something from the dead and coaxing all of us into believing that it can function among the living. To everyone’s astonishment, Sakurai’s creation proves that Kid Icarus can not only compete with Nintendo’s fortunate sons but surpass their capabilities as well.

It makes me wonder what Sakurai’s first step in developing Uprising was because his template to use as a reference was stone-cold stale. The last time Kid Icarus showed its face to the gaming public, it was rendered in black and white, 8-bit pixels on the first iteration of the Gameboy. In the wake of its two-decade absence, Kid Icarus slept through so many vital evolutionary periods that at this point, the series would have to sprint like an Olympic runner in order to catch up with the rest of Nintendo’s properties. Uprising is Kid Icarus's 3D debut, an awkward aspect of development three generations prior that the rest of Nintendo’s early IPs already endured the growing pains of. How could Kid Icarus possibly make that desired impact in the eighth generation of gaming when its lack of experience with modern hardware forces the developers to apply water wings to safely swim in the deep end of the third dimension? After some further consideration, perhaps evaluating Uprising in this manner is looking at it from the wrong perspective. You see, developing every beloved Nintendo property during the early 3D era was especially fretful because the IPs had earned a golden reputation through a series of exceptional, ground-breaking entries in the pixelated generations. Their 3D breakouts still needed to uphold that excellent standard of quality despite the underdeveloped new framework they were sculpting these games with. Fans would’ve been devastated if the third dimension inhibited Link from exploring intricately-designed dungeons or if it stilted Mario’s sprightly acrobatic abilities. The hidden, ironic beauty of developing a Kid Icarus game in a more elaborate graphical plane after two decades is that no one cares about Kid Icarus, everyone except for Sakurai evidently. One most likely can’t have any expectations for something that hasn’t crossed their mind for so long, so Sakurai is given free rein to reimagine Kid Icarus to his liking as long as it retains the same semi-notable protagonist in a realm inspired by Greek mythology. For Uprising, Sakurai didn’t refurbish the rooms of Kid Icarus: he constructed a brand-new house.

Most likely, no one would anticipate Kid Icarus reinventing itself as a third-person shooter. The NES Kid Icarus was staunchly in the 2D platformer genre with the vast majority of its 8-bit ilk, even if its implementation of the genre’s tropes were a scattered mess of ascension levels and weirdly-paced traditional side-scrolling. This lack of cohesiveness and ingenuity is a substantial sum of the reasons why Kid Icarus wasn’t greenlit for greatness like its peers, so it’s for the best that Sakurai practically wiped the slate clean. However, Sakurai still somehow figured that converging two different swirls of genre flavors in the same gameplay cone was a necessary element of Kid Icarus. This time, Kid Icarus tackles two separate methods of blasting enemies away from afar. Each level in Uprising is divided into two distinct shooting sections. The first of the two is a rail shooter where a stream of enemies will engulf the screen as Pit soars through the skies, his contrived trajectory guided by the divine control of Palutena from the heavens. Once Pit survives the ambush above the clouds, the grounded section begins as Pit mows down the armies of the underworld with his full bodily autonomy. The primary goal of the latter half of these levels is to charge toward its boss battle apex point while attempting to endure enough firepower from its cronies on the journey toward it. This halved progression dynamic persists for every single level in Uprising, and only one level deviates from the formula for the sake of plot point relevancy.

One might be concerned that Uprising’s dedicated pension for this predictable level arrangement for a whopping 25 total chapters would cause the player to become numbed by the repetition. Fortunately, Uprising’s gameplay for both the sky and the soil is consistently enthralling. Ripping through the legions of mythical demon creatures with a blazing stream of energy bullets never grows old because of how consistently energetic the action is, with a triumphantly bombastic tone fit for an epic Greek tale to bolster the scope of the scene. Plus, Pit isn’t limited to his piddly, Cupid-esque bow and arrow combination typical of his fairy/angel status. In Uprising, Pit’s arsenal is more stacked than a Texan watering hole. From the long-ranged rapid-fire staffs to the razor-sharp claws and blunt clubs for getting up close and personal, to the balanced blades in between, the sheer variety of deadly toys to play with along with their varied range of practicalities on the field should retain that thrill of combat for the player.

Also, the underworld must be like the United States of afterlife realms because their forces are a melting pot of creatures. We amusingly get to see all of the 8-bit enemies from the NES Kid Icarus rendered in the third dimension, ranging from the one-eyed Monoeyes, the Groucho Marx masked Specknoses, to the more harrowing enemies of the Reapers and notorious Eggplant Wizards. Don’t worry, the eggplant effect is only a temporary curse in Uprising. The developers obviously streamlined dealing with these baddies a bit from their stiff NES origins. Fighting these foes and gaining a profit of hearts from their defeat never makes for a tense encounter. Coupled with all of the new enemies that Uprising introduces like the whale enemy vessel Belunka, cyclops juggernaut Clubberskull, and deceitful, oddly sexy treasure chest Mimicutie enemy most likely stolen from Dark Souls, conquering the underworld’s eclectic army adds another layer of prolonged investment into playing Uprising. The variation also extends to the bosses, of which Pit fights at least one per level. It’s a Clash of the Titans roulette in Uprising as several of the bosses are depictions of notable creatures in classic Greek texts like Pandora and Thanatos or at least alluded to the mythos with the hellhound Twinbellows and giant squid Kraken. While these bosses are as enjoyable, none of their fights are as challenging as dealing with hordes of regular enemies.

The player also has the freedom to make Uprising as enveloping as they please by altering the challenge meter. Uprising’s approach to difficulty is to implement a scale that indicates how overwhelming the level will be on an ascending scale from one to ten with a single-word description coinciding with the specific metric placing. I’d call it the game’s “spice level” if the scale’s visual wasn’t represented by a boiling pot of liquid, ruining my clever food analogy as a result. Still, betting hearts that mix into the soupy, bubbling concoction that represents the difficulty is like sprinkling chili pepper flakes over any dish; your time consuming it will prove to be more memorable, but be careful not to inadvertently punish yourself. The minimalist cartoon drawings above the scale depicting a stick figure Pit being shrouded by more demons should give the player enough of an indication of what to expect, including the richer rewards as compensation for the gamble. When the player becomes aware of their actual skill threshold the hard way and dies as a result, the cauldron will spill all of the wagered hearts and demote them to a marginally decreased difficulty for the remaining duration of the level. This penalty is the game’s not-so-subtle way of signaling to the player that they can’t handle the heat, adjusting more appropriately if need be. While compartmentalizing the levels per decimal makes the range of difficulty superfluous in most spots, the demerit for failure is a brilliant motivator for the player to amplify their abilities. Luckily, at the player’s sweet spot, the game heartily obliges the player with plenty of food and hot spring locations to heal the player, hampering death as much as humanly possible.

Bless all that is holy for all of the game’s accommodations because the player will constantly have to grapple with Uprising’s austere control scheme in the meantime. Handheld systems aren’t designed for games involving intricate, multifaceted button schematics, and not even the 3DS with its innovative, flexible analog control can elevate a handheld to the titanic stature of its home console counterparts. The player aims Pit’s shots by directing the reticle with the stylus and fires with the back L button. This button prompt functions adequately during the opening flight sections when Palutena is manning Pit’s forward velocity. Once Pit regains the use of his legs, however, the wider range of movement greatly exposes the glaring issues with the game’s controls. I thought carpal tunnel syndrome was an urban legend before I played this game, and now my left wrist is screaming bloody murder at me to put it out of its misery. It feels like I’ve been choking the chicken for a week straight. Working the stylus constantly to aim and man the camera with your right hand while holding the system and pressing the back L button with your left hand unbalances the standard equilibrium of holding a controller. Having my non-dominant hand perform the bulk of supporting my kinetic involvement in the game makes every growing moment tense in the worst way possible, only because the cramping was making my hand slip. I never humor Nintendo’s message to take a break from their games as part of their health-conscious initiative but in this case, everyone should heed to the suggestion. I speak with the utmost objectivity when I say that Uprising’s control schematic is probably the worst I’ve experienced across all the games I’ve ever played. They are the sole reason why Uprising is a divisive title, with some people feeling confident in discarding the game completely because of them. The player can change the control scheme in the menu, but no amount of modifications can feasibly make them comfortable. The actual solution would’ve been to develop this game for the Wii, as the dual components of the motion-control Wiimote for aiming and the analog nunchuck to swiftly dodge enemy fire would’ve rectified the issues COMPLETELY. However, Nintendo seemed to have premeditatively given the Wii a premature death after 2011 to starve their consumers for the launch of their next console at the end of 2012, so development time for Uprising inconveniently settled it to the 3DS during the Wii’s purgatorial twilight year that Nintendo mandated.

The controls are a damn shame considering the caliber of Uprising’s gameplay they are tarnishing. Not only that, but the fact that gamers will be deterred away from witnessing the presentational aspects of Uprising that are of equally high quality is a larger tragedy. If your wrists are on their last limbs and are liable to burst from the pressure, I grant you sanction to play this game on a lower difficulty just to hone your focus on the game’s story and characters. It’s these specific facets of Uprising that make me grateful for Sakurai revitalizing the Kid Icarus franchise most of all.

Surprisingly, Uprising is genuinely funny. The first Kid Icarus game featured a few subtle hints of humor, but Uprising revels in being glib. The game is cheekier than Jennifer Lopez wearing a pair of jean shorts. Uprising is as aware of its quarter-century slumber as Laura Palmer and jabs at that fact quite often. Palutena discusses facing off against foes of yore like the Hewdra and Pandora by displaying screenshots of their previous 8-bit encounters. Pandora is even rendered as her primitive ghostly blue flame again in the third dimension to punch this joke to the extra mile. The three heads of the Hewdra are always interrupting each other in a battle for dominant attention, and a rotund, jubilant Thanatos is the antithesis of his usual draconian depiction as the lord of death. Because the game is self-aware, the characters naturally use their advanced perception to break the fourth wall. This tried and true postmodern practice isn’t only used to poke and prod at Kid Icarus but to reference other Nintendo franchises. Let’s say that you made the observation that the Komayto creatures shared a strong resemblance to a Metroid, Uprising affirms that connection for you. While the humorous direction can verge into being too quippy at times, it’s refreshing to see a Nintendo franchise that doesn’t take itself so seriously. It’s Nintendo’s quaint rendition of subverting the ancient Greek lore in a way that fits the company’s accessibility, as opposed to Sony massacring them in God of War.

Uprising’s jaunty tone benefits the characters most of all. It’s ironic that even though we’ve seen Mario and Link’s illustrious history every step of the way that even almost four decades later, all these characters can muster up are still only emotive grunts and one-liners emitted through cartoony vocalization. This lack of substantive characterization extends across almost all of Nintendo’s mascots, for narrative simplicity seems to be an idiosyncratic element of their brand. Pit being untethered by Nintendo tradition gives Sakurai the freedom to make the supernatural angel feel as human as possible. All we could infer from Pit’s personality from his 8-bit incarnation is his commitment to Palutena, as the length he was willing to go to rescue her was rewarded with a promotion at the end of the game. Sakurai extrapolated on this one trait to formulate a character that is a lot like Spongebob Squarepants. No really, Pits shares a lot in common with Nickelodeon’s yellow, undersea icon. They are both overly positive, have a strong sense of duty to the point of being sycophantic to their superiors, and both desire the means to travel faster of their own volition (a boat and the capacity to fly, respectively). They’re also both a pair of squeaky-clean, goody-two-shoes, but I suppose Pit can’t help himself as an angelic entity. Pit’s endearingly dorky disposition is expressed through the background conversations with Palutena, commenting on every bit of action that takes place during a level. While Palutena is essentially a glorified guide to aid the player, her lighthearted banter with Pit gives her enough personality to supersede her role as an advisor. At least this position gives her more character presence than the damsel in distress figure she was before, the fate commonplace for every other female with royal eminence at Nintendo.

The characters that banter with Pit the most are the other supporting characters. Pit’s diminutive role in both status and physical stature seems to be heavily contrasted with the rest of Uprising’s cast. Magnus is a human character that aids Pit in fighting the Dark Lord Gaol in chapter two. His dark features and apparent strength to wield his mighty greatsword make him the masculinity incarnate ying to Pit’s soft, inoffensive yang. Viridi, the petite and bratty goddess of nature of Sakurai’s own creation, uses her godly distinction to undermine Pit. She dishes out more insults than Kazooie, and Pit is too determined and proud to let her penetrate his confidence. Her temporary role in guiding Pit highlights her foil role to Palutena, as she certainly isn’t as pragmatic or patient with Pit as she is. Speaking of confidence, the flaming, self-proclaimed sun god Pyrrhon exudes a sense of quasi-heroic cockiness that Pit is too humble to share. Really, the most on-the-nose contrast with Pit is Dark Pit, a more dour-looking version of Pit with a black tunic formed by our hero staring at his own reflection for one moment too many in the Mirror of Truth. While Dark Pit is obviously equal to Pit in size and relative repute, Dark Pit defies the character traits of his originator with his rogue attitude and edgier demeanor. Well, it depicts a better character contrast than Sonic and Shadow, at least. Pit’s interactions with all of these character foils are thoroughly entertaining and had me smirking throughout. I just wish that these conversations didn’t take place during battle, as they tended to be quite distracting.

To everyone’s further surprise, the bounciness of Uprising’s characters even extends to its main antagonist. No, not Medusa, as she’s manically determined as any typical villain would be to conquer the world and crush her adversaries. I’m referring to the game’s TRUE main antagonist. In the ninth chapter, the game intentionally misleads the player into thinking that the fight against Medusa is the climactic point of the game with her being the main villain of the first game along with Pit decked out with the three sacred treasures. In a turn of events, Medusa is merely a red herring for Hades, the king of the underworld and the primary cause of this holy attrition. This twist was not surprising because I still remember my Greek mythology education from middle school. What was a shock was that the game was barely half over at this point.

Unlike Medusa, Hades is a vibrant, charismatic antagonist. You know the phenomenon that occurs when people have morbid lines of work like being a doctor or mortician and form a callous to cope with the hardships? Well, bearing the brunt of the world’s deceased has turned the lord of the underworld into a flamboyant clown that is at least three degrees related to Tim Curry’s Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show. His growing indifference to death and destruction due to his godly vocation has turned him into a raving sociopath, toying with mankind like a kid does to an ant hill with a magnifying glass. Despite his flippant manner, Hades still retains his eminence. The newest idea Hades has conjured up is fabricating the existence of a wish seed, something the humans wage war over out of gullible desperation. In the event of the humans being distracted, an alien race called the Aurum takes advantage of the earth’s resources. All of this culminates in Pit spiraling into utter defeat after the seventeenth chapter. Three years after his defeat, Pit has to clean up the mess in the wake of his failures and train himself to finally vanquish Hades harder than Rocky did eating all of those raw eggs. While Hades' titanic status as the main antagonist is effectively portrayed when our hero succumbs to his might, the way it is executed is rather clumsy. The Aurum is an asinine plot device whose middling relevance only seems to be tied to causing Pit’s downfall. I’m not entirely sure the parasitic Chaos Kin is really relevant to the grand overarching plot either. The goal of the story should’ve focused entirely on Hades, who is formidable enough to carry the weight of the main antagonist role. Also, Hades' time in the spotlight delves into some insightful musings on the human condition from divine outsiders looking in. While Hades and the other gods to a lesser extent have contempt for humans because of their pathetically selfish propensities, Pit eloquently states that the gods only exist because humans are the only mortal beings with the intellectual capacity for spirituality, conveying a symbiotic relationship between the heavens and the earth. After all, what is a God to a non-believer? Is Uprising actually delving into complex philosophies relating to faith and human nature? Isn’t this game from the same company where an Italian guy saves the same woman again and again and a pink marshmallow eats everything in sight?

When all is seemingly done, Uprising elongates its playtime even more with a bevy of content outside of the main story. All of the additions surrounding Uprising starts to remind everyone that Sakurai is the driving force behind Super Smash Bros. A checklist prescribed by Palutena offers over 120 boxes that reveal an extravagant painting per box checked off. These tasks range from using a specific weapon type to defeat a boss, clearing a chapter under a certain time, to being transformed into an eggplant. Real funny, Sakurai. After a certain point, the player unlocks TWO MORE checklists commissioned by Viridi and Hades with the same amount of objectives. Little figures of the game’s characters and settings similar to the trophies in Smash Bros. are unlocked via a chance mechanic like the aforementioned series and are displayed in a gallery with descriptive blurbs. The player can also engage in an online multiplayer mode that models a capture-the-flag game with skins of Pit divided by white and black factions. The game offers as much content to sink as Sakurai’s more involved IP, and that one has an incredible amount of star power.

Sakurai profoundly loves Kid Icarus. How else do you explain the finished product of Kid Icarus: Uprising? Sakurai wasn’t even involved with Nintendo, much less with the creation of the first Kid Icarus on the NES, yet he raised the franchise like it was his own child. His unconditional passion for the forgotten Kid Icarus IP has enabled the prolific Nintendo developer to convey his strong feelings with an impressive amount of hard work attached. His efforts have done more than convince me of Kid Icarus's full potential: he’s convinced me that Pit should headline the next Smash Bros. game. His one comeback arguably features more content, pizzazz, and personality than all of Nintendo’s more celebrated series, which is just absolutely astonishing. Unfortunately, the compromise with the controls that Sakurai has to make in adhering to the technically inferior 3DS handheld is the game’s Achilles heel. Actually, it’s Uprising’s bulbous, salient zit on its beautiful face. It's enough to keep Pit out of being the beau of the ball for Nintendo's 2012 prom. For those who appreciated everything else in the game regardless of its controls, Sakurai made a miracle in making us all clamor for more Kid Icarus after several years of total indifference. Bravo!

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/8/2023)

[Image from igdb.com]

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Developer: Rockstar

Publisher: Rockstar

Genre(s): Open-World

Platforms: PS2, Xbox, PC

Release Date: October 27, 2002

The rule of thumb when it comes to a retrospective cultural appreciation for a period of our recent past is to revel in it after two decades. Approximately twenty years is the sweet spot to open the floodgates to swim in the nostalgic backwash of yesteryear pop culture, for one decade would still remain in recent memory and three decades almost verges into celebrating the youth of one’s parents, and nothing they liked can possibly be cool. Nowadays, teenagers are interested in the fads of the 2000s (Jesus Christ) but when I was growing up in that decade, everyone was clamoring for the 1980s. From the resurgence of post-punk and new wave, the live-action rise of Transformers, to all of the content on VH1 Classic, the idea that the 1980s were a glorious, gilded time to be alive was efficiently drilled into my brain. I almost had to remind myself that the decade ended six years before I was born because I had been exposed to so much of its cultural tapestry as a child via the retrospection of the older folk who experienced it firsthand. It beats being terrified by the post-911 war on terror news or TiVoing the new sleazy, shameless reality TV show on the hospice bed of the once respected MTV. You don’t know how many times I was reminded that MTV used to exclusively play music videos back in the 1980s, truly the definitive statement for the rush of nostalgic wonderment granted to the 1980s after it had been hazy in the pop culture zeitgeist for over a decade. One of the pieces of media from the 2000s that might go unnoticed as a blatant work of 1980s pastiche is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. If there is any example of a work that soaks in the retro kitsch of the 1980s in a towel and wrings it over the dawn of the modern 21st century, it’s this game.

However, for as deliberate as Vice City is as a vessel of 1980s nostalgia, that component of its identity might be undermined by several other aspects surrounding its legacy. Vice City is the fourth installment in the infamous Grand Theft Auto series and the second title to be rendered as a 3D open-world game. The latter of Vice City’s placements in the franchise is the more pertinent one, for it’s the entry that followed up the ground-shaking splash of the first 3D GTA game that eroded the moral fiber of modern society. Or, at least that’s what the menopausal soccer moms and fuddy-duddy political figures in Washington DC would have you believe. At the same time these people were dreading the new tidal wave of unmitigated amoral mayhem Vice City would bring, gamers everywhere couldn’t wait to get swept up in its riptide current. Vice City was especially exciting because the series could only improve on the open-world formula that GTA III established. Its predecessor merely provided a base level of player-induced chaos with a staggeringly simple foundation with half-baked gameplay mechanics and narrative weight. Even though GTA III admittedly was the first of its kind, the game is like the equivalent of putting two pieces of bread together with some mayonnaise and calling it a sandwich. While technically true, it leaves a lot to be desired. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much hindsight to note that this sandwich would be both tastier and more enriching with some bacon, lettuce, and tomato on it, and that’s the meat of what Vice City could potentially provide to the open-world crime experience.

Crafting a full-fledged GTA title around the aesthetic of the 1980s was actually a complementary fit for the franchise. Gangster films are a primary influence on GTA in the narrative sense, and the 1983 blockbuster crime epic Scarface is among the most inspiring. Songs featured in that film’s soundtrack even make up the theme for a radio station’s playlist in the previous game. Specifically, in the case of Vice City, Rockstar seemingly attempted to formulate a tracing of the hit Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone collaboration, hoping to smudge the film’s trademark print as if doing so meant that the two Hollywood giants couldn’t take legal action against them. Flying too close to the copyright-infringing sun aside, what are the benefits of using Scarface as your muse to channel the decade in which it was released? Scarface, more so than any of its other contemporaries or gangster film elders, is an excessive depiction of the crime life. Everything from the constant indulgence in the city nightlife, the violent, bombastic action sequences, to shouty Al Pacino chewing the scenery as Tony Montana exudes a whirlwind of hedonistic adrenaline relatively associated with living on the fringe of legality. Two words: cocaine snowman. Yet, all of these hyper-exaggerated elements that make up the tone and direction of Scarface never verge on accidentally making the film overblown to the point where it’s ridiculous, or at least not at the time. The prevailing aura of the 1980s was to revel in excess thanks to the economic boom at the beginning of the decade, also making material gain a stark signifier of American “freedom” in the largest anti-communist decade since the 1950s. Only in the 1980s would Scarface be approached with the utmost sincerity. Try squeezing the line, “This town is like a great big pussy waiting to get fucked” in The Godfather, and see how that film stands up as a masterpiece.

While Al Pacino’s Tony Montagna is admittedly a bit over the top, one can’t deny his magnetic screen presence while we witness the tragic downfall of his rags-to-riches story. Because the character is such an integral part of Scarface’s identity, Rockstar needed to formulate their own Tony Montagna without actually calling him as such, much to their disappointment. Race-swapping the character to an Italian guy named Tommy Vercetti did the trick, even though the uncanny connections still scream Scarface arc from the top of the Miami Freedom Tower. Instead of introducing him as an immigrant, Rockstar cements that its main characters always enter the fray the same after a stint in the big house, with Tommy being released after a fifteen-year sentence as opposed to running on the lam. Apparently, Tommy was not a respected figure in the Italian crime syndicate as his old boss Sonny Forelli immediately sent him away to do some grunt work after a decade and a half of his absence. During a drug deal, a third party infiltrates the rendezvous and gun down Tommy and the others, surviving the unforeseen attack by the skin of his teeth. Because the deal is a bust, Sonny demands that Tommy compensate for the money lost and find the culprit behind the breach, even though Sonny is obviously playing him for a fool here.

Thankfully, clarity hit Rockstar over the head within the year after GTA III hit the shelves and gave Tommy a voice and a defined personality. Not only that, Ray fucking Liotta supplies his vocal talents to another low-level mobster on his rise to the top like the character from Goodfellas he is best known for. Puts the success of GTA III into perspective, does it not? Also, we can be thankful that Ray Liotta doesn't ham up Tommy’s inflections in an attempt to impersonate Tony Montana and that Tommy is relatively down-to-earth and pragmatic for a guy who is working his way to overthrow all organized crime in southern Florida. Ray Liotta even monologues Tommy’s thoughts and feelings like his Henry Hill voiceover to enhance his personability. Admittedly, surpassing the mute avatar character Claude as a substantial character is not a high bar to hurdle over. Still, Tommy provides enough charisma and personality to remedy Rockstar’s mistake they made in the previous game and put the franchise on the right track from here on out. Maybe I just like his festive Hawaiian shirt.

While the supporting characters in GTA III possessed the ability to speak, the overall cast still somehow managed to be as chillingly distant and impersonal as Claude. Tommy’s role as a more personable protagonist also makes the various people he associates with more vibrant by proxy. Ascending to the top of the throne of organized crime involves Tommy making business relationships with the Vice City elite that practically run the city. The suave, ex-drug kingpin Juan “The Colonel” Cortez seems to use his amassed wealth and retired status to congregate his upper-class colleagues on his fanciful yacht, which is where Tommy ascertains the idea of who to make bedfellows with on his mission. These notable aristocrats include Ricardo Diaz, the irascible and unpredictable drug baron of Vice City who Tommy believes most likely orchestrated the setup in the beginning. The Sam Elliott impersonator Avery Carrington is a Vice City real estate magnate who hires Tommy to subside the property values for his own financial gain, and the obnoxious British poonhound Kent Paul is a high-profile music producer working with fictional Scottish glam metal band Love Fist. The members of this band are present only in side missions, but I highly recommend engaging with their Spinal Tap shenanigans for a laugh and a satirical look at 1980s music trends. We see an earlier window into the lives of characters from GTA III such as Donald Love and the not-yet armless Phil for a lark and to cement a kind of world canon between the GTA games.

Not every character here in Vice City is a powerful mogul that Tommy has to prove his worth to. Tommy’s two right-hand men collaborating with him on equal standing are his advisor Ken Rosenberg and partner on the field Lance Vance. Both of these men irritate Tommy to no end because neither can be relied on. Ken is as neurotic as the Jewish stereotype comes by, and the white booger sugar he’s constantly cranking up his nose probably doesn’t help alleviate his anxiety. Lance, on the other hand, showcases the game’s strong Miami Vice influence by presenting a parody character of Don Johnson’s partner Tubbs from the show. I’ve never seen an episode of Miami Vice but after consulting my mom who watched the show during its run, Tubbs is completely worthless. The same could be said for Lance during the missions, and his whining to Tommy about how he doesn’t “appreciate him” is sure to give both Tommy and the player a migraine headache. While Tommy is ultimately using the game’s supporting cast to climb the ranks like Claude did, one gets the impression that the relationships he makes are more personal through the interactions in the cutscenes, a certain repartee that goes beyond sterile commands that are just business transactions. It’s amazing how much depth can be added to a character and their interactions through the power of speech.

How does Vice City bask in the indulgent atmosphere of the decade it is set in? Let us start with the setting and its aesthetic. With some deeper consideration besides simply reusing the same city setting from Scarface, Miami seems like the perfect US city to retrospectively encapsulate the sense of 1980s pomp. Florida’s most southern major metropolis is notably a party city for wild college kids and wealthy socialites alike, the appeal stemming from its beaches and year-round tropical climate without requiring a passport to visit. Its southern settlement along the Atlantic Ocean also verges near the Caribbean where foreign island nations are but an earshot away via a breezy boat ride. Because Miami is in close quarters of these nations outside the bounds of US jurisdiction, the city is also associated with trafficking illegal exports from these countries. Namely, an elicit white powdery substance that was the center of a city-wide drug war during this decade. It’s also the drug that fueled the debaucherous high life associated with the decade, so why not set the scene at the source? Miami is fun, hot, colorful, and decadent, four words that also tend to summarize the nostalgic pining people had for the 1980s. Correct me if I’m wrong, Miami natives, but the most indelible image of the city in my perspective is Ocean Drive along the beach with the festive buildings running the gamut of the neon-colored rainbow. Put some palm trees and lawn flamingos in the shot and you’ve basically constructed the perfect postcard of the American tropical paradise.

If you couldn’t tell from my description of Miami, the mimicked GTA version of Miami is a far cry from the New York-esque Liberty City from GTA III. The atmosphere that Liberty City exuded was one of urban cynicism, a cold concrete jungle that served as the graveyard for the American dream. Vice City emits such a polar opposite of the atmosphere from Liberty City that it’s hard to believe that both metropolitan areas reside in the same country. Conversely, Vice City feels like a lucrative bastion of economic and humanistic prosperity. The American dream is still alive and well in Vice City, even if achieving it here involves skating around federal law and putting a target on your back. On top of drastically shifting the tone from the previous cityscape, Vice City itself is also designed in a different manner than that of Liberty City, naturally so considering the real American cities they parallel. Instead of three distinct burroughs of equal size, Vice City is divided by two large islands with some smaller isles between them of relatively less significance. Progressing around the map of the city is still similar to that of Liberty City in that the player must complete a certain amount of missions to visit the other islands that comprise the city. Tommy starts out operating from the resort island in the east with people in bathing suits walking along the beach sidewalks to the various clubs and other lavish tourist traps. The island in the west, conversely, is the downtown sector that completely juxtaposes the inviting glow of its eastern counterpart with dirty slum villages and a rampant gang war between the Cubans and the Haitians in the foreground. Both islands contrast each other and display a strong and honest city dichotomy of poshness and poverty under the same area code. Navigating through Vice City is also more convenient due to the straightaway shoreline drive on both islands as opposed to the grid design that emulated New York. Vice City is technically smaller than Liberty City, but it compensates more than enough with substance, style, and accessibility.

The largest improvement Vice City makes on GTA III’s open-world foundation relating to the city's design is that the developers implemented a world map, a wake-up call this kind of game desperately needed. An arrow icon could have perfected the utility of this requisite reference tool along with putting more key icons on the radar, but at least it's a step in the right direction after its appalling omission in the previous game. Other quality-of-life enhancements Vice City adds are the sturdier vehicles that will not be set ablaze by the slightest of road shrapnel or minor change in wind velocity. Of course, this makes enemy vehicles more difficult to mow down but considering how many vehicle missions involve evading the cops who batter the player’s cars like charging bulls, I much appreciate the added durability. The first safe house will provide health icons and some of the other properties that Tommy can purchase also come with free body armor. The target system when shooting has also been tweaked to the point where it targets enemies from further away depending on the firearm with a more defined reticle. The developers listened to everyone's prayers and delivered splendidly.

I complained that GTA III’s rudimentary design made the game unnecessarily difficult, so all of these improvements should make for a more accommodating GTA experience, right? Well, it seems like I was only partially correct. All of the improvements make the general GTA gameplay more fluid, but Vice City introduces a whole new slew of new mechanics that rival the austerity of GTA III. For one, everyone seems to gripe at any mission involving steering a remote-controlled model from a distance, namely the chopper in “Demolition Man” or the seaplane in “Dildo Dodo.” The objectives during these missions aren’t outlandish or anything, but controlling these model aircraft is always rigid, and accelerating them requires so much force that it feels like the player will need a paperweight. While these types of missions can be aggravating because of the controls, acclimating to them is still something that can be achieved through a small amount of practice. However, the prevalent number of escort missions really tests my patience. Fending for oneself against the onslaught of police forces is hard enough, but the additional challenge of protecting (not assisting, let's be real here) a CPU whose mortality lies in Tommy's success is a game of chance most of the time. During the bank heist, it’s a gamble whether or not Cam dies on sight from the security guards, and Lance certainly does not atone for his annoying bellyaching by adding extra firepower in the mission “Cop Land”. The cocaine that the denizens of Vice City are snorting must be laced with lead paint because their AI is as unresponsive as Internet Explorer. Forget about continuing with the mission if your car catches on fire with someone else in it. It shows me that some aspects of 3D gaming were still in their primitive stages and gaming AI still needed some heavy consideration. On top of all the new grievances, Vice City still proves that the shooting gameplay should have a duck-and-cover system because Tommy standing in the open and opening fire will often annihilate him even with body armor. Because of this, the mission “No Escape?” where Tommy has to perform a jailbreak with an endless stream of armed cops in an enclosed vicinity is my pick for the hardest mission. I guess the developers intentionally craft GTA as a challenging experience. Still, seemingly unrefined mechanics shouldn’t be the source of it.

Vice City’s difficulty curve is also just as wonky as it was in GTA III, with some missions requiring one simple objective and others acting as an endurance test. However, Vice City’s uneven difficulty progression is due to the most interesting mechanic the game offers. The first half of the game revisits the quasi-linear mission format of completing tasks for a certain character until an arc is completely akin to GTA III. That all changes once Cortez flees the country and Tommy takes down Diaz, repurposing his resplendent isle estate as his own. After that, it’s time to utilize the teachings of Mr. Carrington and invest, invest, and invest some more. Ten total assets can be purchased for a sizable sum of money, and most of them come with a line of missions. Others involve more trivial tasks like spending $300 in a private room of the Pole Position strip club and making fifty deliveries of a potent new drug out of an ice cream van, which amused me greatly. Once Tommy completes these missions, he can collect a consistent revenue stream that maxes out at the in-game 24-hour period. Some of these assets are investments of a considerably large price like the club and the counterfeit mill, so making rounds will be a consistent outlying task outside of the missions themselves. The Reaganomics-era rate of inflation is only so accommodating. One may see this tedious task as an example of grinding, but I didn’t mind it so much unlike other instances of gaining experience and or finances. The reward of a constant flow of money after completing the necessary missions was super gratifying. The struggle of rising to the point when Tommy was an errand boy pawn during the first half shifted into Tommy becoming a bonafide bigwig in the crime world. Only treating that goal with this sense of pacing could effectively translate this to the player, and I felt as powerful as Tony did. If only I could translate this to my real life.

As effective as the game’s second half is in conveying Tommy’s character arc, it does put the main plot on a cryogenic hold. Once Tommy has a comfortable hold on most of the assets, Sonny decides it's time to reap the benefits of his accomplishments. Tommy’s mafia cohorts start taxing the revenue of his new assets which obviously, Tommy doesn’t care too much for. Working his way up to being a self-made man has given Tommy a newfound sense of self-respect and is willing to defend against Sonny and hold his new ground as a prime contender in the crime syndicate. Tommy’s original plan was to dupe Sonny with counterfeit money to throw him off, but that plan falters because Lance betrays Tommy for both personal and financial reasons. Given that the final mission takes place on the upper foyer balcony of Tommy’s mansion with him gunning down Sonny’s forces infiltrating his private domicile, the Scarface comparisons should flare up once again. While the mafia’s numbers seem endless, the spacious estate gives Tommy enough room to take them, Lance, and Sonny out at a safe distance, and health and armor can be picked up at any point. Again, Rockstar learned that depriving the player of all of their defenses for the final mission was a bad idea. Unlike Scarface, Tommy’s sense of pride doesn’t lead to his downfall as he wins over Sonny attempting to toy with him like a sociopathic child picking off the legs of an ant once again. He walks off with Ken in a moment that references the end of Casablanca as he plans to continue his business ventures with him, the “beginning of a beautiful friendship” in a criminal context. No, Tommy should not have shot Ken as Claude did to Maria, as the more upbeat GTA game deserved this more satisfyingly upbeat ending.

Though GTA III spurred a monumental movement in both game design and the parameters of video game controversy, the game itself was but a beta test showcasing the base potential of what it offered and nothing more. All it took was a meager year for Rockstar to use those primordial workings that promised thrills unseen in any other video game before it and actually delivered on those promises. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a lighthearted thrill ride through ascending to the top of the drug lord ladder, and the added aesthetic of 1980s culture with a few pronounced elements of that time period certainly add to the game’s vibrancy. I became totally immersed in the game’s presentation and its intriguing pacing, even with a few lackluster aspects still retaining or adding to Rockstar’s “to-do list” for the following game. All in all, Vice City is simply far more fun than GTA III, which should ultimately be the prime aspect that really matters.

Brütal Legend Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/2/2023)

{Image from wikipedia.org]

Brütal Legend

Developer: Double Fine

Publisher: EA

Genre(s): Action-Adventure, Real-Time Strategy

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Release Date: October 13, 2009

Brutal Legend was released at the pinpoint perfect time in my life. I know this is hard to believe for a guy that reviews video games on the internet, but I wasn’t exactly the BMOC in school. My middle school days in the late 2000s were a turning point in my social life when I discovered that I was the weird kid in school and probably wouldn’t be dating any cheerleaders in my upcoming adolescent years. What do the weird kids tend to gravitate to when they feel ostracized by their peers? Music, and specifically underground music that their classmates would revile and or cause them bewildered confusion. Let’s face it: metal music is the epitome of this sensation, encapsulating all of the musical themes, tropes, and boisterous musicianship deemed unsavory by the masses. Yet, metal’s inaccessible aesthetic and musicality is exactly why the genre’s community has persisted since its glory days in the 1980s. It’s the reason why I found myself magnetized to its gritty majesty during my early teenage years and ostensibly, the same chord was struck inside LucasArts mainstay and Double Fine founder Tim Schaffer. Already, Tim Schaffer is the ideal developer to task with making the radical notion of a heavy metal video game come to fruition, judging by his legacy of weirdo, auteur-driven cult classics under his belt. From another perspective, putting Tim Schaffer at the helm of a video game based around a niche music subculture is destined to be poison for sales figures. Fortunately, Brutal Legend foresaw this possibility of being a continuation of Tim Schaffer’s shortcomings and ensconced itself with some notable industry heavyweights. If someone wishes to launch their new video game IP into the stratosphere of success, I can’t think of anyone better to bolster that possibility than American gaming wall street sharks EA to publish it. It also doesn’t hurt having A-list Hollywood celebrity Jack Black as the face of your new IP from a marketing standpoint, as he’s the only famous face who champions the spirit of rock music as much as humanly possible with his various projects. With a solid team backing Brutal Legend, Tim Schaffer finally hit his commercial stride and the game ushered in a new wave of interest in the metal genre beyond its legion of committed community members…no, it didn’t. I can’t lie to you, people.

Brutal Legend subtly suggests how passe it is making something revolving around heavy metal music past its days in the 1980’s as a youth subculture. The game’s introduction illustrates the sad state of the genre in the 21st century. Eddie Riggs, who is essentially Jack Black’s ideal version of himself he sees in the mirror to amp up his confidence, is a roadie for the obnoxious, braindead quasi-boy band Kabbage Boy. He cringes and facepalms at their fusion of modern metal with tasteless hip-hop elements and schmaltzy, sugary pop choruses, parallelling everything under the realm of “mallcore” that unfairly defined the heavy metal landscape in 2009. He laments that he was born too late to witness the genre at its inception before it became an embarrassment. A shooting star must’ve flown past the venue within milliseconds of Eddie expressing his metal malaise because before he knows it, the Motorhead-esque Snaggletooth/Warpig set piece he designed comes to life and makes mincemeat out of these scrawny Kabbage Boy clowns. Unfortunately, Eddie does not get to witness the sinister side of his wishes come true because he’s knocked unconscious by a large piece of the stage after saving one of the little pissants from falling. When he awakens, he is transported to an altar where he must dispatch the droning deacons with a mighty battle ax and his guitar Clementine seems to have elemental powers in this new environment. Eddie soon meets up with his metal pixie dream girl Ophelia who enlists him in the rebellion army against a fascist force in this world named Emperor Doviculus who has enslaved humanity.

If you couldn’t tell from the synopsis of Brutal Legend’s opening sequence, the game isn’t merely a lark to converge metal culture and video games: it’s a metalhead’s wet dream sure to cause more nocturnal emissions than Kate Upton wearing a bullet belt as a brasserie. To make every metalhead make a shameful mess in their ripped-up jeans, Jack and Tim had to consider the culture of metal deeply beyond a game full of references to the music groups and their songs. Firstly, Double Fine nailed the metal aesthetic and for those of you who are totally alien to the genre of music, I’m not talking about chain link fences and kitchen utensils. It’s safe to say that metalheads encompass another branch of the nerd family tree, and that’s not a shocking statement if you look past the seemingly tough exterior. Fantasy tropes are interwoven all over the fabric of metal’s visual tapestry. They crank up the testosterone-fueled, power-fantasy elements with a pinch of ghastly hellfire to boot while diminishing the whimsical, folksy elements associated with fantasy to mask its nerdy core. It’s like a marriage between the designs in an offroad tattoo parlor and dungeons and dragons. Brutal Legend’s fantasy realm that Eddie finds himself in after his stupor encapsulates that electric metal atmosphere to a T. The environment is a naturalistic landscape untouched by civilization with its rolling hills and steep, rocky cliffs, with a few paved roads for the convenience of Eddie’s bitchin hot rod. There’s constantly an element of the sublime with constant thundering in the clouds and towering effigies to exude that metal mightiness. The piles of skulls and pits of fire interspersed on the field definitely aid the intended atmosphere, don’t you think? As Eddie travels further across the map, Lionwhyte’s palace, the snowy peaks, and the gothic grave lands might change up the surface aesthetic a tad, but it still provides the same spicy flavor of fantasy landscapes. Brutal Legend looks absolutely incredible.

Of course, a heavy metal game couldn’t possibly hope to be a genuine experience on aesthetics alone. One of the most exciting aspects of Brutal Legend was the reveal of the soundtrack, with a whopping 107 songs to shuffle through. This aspect of Brutal Legend was arguably of the utmost importance, as nothing is more vital to metal than the music. Fucking this up would prove to be disastrous, and potentially out Jack and Tim as posers. Fortunately, they both proved their metal credibility because the selection of metal songs is dynamite. By 2009, metal had evolved and sprouted a myriad of subgenres, so Double Fine had plenty to pick from. Naturally, classic bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Motorhead get a higher precedence not only for their titan-like status as metal pioneers but because members from these bands offer their voice talents to a few of the characters. A few hard rock bands like UFO, Budgie, and Kiss are in the mix for their proto influence on the genre as well. Some classic obscure heavy metal bands featured here include Crimson Glory, Omen, Sanctuary, Brocas Helm, etc. and some NWOBHM bands like Angel Witch and Cloven Hoof should ideally intrigue players into diving deeper into their catalogs via Google. The newer bands on display are ones that emulate the classic metal sounds like Slough Feg and Skeletonwitch. Bands that lean more towards the more modern styles post-1980s are few and far between, with Ministry, Prong, and Marilyn Manson being the representatives here. Some might be alienated if their metal fondness stems from the alternative side, but really, that makes the soundtrack authentic to the metal community. I’m satisfied with the range they’ve covered and I’m impressed with their deep cuts, but not with some genres only having token picks and the extreme metal selections verging in the more melodic/symphonic directions.

Brutal Legend’s gameplay deceived everyone at the time. Given that Eddie brandishes a hulking battle ax and that his guitar now summons magic, everyone assumed that Brutal Legend would be akin to a hack-n-slash action game like God of War. One should’ve expected that Tim Schaffer would never produce anything typical or by the numbers, so the fact that Brutal Legend’s core gameplay mechanic combined with the driving is real-time strategy shouldn’t come as a surprise. This unorthodox decision is exactly why Brutal Legend failed to captivate both gamers and metalheads alike, for it’s as half-baked as that time Metallica collaborated with Lou Reed. Through the unmitigated power of his guitar shredding enacted by simple rhythm-based sections, Eddie will call forth the metalheads battalions to do battle with the opposing forces, dismantling their stage before they penetrate their defenses to do the same. RTS games usually aren’t designed for consoles, for one thing, because the genre tends to involve an intricate array of quick options that functions optimally with a mouse and keyboard. The wheel roulette of sick licks to play to summon the forces of metal works well enough, but there is barely any real strategy involved. Most of the time, spamming any kind of class from the shirtless meatheads with iron skulls to the mammoth creatures with steel tusks will always prove effective. This is a relief because it’s difficult to know what’s going on beneath all of the chaos because the rival factions tend to share too similar of a resemblance to Eddie’s. All of the RTS sections are in one ear and out of the other, and engaging in one to further the story always felt irritatingly distracting from the real appeal of the game. I doubt Brutal Legend would be any more substantive as a hack-n-slash game because fighting as Eddie lacks a certain oomph compared to the chain-wielding of Kratos. That, and the man does not have the capability to jump even an inch off of the ground.

I can’t help but feel like Brutal Legend’s story is more allegorical than anything. Anyone that has a slight knowledge of the history of metal can suss out the subtle identities of Doviculus’s forces by their appearances. The gaudy glam metal forces of Lionwhyte and the mall goth factions mirror the metal communities' distaste for the metal-adjacent genres they represent that have wrongfully (in their eyes) been the de facto faces of metal in the public eye in separate decades. If there’s anything metalheads hate more than Top 40 pop radio consumed by the masses, it’s the “impure” popular genres that creep in and adulterate the metal family tree. Certainly, a story revolving around absolving metal from commercial sin makes the Metalhead fantasy more palpable. However, this premise only works for me if there is a tongue-in-cheek element that is poking fun at the less-than-savory aspects of the metal community, and I don’t think it is. That kind of elitism and groupthink is one of the reasons why I abandoned metal as my favored genre of music for over a decade now.

Ultimately, the allegorical route to Brutal Legend’s story is more interesting than what is happening on the surface. Once the metal rebellion defeats Lionwhyte in his pleasure palace that looks like a perfume grenade went off in Tony Montagna’s mansion, Lars, the most interesting character, dies at the hand of Doviculus. After that, the group travels past the beachy cliffsides to the jungles and misty woods of the gothic factions' territory where Ophelia betrays them by drowning herself in the mystical Sea of Black Tears to become a supernatural force of power for Doviculus. Anyone surprised by this twist needs to crack open the first page of the Story Writing 101 book as the love interest is always the mole in every reveal such as this. A flood of lore is exposited involving Eddie’s destiny in this world due to a familial lineage he was not aware of and how it pertains to vanquishing the threat of Doviculus, which he does by the end of the game. Not only does the story suffer from being a bit rushed because of the game’s quick pacing, but the stakes of Eddie defeating Doviculus in the end were never too severe. He’s not a fish out of water here, but a shark who’s been transported to the vast depths of the ocean after living his life in an aquarium. The metal world is his paradise, not an unnerving strange land he has to acclimate to survive. It would probably be more interesting to see Eddie struggle in the real world where metal is practically kitsch.

Brutal Legend is yet another indication that Tim Schaffer is doomed to never ascend past a cult classic status, even with so much stardom backing his project. In a twist, this might be the first example of poor Tim fumbling on one of his titles because of the questionable quality instead of the unabashed quirkiness that hinders his sales margins. Tim should’ve kept it simple with the story and the gameplay, for even he can’t be so dense not to realize that Brutal Legend’s appeal stems from its concept and theme. When it comes to those aspects, Brutal Legend excels wonderfully as the culture and aesthetic of the metal genre are emulated perfectly. All I enjoyed doing in Brutal Legend was basking in the glory of the setting while driving around and listening to its extensive metal soundtrack. I do understand that releasing a game as bare bones as that would be hard to sell at all, though even to the most zealous of metalheads.