So here it is, a game seemingly perfectly engineered for middle-aged metalheads such as myself, a dude weaned on Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Megadeth. Brutal Legend admittedly nails it with its world and story and soundtrack. But it falls so short in actual gameplay. At first, it's a brawler -- you know, lots of button-mashing combos. Then it's an open world thing where you're driving around doing stuff. THEN -- it turns into this bad RTS, kind of like what Sacrifice (available here on GOG...) did, except Sacrifice did that weird FPS/RTS thing right. And then Brutal Legend kind of...just ends. So you end up with this mishmash of game elements, none of them that great. Very disappointing.
It's not so much the nudity (pixelated and low res that it is) that bothers me. Nor is it the puerile, juvenile garbage that passes for humor. I can handle these -- even enjoy them -- if it's in the service of a great game. MCL gameplay isn't great. It's not even good. It's a bunch of mindless, Flash-level minigames that you have to grind over, and over, and over again to get anywhere. My advice: if you want the same level of titillation and lowbrow humor, go out and rent something like Van Wilder or whatever passes for a grossout teen comedy these days. You'll waste less time.
What you have here is an OK roguelike, with a strong emphasis on missile weapons and crafting. Balance seems to be OK, but as is usual with all of these types of games you can still be a victim of the random number generator. Other than the bad artwork -- which I think is just lazy, not "retro" -- The Pit is good enough for a few nights of exploration and monster-bashing, but it doesn't have the "hooks" that a truly good roguelike (like the free Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup) provides.
