Brutal Legend multiplayer has RTS twist

By Robert Purchese Published 14 August, 2009

Win fans, build stages, crush competition.

Double Fine has drawn back the curtain on the four-player RTS multiplayer mode within upcoming action game Brutal Legend.

The idea will be to lead your band to glory, harvesting fan resources, erecting an enormous stage base and trampling the opposition. Each faction has a leader - hero Eddie Riggs, baddie Doviculus and Goth band Drowning Doom, according to Kotaku.

Those leaders sprout wings to enable quick-travel around the map. Leaders can link with units to perform special attacks, too.

Fans are won by successfully completing Guitar Hero-style mini-game solos, where notes play on a clef at the top of the screen from right to left. Press the wrong face-buttons, however, and the solo is over.

Stages (bases) cannot defend themselves, but leaders can garrison them and turn them into weapons which shoot light-rig lasers, knock enemies back with speaker-blasts and weaken attackers with dry-ice fog. Fans earned from geysers can heal the stage.

One map - Bleeding Coast - was shown at the multiplayer reveal, but seven maps will be offered in total.

There are pictures to illustrate all this in our Brutal Legend gallery.

Brutal Legend arrives for PS3 and Xbox 360 on 16th October.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Toothball #1 3 years ago

    Sounds curious. I'll be getting it regardless after Double Fine's magnificent victory over the enemy.

  • kar #2 3 years ago

    Heh really looking forward to this game actually!

  • r4z0rbl4d3 #3 3 years ago

    LOL, sounds awesome! Very odd that the MP is totaly diffrent from the SP but I like what I hear!

  • ardamillo #4 3 years ago

    Nice to see something a bit different in the multiplayer department.

  • Xerx3s #5 3 years ago

    MP in games like these is usually futile. Nobody will be playing MP after a month or two (because nobody else is playing). They would have been better off spending money on the SP or something like coop.

  • InsoFox #6 3 years ago

    Fun fact: Brutal Legend was originally conceieved as a mainly-multiplayer game and the single player game we've seen so far grew out of that, not the other way round. So saying that they shouldn't wasted time on multiplayer is kind of silly.

  • ElPedro #7 3 years ago

    "Very odd that the MP is totaly diffrent from the SP but I like what I hear! "

    There are parts of the single player that plays like the multiplayer. A big part of the single player seems to be recruiting units to your army and then have battles that plays out kind of like an RTS. To say that this game combines several genres is an understatement.

  • Rorsch #8 3 years ago

    I really can't wait for this one!

  • Zebula77 #9 3 years ago

    Hmm, could this be the first RTS-style game to appeal to me? Very possibly. :)

  • Xerx3s #10 3 years ago

    "So saying that they shouldn't wasted time on multiplayer is kind of silly. "

    Is it? The fact is that unless you have the next CODMW or Halo, MP will players will be on short supply. I have so many (pretty good) games that are bought for SP (which I reckon 95% of the buyers buy BL for) that had 0 active players within 3 months (I reckon that it's about 60% of all the good games I own). People buy story games for the SP, they play it and then move on to the next thing.

  • reelbigkris #11 3 years ago

    saw some gameplay videos of this on IGN, it looks particually confusing, but could be fun. after playign tower defense games like pixel junk monsters and plants vs zombies this will be a great take on the genre.