Into The Vault: Brave (Xbox 360)
Surprisingly enough, if you have had an Xbox console for a while, you might own this game and not even realize it. Seriously, it was offered as a free game for Xbox Live Gold members like two years ago.
But onto the actual review! Brave, based on the Pixar movie of the same name featuring a pretty awesome heroine who needs a better movie, loosely follows the plot of the movie, but the structure of the Nintendo 3DS game (which I reviewed awhile back) with a few key differences. Either at some point Brave had a very different story (totally possible) or the developers decided the story as is wouldn’t make for a compelling enough video game. Which I think is fair, I don’t actually think the movie easily translates into a video game.
So yes much like the 3DS game, your goal is to save your mother but instead of saving her by understanding her better and thereby improving your relationship and breaking the curse (though a scene recognizing that aspect of the movie is still included here and as such doesn’t make a ton of sense as pertains to the game), the real villain is the evil bear Mor’du and you must defeat him and his seeming legions of forest demons to cleanse the forest and save your mom.
Playing as Merida is pretty much the same deal here as before, you gain access to different elemental types that enemies are weak against, and use those to your advantage. You can also gain upgrades of bows, armor etc. The games are about equal length. The Xbox 360 version has far fewer overall levels but they are longer.
Maybe my expectations are too high but I was honestly shocked at just how bad this game looks. This was the era where things like “Toy Story-level” graphics were promised and not delivered on sure, but I think the 3DS game is more impressive in terms of what they did with what that system is capable of. Brave for Xbox 360 suffers from a lot of the brown and dingy look that many games of the era suffered from and in some cases that makes it incredibly hard to see what is even going on or if there’s a platform I’m supposed to jumping to or what. All but the last three levels pretty much look the same and even those aren’t any great change just a welcome change from hey it’s another forest!
So what’s different about this version? Namely that in some limited capacity you get to play as Merida’s mother as a big bear and as her triplet brothers as bear cubs. This probably could’ve been interesting, but boy does it fail at varying up the gameplay in any fun way. There is some entertainment in being a big bear for a few minutes that is mostly unstoppable and can destroy a bunch of enemies in a row, but Merida’s mother controls so clumsily it’s hard to even direct attacks properly and while you are harder to kill as the bear you aren’t invincible and sometimes your health will be drained fast just because it’s hard to keep control and kill enemies effectively.
Then there are the triplets. These guys are reserved strictly for puzzles that unlock gates or doors. And I know, this is a licensed game based on a kid’s movie, the puzzles shouldn’t be all that difficult. But a lot of these barely qualify as puzzles, it’s simply moving one triplet to a switch at a time with nothing to even figure out. What is even the point?
Finally, though it’s a more challenging set of waves, you still have one of the same big issues I had with the 3DS version, you don’t actually fight Mor’du. He summons several slightly challenging waves of enemies and you fight those, but once you beat those the game is done, no final confrontation with the bear itself.
So oddly enough if you are looking for a video game take on Brave to play I would highly recommend the 3DS version over the Xbox 360 one. It honestly kinda looks better, is more fun to play, and the added elements of playing as mama bear and her triplets are more of a detriment to the game than a bonus. I still want a showdown with Mor’du though dammit. That’s all for now, see ya real soon!
