Disney's Brave

Scotland is filled with historical castles and misty moors.

There’s a lot of history that comes with Scotland, a lot of interesting places and
monuments, exports and even famous people such as Sir Alex Ferguson, Ewan
Mcgregor and J.K Rowling.

Screw talking about all of that though, instead today I’m going to talk about a
bright-eyed, colourful version of Scotland where little can go wrong, that’s right
we’re in Disney town.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Brave then the video game will be very familiar to
you as they run pretty much parallel up to a point. Merida wants the freedom
from her family and obligations she thinks she deserves, goes to see a witch,
gets more than she bargained for, blah blah blah.

It’s here that the game takes its own turn, as following exactly what the movie
did would be too hard I guess. I say that in jest as it obviously wouldn’t be and in
all honesty it would probably be more interesting, especially the archery contest.
Well, there goes my opinion of Brave escaping early but stick with me I have
more to say.

Brave is a level based game. You start in a ring of stones after being led there by
a Will-o’-the-wisp via the witch’s hut who informs Merida that Mor’du has
corrupted the land or whatever and she must defeat him. That’s a nice neat
start; a problem is introduced along with the antagonist, all that’s left to do now is
save the world.

The problem with Brave is that it’s made by Disney. I don’t mean that in snooty,
pretentious “it’s a cartoon so it doesn’t matter” kind of way, but rather that you
go into watching any Disney film knowing that everything will be ok in the end.
So it’s obvious that the evil corrupting the land will be defeated swiftly once and
for all.

Getting back to the game play and I believe I left us at the ring of stones.
Each stone arch takes you to a different level you see and on each level there’s
a plethora of enemies, some of which have certain weaknesses. These can be
exploited by equipping charms to your bow or sword for enhanced attacks,
though it does involved switching between what type of attacks you want to use
which is a bit of a ballache. Personally I found it easier to jump into the fray with
a barrage of generic arrows, the damage may not have been efficiently
maximised but it worked. Another part of battle involved Merida’s mother, who
has been bearified remember. Essentially, these segments give you a break
from the norm as you crash about as a huge bear destroying everything in your
path. Once I did sit there and do nothing as Merida’s mother in an attempt to see
how long it would take her to die. You can imagine my lack of surprise when she
took next to no damage at which point I proceeded to decimate everything
around in a matter of seconds.

Brave is a toothless game in regards to the combat - and most aspects come to
think of it -  Combat is almost ancillary in a sense as the layout of the levels is
very straight forward. It’s almost like the designers needed to stop the player
burning through each level. Speaking of level design, each one is very basic:
Forests, mountains, caves, a frozen lake (yeah i’m not really sure on that last
one either), some even get reused which is rather slapdash. One of the shining
points about the game - and that’s using the term loosely - are the puzzle
sections. Now, Merida’s mother would be far too heavy handed to take on a task
as delicate as operating several levers and pulley systems to open a door and
Merida herself is as useless as a chocolate teapot when it comes to thinking.
These sections are left to her three brothers, who have also been bearified.
You switch between the furry little rascals to weigh down platforms, pull levers
or ropes and eventually open the door so Merida can progress. Now, maybe it’s
my general ham handedness and lack of lateral thinking but these were the only
times the game threatened to become challenging. I’m not saying it does
because on the scale of challenging puzzles Brave’s comes in above “press A to
start game” and just under “use stick to move”.

At the end of the day Brave isn’t designed for veteraned gamers. As you could
probably have guessed it’s aimed at a younger audience, one that won’t know
the nuances of complex combo moves or out of the box thinking. Just because
I’m obviously too old for the game that doesn’t mean I’m automatically down on it
or that I think it’s a bad game though. It follows the themes and story nicely so
anyone playing that has seen the film will be familiar with their surroundings.
If you’re after a decent adventure game with limited controls and gameplay a
tad on the easy side then give Brave a whirl, it won’t be the best thing you’ve ever
played but it definitely passes the time.

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Happy gaming guys!