Brutal Legend is a game that's only as great as your love of the source material. If your musical library consists mostly of The Backstreet Boys and Madonna, this game is definitely not for you. Brutal Legend is a game for those people who want to "rock and roll all night and party every day." A game for those people who want to "run to the hills" and ring "hell's bells." A game for those people who know whom the hell Baba O'Riley and Mr. Crowley are.

You play as Eddie Riggs, who works as a roadie for a lame pop metal band. It's a good thing for them, however, that he's the Wolverine of roadies, as he's the best there is at what he does. Of course, doing his best gets him injured and teleported to a strange realm where demon nuns stride around, metal exhaust pipes sprout from the ground like trees, and metal spiders spin bass guitar strings. It's a world filled with peril and dangerous situations, but that's just awesome to Eddie, who loves the Heavy Metal vibe.

Eddie Riggs

Tim Schafer is known for his humor and the way his games can tell a story. While Brutal Legend isn't as laugh-out-loud funny or cerebral as Psychonauts, it's still an excellent game, though for entirely different reasons. Brutal Legend is indeed a funny game, but the opening intro reeks of false advertisement, because its tone is widely different than that presented once the game proper gets going. I actually find the humor much more endearing and intelligent later on, but some find the game dull when it comes to the humor level. The reason for such differing opinions is the level of knowledge the player has when it comes to the heavy metal and rock music that the game is so lovingly a tribute to. Eddie and crew being attacked by a "flock of seagulls." A family of bats with human heads, which strangely look like a popular rock n' roll family. Enemy troops that look like Robert Smith from The Cure. Amazon women who wear black and white makeup like the members of KISS. A magical guitar solo attack that sends a zeppelin crashing down to the ground in a blaze. If you can understand the humor of those situations, you'll be in heaven when it comes to Brutal Legend.

The thing that surprised me most about the game's story is that I was expecting a comedy, but what I got instead was an epic narrative. I was riveted to the game's story and devoured every morsel I could. I loved watching as this epic struggle played out on the screen. I also enjoyed searching out such collectibles as the lore stones, which tell the stories of the game's world and how it came into being. You'll learn about the titans, how humanity came into being, and what caused the black tears that are such a thorn in your side at different points in the story.

Gameplay wise, the game appears to be a platformer/action adventure game, but in reality it's more an RTS-lite mixed with a lot of driving elements. You'll be on your own a lot so you can go around and explore, which you can do both on foot and in your sweet ride. When on your own, you're mostly searching around for unlockables, health and power upgrades, and extra fire tributes (earned by finding things and doing quests) so that you can upgrade Eddie and his ride. You can attack enemies with your axe and guitar solo (it does magical attacks), but this is far from the real modus operandi that's the heart of the gameplay.

The main gameplay of Brutal Legend revolves around Stage Battles, which are basically RTS-lite skirmishes between two rival enemies. Each army has a stage, which is able to deploy troops to do your bidding. In order to build your "band" of characters, however, you've got to have fans, which are presented as ghostly spirits that issue from wells in the ground; by controlling these points you're able to build more units to help you out. As you're going about gathering fans, however, so too are the rival faction. The winner is whoever can ultimately get his or her army to the enemy stage and do enough damage to destroy it.

Light It Up

I have no problem telling everyone that I hate RTS games for the most part, as the games in the genre are often too difficult, as I have a hard time coming to grips with micromanagement, resource gathering, and planning strategic attacks. With Brutal Legend, however, I found the RTS experience extremely rewarding, as it's easy to grasp, get involved, and start raising armies and causing hell. A simple layout helps you easily upgrade your stage for bigger and stronger troops and queue up any and every troop you want (assuming you have enough fans). Since the areas where the Stage Battles play out aren't too huge either, it's easy to quickly press a button to fly into the air, zip around, and find troops and give orders.

Orders are given with presses of the direction button and using the left bumper. You can have troops attack where you're pointing, follow you, stay in one place, or defend a targeted location. It's a simple system to learn and the execution is perfect. When I ordered my headbangers to go defend my merch booth, it was easy for me to give that order, while also being focused on raising new troops, splitting them off, and having them attack from another direction.

You won't merely be a general during these battles either, as you end up being one of the most powerful troops of your team. Much like you can do when roaming around the open world, you're free to attack directly any enemy troop you come across. You can also tag team with any of your own troops, thus making their attack properties different and giving you more moves. You can gather the headbangers for a mosh pit and run around with them as your personal guard. You can have one of the gun-wielding ladies jump onto your shoulders and walk around with them, individually targeting enemies yourself and giving them a shotgun blast. You can also use your guitar solos to perform battle actions, such as recruiting all your troops to come directly to your position or playing a solo that melts the faces of all nearby enemies.

While you'll only play as the Ironheade faction during the single-player mode, you'll be able to play as any of the three factions when it comes to the game's multiplayer: the other two factions being The Drowning Doom and The Tainted Coil. Each faction essentially has the same type of troops, ranging from melee attackers to long-range attackers to support and others. Though you have the same basics, the execution is indeed different for every faction. Ironheade is the most basic group, while The Drowning Doom focuses a lot on destroying by performing debuffs, and The Tainted Coil are easily able to summon more dangerous troops wherever they want (assuming they have the right troops with them). Each faction has its own strengths and weaknesses, so experiment, find who you like using, and then destroy with them in the game's multiplayer (a whole hell of a lot of fun).

Outside of that main RTS-lite gameplay mechanic and wandering around to explore the world, you'll also be partaking in a number of sidequests in order to earn more fire tributes to update your character and car. The sidequests are easily the worst thing about Brutal Legend, as they're the same thing over and over. You'll have to kill a certain number of animals to beat a hunter's record. You'll have to help your troops ambush a group of enemies (if I have to hear that idiot say, "Bad guys" one more time I'm going to scream like Bon Scott). You'll engage in combat by helping a cannon find its targets and raising up on a platform to shoot from a stationary position as enemies advance on your position. You'll also race your car against a rival demon looking to prove his motor prowess. The game has a few more sidequests, which are one-time quests, and these are the most satisfying of the group. After you've defended a location once from attacking hordes, however, the other quests get pretty boring pretty quickly.

The Deuce

Graphically speaking, Brutal Legend isn't a game that's going to define the evolution of graphics, but it's still a gorgeous game, thanks to its blending of the dark and macabre with enemy and creature designs that are slightly humorous and cartoonish. The world is the real star when it comes to graphics, as it's so imaginative and clever, I loved exploring the land and uncovering every little detail that I could. The game is also an overall excellent sounding game as well. The sound effects are very good, but the stars are the vocal talents and licensed music that will dominate your speakers. First up, Jack Black is great as star Eddie Riggs, delivering a light and yet powerful performance depending on the situation. The game also uses rock legends like Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy, and Rob Halford to great effect too. The licensed music is the best, however, as it's a brilliant soundtrack featuring many popular songs and some you'll perhaps be discovering for the first time. The game easily lets you build your personal soundtrack and play at will whatever song you want, so that's a plus too. Besides being excellent backing songs, the game also uses some songs during specific moments to amplify the intensity of some scenes. Mr. Crowley is especially sad and heart wrenching when juxtaposed with what's happening on the screen, and I dare anyone to not love the song Through The Fire and Flames (by DragonForce) after experiencing it as it's used to brilliant effect during a certain segment in the game.

As if you couldn't tell from my references by now, I'm a big rock and metal fan, so playing Brutal Legend is like having the gates of heaven opened and having some rock god bestow upon me a gift and saying, "And it was good." Yes, the sidequests get too repetitious, but they didn't hamper my enjoyment of the game that much. I whole-heartedly recommend you go out right now, pick this game, and get exploring for yourself the excellence that is Brutal Legend.

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