Obey the rock gods and lead the headbangers' rebellion in Brutal Legend, a heavy metal inspired adventure starring Jack Black as roadie Eddie Riggs. This imaginative 3-D action game transports you to a mystical world full of imagination, monsters and, most importantly, big hair. You'll plow through the countryside in a supped up hot rod, buy upgrades from the Guardian of Metal (played by none other than Ozzy Osbourne) and cut through hordes of strange looking dudes.
Although Brutal Legend features enjoyable combat and driving sequences, its incredible presentation trumps the gameplay. It all starts with the story, a bizarre tale with a loveable hero. Eddie Riggs is far from perfect (he curses and smokes), but the guy has a proverbial heart of gold and plenty of jokes. Credit, of course, goes to both the game's scriptwriters and Jack Black. Instead of phoning in the performance, Black dove into the role to give Riggs plenty of depth. He's without question the game's star, but you'll also dig the rest of the cast, including characters voiced by the aforementioned Osbourne and Lemmy from Motorhead.
As for the story, it's your typical yarn about someone ripped from his or her world and transported to another dimension. Eddie meets a hot babe, runs into the head bad guy in charge and winds up leading an army. Yes, we've seen this in movies before (Army of Darkness comes to mind), but everything works, despite the jokes tapering off near the end.
Brutal Legend's developers also deserve high marks for the game's outstanding visuals and audio. Everything about the environments bleed heavy metal, including stone guitar statues, a mountain of bones, humongous amplifiers, magic instruments, scantily clad (and leather bound) ladies and lots of fire; the entire game appears ripped from a heavy metal album cover. On top of that, the game has a phenomenal soundtrack that includes such artists as Motley Crue, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Anthrax, Motorhead and Def Leppard. Don't be surprised if you start tapping a foot while chopping bad guys to pieces.
Of course, there's more to the game than greatest hits. Brutal Legend's also fun to play. You have a huge open world to explore, full of dangerous wildlife, side quests and plenty of secrets. Within the first few minutes, you'll gain access to a huge axe and guitar that let you slice monsters to pieces and electrocute them, respectively. Soon thereafter, you'll navigate an awkward (but still sweet) looking vehicle down a mountain of skulls, battle a humongous worm creature and team up with other characters to execute powerful double team maneuvers.
It's interesting, because the developers initially made us think that Brutal Legend was a simple button masher, so you can imagine our surprise when they introduced tower defense. After amassing an army, players can issue commands to lead them into battle and/or defend key positions, paying close attention to the types of units on the field and upgrading their abilities; Eddie can also take part in these battles.
Everything works for the most part, but we can't help but feel that Brutal Legend's creators tried to do too much. That doesn't bode well for gamers who dislike tower defense, since there's no hint of that on the game's packaging. They'll purchase it expecting a solo action adventure, only to discover a game that forces them to micromanage upwards of 40 units at once; this is essentially the game's multiplayer, as up to eight players lead their armies into battle. It's an awkward twist that puts a hefty does of responsibility on the player. We didn't expect this much babysitting, and were a little put off by having to constantly produce units and give marching orders, instead of just hacking creatures to bits.
In addition, the game has slight performance and design issues, so don't be surprised to accidentally become trapped within the environment and need to restart, hear repeating lines (those grow annoying) or see the action momentarily slow down as the game struggles to keep up with all those on screen units.
As for those secondary missions, there are only a handful of different types and those get old quick. At least you'll continue to unlock goodies (new music and concept art) along the way.
None of these complaints, however, should keep you from playing Brutal Legend. There's nothing revolutionary about how it plays, but the likeable characters, rockin' soundtrack and jaw-dropping scenery make it worth experiencing. We certainly hope that Eddie Riggs (and Jack Black along with him) appear in the future sequel.
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