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I want you to imagine, for a moment, a sunny happy place, full of rainbows, sunshine and butterflies. Now that you have that wonderful image I want you to slap yourself in the face, since you are clearly in the wrong place. Put simply Brutal Legend takes place in a world that has been taken over by demons.

You are Eddie Riggs, a roadie from the future that due to a freak accident was killed and sent back in time to help defeat the demon oppressors. Jack Black surprisingly brings the character to life with excellent wit and comic timing at every turn. In fact without the comedy in Brutal Legend, it would be very easy to pass up. However Brutal Legend has the perfect blend of comedy, action/adventure and METAL.

Jack Black brings the character to life with excellent wit and comic timing

As Eddie Riggs you are armed with an Axe, A guitar named Clementine and a car that you can equip with various guns and upgrades. While playing Brutal Legend I couldn’t help but feel as though everything is either weightless or welded to the ground. Allow me to clarify, while driving around I occasionally attempted to break through a wooden fence. I used my cars Nitrous for an extra boost of speed in an attempt to bust through the fence faster only to hit it going full speed and come to a grinding halt as my car decided the fence was simply too pretty to break. Other times my car would plow through a series of animals and barriers like they weren’t even there.

The songs in Brutal Legend are nothing short of spectacular, bringing heavy metal from bands such as White Snake and Black Sabbath this is truly a game that 70’s metal lovers will adore. The voice acting is flawlessly delivered making it sound like every character is actually a human being rather than a mindless robot.

The story is compelling while it lasts and the twists and turns can be a bit of a shock the first time they are thrown into your face. Brutal Legend features three different factions, you have Ironheade led by Eddie Riggs, Drowning Doom led by a character that I’m not going to spoil and the Tainted Coil AKA the demons. For the most part the single player aspect of the game is free roaming but occasionally the rest of your crew will build a stage in what could only be described as lightning time and the game drops into what the game calls a Stage Battle.

Here you and your team attempt to destroy your opponent’s stage by using different units to generally beat the daylights out of your enemy, think real time strategy and you’ll be on the right track. The landscapes in Brutal Legend are absolutely massive and when I say massive I don’t mean it’s slightly larger than average, I mean it will take you about fifteen to twenty minutes to drive from one end to the other…trust me, I timed it.

Brutal Legend has massive landscapes that take twenty minutes to drive across

Brutal Legend is also capable of having a large amount of characters on screen at one time although once the number begins to rise, the frame rate drops down into what feels like the single digits.

However this isn’t the only real issue I had with this game, once we got past the Drowning Doom I was excited to take down the Tainted Coil but it seems as though the developers got lazy (Ed – Spoilers coming up) and felt that you had already built an army and had taken down the Drowning Doom so that is enough. The fight with the Tainted Coil is basically one Stage Battle where you defeat their leader and that’s it, credits roll and game over. I just felt cheated out of an enemy that while challenging would have been a great final enemy that should have been a blast to deal with.

Meanwhile the multiplayer is strictly limited to the one online mode, which will definitely irate anyone looking for multiplayer variation. This solitary game type is a stage battle where two teams face off against each other in what can be three on three matches. The RTS style stage battles are a lot more enjoyable than anything in the single player but only because of the teamwork. Nothing else really changed from the Multi to the single player modes except the hall-important ability to play with friends.

Brutal Legend is a great game despite the rare sharp drop in frame rate, sudden ending and highly limited multiplayer options. If you like to laugh then you won’t want to pass this one up. This game is absolutely packed with great music and hilarious one liners and it’s one of those games that will captivate your attention for many months to come, especially if Double Fine doles out some downloadable content later on down the line.