Review: Brutal Legend

> Brutal Legend
PS3, Xbox 360
4 stars (out of 5)

Review by Matt Greenop

Heavy metal - you gotta love it. This Jack Black-voiced beast of a game combines metal with a light RPG in a unique and massively entertaining netherworld epic.

Black is Eddie Riggs, a committed rock roadie who is sent into an alternate reality after a stage mishap.

He finds himself in a world where metal is God, his beloved guitar Clementine is capable of blowing the heads off enemies and he is the enthusiastic leader of an army of goat-throwing head-bangers.

The graphics are superb, with the overwhelming feeling that you're in a heavy metal album cover as you drive around in a flame-emitting T-bucket adorned with the obligatory flames.

There's even a "Mouth of Metal" upgrade, which lets you belt out metal playlists while you explore the massive open environments.

While there are many missions - where you'll catch cameos from stars like Ozzy Osbourne, hot metal chick Lita Ford, Judas Priest's Rob Halford and Lemmy from Motorhead - secondary goals get you extra goodies.

These are quite helpful, because some of the demonic enemies can be a bit hard to kill, even when you're controlling your own army of grumpy bogans.

Controls are simple and slick as the game bounces between RPG, slasher and heavily-armed racer.

But it's the dark humour that fills in the gaps that makes Brutal Legend the axe-wielding success that it is - Black's voicework is packed with energy and enthusiasm.

Those who've cut their teeth on in-depth and complex RPGs will likely feel a bit let down by the comparatively basic gameplay, and Britney fans (quite rightly) would be scared out of their half-wits.

It's not super-strong on every level, but the combination of fun and funny with comical, super-gory violence and dark metal hilarity makes up for any shortfall.