Review: Brutal Legend

Jack Black's bogan roadie character Eddie Riggs in Brutal Legend.

Heavy frickin' metal, 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 as 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 is - Black's voicework is packed with energy and enthusiasm.

Those who've cut their teeth on indepth 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.

Verdict: Genius - a one-of-a-kind homage to the awesome power of metal set in a very heavy fantasy world with all of the icons that come with it. This is a must for fans of the genre, but anyone is going to get a giggle out of it. Entertaining, hard, fast and heavy.

Rating: * * * * (R16, tested on PlayStation3)