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Brütal Legend, from Tom Schafer, has voice cast of real-life Metal gods.

Brütal Legend: Saving the world with Heavy Metal

Brütal Legend, the latest game from Tim Schafer, is everything I've come to love about heavy metal music: loud, proud, epic, erotic, glorying in its badass syncretic symbology, fan-focused, conscious of itself, earnestly committed to virtuosity ... and still, somehow, pretty funny.

One of games' greatest writers, responsible for Grim Fandango and the unbelievable Psychonauts, Schafer puts everything he's got into his tale of Eddie Riggs (Jack Black), the world's greatest rock roadie, transported by the power of demon-god Ormagöden to a world where darkest fantasies of the gnarliest metal album covers and the most lurid airbrushed boogie-van paintings are everyday reality.

All the good evil stuff, that is, save for one essential ingredient. The world of Brütal Legend is missing its animating spirit: it's a metal world without heavy metal. In comes Riggs with his rock n' roll soul and roadie's ethos, inspiring the downtrodden and enchained to rise up as a metal army against demonic tyranny and reclaim their rocking birthright. It is awesome.

Schafer's writing walks confidently along a dangerous line between reverence and irony. The result – brought to life by a voice cast that includes a real-life metal gods (Lemmy, Ozzy, Lita Ford, Rob Halford) along with Black and Tim Curry, and wonderfully expressive digital puppetry – is an adventure that can leave you breathless.

Brütal Legend is a third-person brawler with the upgrade elements of an RPG, set within the context of a Grand Theft Auto-style open-world action-adventure with heavy exploration and discovery elements, in which the battles – and the story's major theses – are expressed through a hybrid of arcade brawling and real-time squad tactics and resource management.

But rather than knock it for occasionally leaving me confused and frustrated, I'm going to praise it for confusing and frustrating me less than it ought to, given that Schafer's asking me to play three video games at once. Are you metal enough?