“We start a revolution!”

Perhaps no greater tribute has ever been offered at the temple of an entire genre of music than Brütal Legend. This game idolizes the power and energy of heavy metal, creating an entire world with metal as its central mythology. The world of Brütal Legend is steeped heavy metal symbolism; with every scenic vista looking like it belongs on an album cover.

Brütal Legend is a game with a lot of star power. First, it bears the name of one of the most critically acclaimed video game developers: Tim Schafer. Schafer spent more than a decade at Lucas Arts working on games like Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango before founding his own studio, Double Fine Entertainment, and creating games like Psychonauts. He has earned the reputation as being one of the funniest writers in the industry.

The game’s second big name is Jack Black, who voices Riggs, and whose enthusiasm for rock music evident in movies like School of Rock and Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny made him a perfect advocate. In addition, heavy metal icons like Ozzy Osborne, Lemmy Kilmister from Motörhead and Judas Priest’s Rob Halford lend their voices to some of the game’s main characters. In another stroke of genius, Schafer secured the diabolical voice of Tim Curry as the game’s main villain.

Brütal Legend is a third-person, open-world action game where you play as Roadie Eddie Riggs. Riggs laments what passes for music nowadays, asking a fellow roadie, “Do you ever feel like you were born in the wrong time, like you should have been born in a time when the music was better?”

Soon enough he finds himself magically transported via his cursed belt buckle to a land of Nordic fantasy where demons have enslaved humanity. Only the power of metal–and Eddie’s superior organizational roadie skills—can save them.

In this world, Eddie can melt his enemies’ faces with a scorching guitar riff and allies can be healed with the soothing vibrations of a bass note from a steel string made from a giant spider. Eddie’s guitar launches special attacks, and behaves in a way similar to Link’s ocarina in the Zelda franchise.

The story lampoons various aspects of music culture. Eddie’s first roadblock, General Lionwhyte gets around by using his massive hair to fly, and represents the glitz and glam of corporatized hair metal in the 1980s. Other enemies clearly mock the emo culture, as they don black clothing and mascara while saying things like, “you don’t understand my suffering.” These guys get their power by drinking from the “Sea of Black Tears.”

Eddie’s roadie skills particularly help in the massive “stage battles,” which are duplicated in multiplayer mode. Stage battles are a mix of third person action and real time strategy. Here Eddie sprouts wings and soars over the battlefield, setting rally points and commanding his troops. Two opposing stages vie over fan geysers, which supply resources needed to build more and more powerful troops to take out your opponent’s stage.

Some RPG elements are evident in that Eddie earns flame tributes by pleasing the gods, which he can give to the Guardian of Metal (Ozzy) in exchange for upgrades to his vehicle and weapons. Side quests are good ways to earn extra flame tributes. There are around a half dozen varieties, including ambush attacks, races, hunting wildlife and searching for collectibles.

If anything bad can be said about it is that it is too short. However, it could have just seemed that way because it was so much fun.

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