After playing games for almost twenty years, I can tell you one thing for certain: games can be pretty damn repetitive. Not just the mechanics of an individual title mind you, I mean that genres tend to follow patterns that also create a sense of inherent familiarity when you pick up the controller. If you played a first person shooter in the last five years, you'd be entirely forgiven for not knowing if the World War 2 themed game you were playing was calling you to duty with your brothers in arms to earn a medal of honour, or if that was actually three distinct franchises with their own sequels and spinoffs.

What gaming needs every once in awhile is a kick in the pants, which can come in the form of some innovative new feature, or just a completely out of the box idea, be it a wild story or a crazy concept. Brutal Legend is very much that kick in the pants, although honestly, which particular genre is getting a boot to the buttocks is a whole different question.

Brutal Legend's selling point is a combination of all the things I mentioned above. Conceptually it is a living, breathing world based on all those heavy metal album covers that you saw on the 80s, often emblazoned on black t-shirts worn by the kind of guys parents warn their daughters about. Dragons, swords, chainmail armour, demons, snakes, busty babes in bikinis, all that sort of stuff. Then you mix in a story about the world's greatest roadie, Eddie Riggs, who suffers a probably fatal injury in our world and is mysteriously teleported to the aforementioned metal dimension where he is regarded as their saviour. Then, you add over 100 songs that run the metal gamut from hair metal to death metal, and stir in Ozzy Osbourne. Finally you throw in gameplay that straddles half a dozen different genres, and after allowing to simmer in the imagination of Psychonauts creator Tim Schafer, serve with a garnish of Jack Black humour and voila! You have Brutal Legend!

If that admittedly lengthy paragraph didn't do anything for you, then you can probably stop reading this review and go and do something else. Don't worry it's not a judgement, I won't think less of you...but the bottom line is that if you don't like metal or you're not a fan of Jack Black, then there's a pretty good chance you're just not going to take to this game. And even if you do like metal, that alone isn't a sure-fire guarantee that Brutal Legend is for you, and for that, well, that's why we have a review!

Once Eddie takes his final bow in our mortal realm, you'll gain direct control of him and begin a tutorial sequence that introduces you to some of the game's core concepts. These are, in order: chopping shit up with an axe, rocking out so hard your guitar shoots lightning, rocking out so hard that you summon a car, and then using that car to run over a legion of demons, kill a giant boss monster, and get the girl. And that's only a part of your introduction to the world of Brutal Legend, whose 8-10 hour adventure almost serves as one epic tutorial to prep you for multiplayer.

That's not to say that Brutal Legend's singleplayer is lacking, however, because the game boasts quite a strong story and a thoroughly enjoyable solo romp. After the opening licks, Brutal Legend becomes an open-world adventure, filled with side-quests and a variety of collectible goodies you can grab as you set about saving the world from the demonic clutches of emperor Doviculous. You can just run from each plot-advancing mission to the next if you want, but doing so would mean you'd miss a lot of the game's surprisingly rich history, as well as a bunch of new songs to listen to and a smattering of combos that enhance Eddie's repertoire of moves.

Speaking of enhancements, the other reason to spend some time with the side missions in Brutal Legend is to earn enough favour to buy upgrades. There's a ton to choose from, with plenty of upgrades to your hotrod (the hilariously named Druid Plow...why...no idea, though it does have a giant plow on the front!), as well as buffs for your guitar and axe. Much like all the side-missions and exploration, spending time and in-game money unlocking this stuff isn't essential, but it can make the game a lot more fun and a little bit easier.

Difficulty is going to be a bit of a sore point for Brutal Legend, because the game tries wear so many different hats, there's bound to be a game mode you're less adept at. For most, the driving and brawling won't be a hassle; the challenge is going to come from the game's real-time strategy aspect. Brutal Legend began its life as a fairly conventional RTS, and though the game has been heavily reworked and expanded, a solid core of squad-based strategy runs still lies at its heart. You'll begin by learning the ropes as Eddie commands a few headbangers, issuing commands with the D-Pad and even joining the squad directly to execute a special attack move.

It won't be too long though, before Eddie grows a pair of demonic wings (no, seriously!) that allows him to fly above the battlefield for more of a bird's eye view of the fracas below. While there is a unit cap that limits the amount of troops you can field, the action quickly escalates as you try to manage 4-8 squads, seize and defend resource nodes, and advance on the enemy's base to secure victory. At any point Eddie can crash back to earn and get involved in the fight directly, but this is often the quickest way to die if your opponent has a half dozen squads of his own in the area.

This balance of command and control makes for a surprisingly compelling experience, but there's no denying the learning curve is steep, and based on the demo and a lot of the previews of the game, it's also a play style a lot of people just weren't expecting in the game. Of course those who read more or have been following the game will know exactly what to expect, and once you start commanding teams of roadies, chicks with guns and fire-spewing Harley hogs, it's hard not to be entertained.

The visuals in the game certainly don't hurt its cause. Brutal Legend may not be the most technically impressive game of the year, but the art style is second to none, perfectly capturing what most of us would imagine a heavy metal world to look like. There's chrome everywhere, swords, chains, gallons of blood, demons galore and epic shrines dedicated to the fallen gods of metal. While the world itself is the main character, the actual cast look great too; cartoony, but still expressive. An Ozzy looks...exactly like Ozzy! Not only that, the game runs quite smoothly even when you're tearing across the open world in your car, slowing down only when you're in battle against a dozen or so on screen enemies or deploying a particularly impressive looking combo.

As has already been alluded to, Brutal Legend has a phenomenal soundtrack of well over 100 songs, putting the likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band to shame. Not only that it boasts an incredibly talented array of voice talent, led by Jack Black and including Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy from Motorhead and Rob Halford from Judas Priest. The dialogue is sharp and funny, and the talent does a great job of bringing their characters to life, especially Jack Black who truly becomes Eddie Riggs.

Once Eddie's journey of self discovery and ass kicking is complete, it's time to take Brutal Legend into multiplayer overdrive, because in many ways this is where the game truly begins. That being said, if you didn't enjoy the battle of the bands peppered throughout the campaign, there's nothing more to be gained from the game by taking it online. You can pick between one of the 3 main factions in the game (essentially metal, emo/goth and demonic) and duke it out in configurations up to 4v4 on a variety of maps, with more arriving via DLC in future. Multiplayer's learning curve is even steeper than singleplayer, and finding matches isn't quite as easy as with more mainstream titles. But if you're open to playing one of the more unique multiplayer games on the Xbox 360, you'll get a lot more mileage out of Brutal Legend than a lot of people.