To be completely honest, I was sold on Brutal Legend the moment I found out Ozzy Osborne was in it. The fact there was a game built around him was initially no matter to be at all really, as the potential opportunity to be bad-mouthed by a bat-eating Brummie was all I really needed. Luckily, the rest of the thing turned out to be pretty decent as well.

You play the part of Eddie Riggs, who not only is a slightly Americanised version of a heroic IT guy I know, but is also voiced by none other than Jack Black of Tenacious D and assorted movie fame. To some of you this will be the best news possible, to others it’ll cause the same kind of reaction that I usually have whenever the BBC try to peddle Russell Howard as a funny comedian, but his performance actually really enhances things. In any case, it’s good to see a celebrity getting so into his work with a videogame that he is prepared to go to an award ceremony dressed as the character he is voicing.

To us gamer folks, Tim Schafer is our very own Jack Black: a man whose slightly insane brain has been the product of many endearing games throughout the years. His last effort, 2005’s Psychonauts, is a game that a depressingly high number of you wouldn’t have played, but he is also the man who worked on the original couple of Monkey Island titles amongst others. This latest offering from his rather fruitful imagination is a mixture of free-roaming hack-and-slash and real-time strategy, and for the most part it works really well.

Having been thrown into a strange world after a really quite amusing sequence of events and discovering you need to help a ragtag bunch to cause some sort of uprising, your initial tasks seem you controlling Riggs around very much as you would Kratos in God of War, slashing at things with your oversized axe and electrocuting strange demons with awesome riffs from a magic guitar. Given that this all takes place on top of a pile of bones that could have come straight from an 80’s metal album, I think you understand the kind of atmosphere we’re dealing with here.

These sections prove really rather satisfying, and as you progress you unlock new moves and riffs to dish out all sorts of damage to your foes. Some of these are really quite graphic and involve such things as people’s faces melting off and the like, so perhaps not the game to show your gran or kid. In any case, the combat is simple enough and the meaty feel of it is something to behold. Some of the ideas behind it, magic-producing guitar for example, are the kinds of things that even Bill, Ted and Wayne’s World would find totally metal.

Piecing all of this together is a decidedly sandbox mission structure in which you can either spend your time working through the main story or driving around in your badass car completing secondary quests or discovering the world’s secrets. The one slight annoyance is that a couple of the game’s moves and additional bonuses such as additional health are things that require you to hunt them down, leaving anyone who just wishes to plough on through the story missing out quite a bit. Still, can’t complain too much when the game allows you to collect points to spend in an upgrade garage patrolled by Ozzy sodding Osbourne.

The other major part of the game is a kind of light real-time strategy offering, giving you command of a set of different and amusing squads as you work to fend off the marauding baddies trying to squish your little rebellion. Generally this works by you finding some sort of curious geysers containing souls of ‘fans’, erecting a stage nearby and then spending most of the time crawling closer and closer to the enemy stronghold, taking control of more geysers as you go and thus enabling you to add more units to your army. It’s not particularly difficult and to be honest I had more fun having everyone just follow me around and mash in with my mighty axe myself, but there are times when a little discretion is needed so it’s not without its challenges. It’s also the basis for the game’s multiplayer mode, and plenty of hectic fun can be had directing your troops toward a mate’s and seeing them do battle.

The story itself is peppered with humour and wry nods towards metal and rock, replete with celebrity appearances from the likes of Motorhead’s Lemmy. He may sound a little stilted, sure, but hey – it’s Lemmy, and if Lemmy wants to sound stilted in a video game then I’m not going to argue. It’s not quite jam-packed full of belly laughs as you might expect and the humour does tail off a little toward the end when the story gets into gear properly, but it’s a fun, well-produced environment to cause havoc in. Likewise, the soundtrack is so packed full of rocking goodness that it’s not hard to feel pretty awesome whilst driving around to tunes from Motorhead, Motley Crue and the like.

As an overall package, it’s great fun to play, give or take a couple of issues here and there as mentioned. It’s perhaps not quite as charming as previous Tim Schafer games, but it’s a good laugh here and there, with an entertaining story, great cast and a rocking soundtrack, although even if headbanging to Iron Maiden isn’t quite your bag, there’s enough enjoyment to be had to justify giving it a good chance in any case. A game of the year award winner this isn’t, but it’s a solid slice of entertainment that’ll bring a smile to your face.

And has magic guitars and giant axes.

Awesome.

To the max.