Heavy Metal – I have to say I’m not a fan at all. Yet somehow this game which is based around heavy metal & rock turned into one of my most wanted of the year. Strange. There were 3 main reasons for this, 1) Tim Schafer is the designer & he is a genius who never fails to create amusing games – & this would be no different as the trailers already proved. 2) Even though I don’t like heavy metal, I do appreciate & love the imagery that goes into the album artworks & general culture. & lastly, 3) You play as a charismatic roadie called Eddie that chops up demons with a huge axe & can burn or electrocute them while playing guitar. If you looked in the dictionary I wouldn’t be surprised to see that as the very definition of awesome. Needless to say I was excited.

So is it as good as I’d hoped it would be? Well, in a word, no. Unfortunately there’s been a couple of design decisions I didn’t know about until release & they really haven’t sat right with me at all.

It starts off brilliantly, fantastic cut-scenes introducing the characters with a sharp & well acted script – which is present throughout. You get to run around destroying demons with your huge axe, bring buildings crashing down around you with special attacks, create & drive the ‘Deuce’ (a fantastic & fun to use hotrod) & you slay a pretty big boss while screaming “Decapitatioooooooonnnnn!” before driving across a collapsing bridge with a surprisingly hot Goth chick. A great opening section that had me pumped for the rest of the game.

After this the game starts proper. You’re in an open world & you find that you need to help a few stranded humans build an army to take the land back from the demons using the power of rock & metal. It’s a pretty simple story but it works & is told in such an amusing & OTT manor that it makes up for it.

This area has the usual ‘go here to collect your next mission’ gameplay & side quests that are present in every open world game. Where other games of this type fall down though is in creating an interesting & vibrant landscape that you want to explore. Not Brutal Legend though, oh no. The open world area is superb. I’m not usually a fan of sandbox areas but this one is just so full of fantastic imagery & brilliant landmarks that its an absolute joy to explore. You literally cant travel more than a couple of feet without something catching your eye that you then feel the need to go & have a look at. It could be huge amps & speakers acting as a cliff face or statues of women built from walls. Its truly amazing & one of the best open worlds I've ever had the joy of exploring.

But then you decide to actually carry out a mission & it starts going wrong. The first couple of missions are fun enough while you free some people to join your army. & throughout the game you get presented with the odd couple of missions that are fun enough – transporting your huge tour bus across the landscape while shooting motorbike demons with the guns on the Deuce for example.

But the main crux of the game is made up of RTS style battles. This is where it falls flat on its face for me. For a start I'm not a fan of RTS games at all & secondly even people that are fans of RTS games have mentioned to me that its implementation in this is ‘dodgy’. Suddenly you go from chopping demons in half & smacking enemies out of the way with head bangers to having to carry out light resource management & command troops. Its jarring.

When these missions start up they act as a rock concert. You have a stage to protect & geysers you have to play guitar solos at to get fans that you ‘spend’ to build more troops to rush & destroy the enemies stage. Within these missions Eddie will sprout wings so you can fly high to oversee the battlefield easier as well as travel faster to give out orders. A nice touch is that you can swoop down & join in the battles yourself. Orders are kept simple with 4 commands on your d-pad – follow, stay, attack & ‘go there’ where you place a marker light. Thing is it can be very awkward & cumbersome as you first have to be near your troops to issue out orders & selecting single units requires holding a button while on the ground, facing them & you have to keep the button held down while issuing the command. Its not as easy as it sounds & while in battle its near impossible to pull off effectively as you’ll be attacked, forget to keep it held down while issuing the order making all your troops walk off or you’ll keep selecting the wrong ones by mistake.

What also doesn’t help is that while fighting some factions it can be near impossible to make out your troops from the enemies. It all adds up to a frustrating experience & since most of thee missions can last upwards of 30 minutes they become quite a chore as you go through the motions. Don’t get me started on the huge difficulty spike near & at the end too.

Even though I’m pretty rubbish at RTS I still managed to get through the battles pretty problem free – their one redeeming feature. Until the last couple where suddenly the difficulty spikes massively. The last couple of battles come in 2 sections, you’ll spend ages doing the first & as soon as you start the 2nd section you’ll find yourself getting wiped out within seconds as it unfairly spawns a huge amount of enemies in an instant that can kill you in one hit. Then it sends you back to the first part again. Incredibly frustrating!

None of these missions were any fun at all for me. Either being a chore or frustrating. Each time I finished one I said “thank God that’s out of the way” hoping the next mission wouldn’t be an RTS one leading to celebration & fun when it wasn’t. When the main part of the game is the part you’re hoping doesn’t appear again, you know you’re in trouble.

The side quests aren’t much better either. None involve RTS & all start out fun which is great. The problem is, the exact same ones are repeated 10’s of times, all have the same cut-scene preceding & following it too which gets very tiresome. It’s a lazy way of extending the games very short 6-7 hour lifespan.

The thing is none of this can detract from the game as a whole too much. The good parts are so great more than make up for all these problems & niggles. Seriously. The missions without RTS are usually great fun & usually varied, the characters throughout the game are brilliantly realised with fantastic voice acting & humour. The story is expertly told, forging a great mythology around metal & how the world was created that you have to keep playing through the mediocre bits just to find out what happens next & to see the next cut-scene. Then there’s the atmosphere is second to none, it really pulls you into the game world with excellent sound & visual design. There’s loads of in jokes for the fans of Tim & heavy metal too that even I managed to pick some up from with my limited knowledge of the culture & most of all you can just tell this is a work of real labour & love. Its difficult to explain but you can tell the guys who created it really loved doing so, it just shows in every piece of design in the world. They even put landmark viewers for you to look through while exploring that shows off areas of the landscape with great camera work, you can tell they are proud of it & it really adds to the feel of the game. Its one of those games made out of passion rather than for the sales.

Sure the RTS bits didn’t work for me at all & the side quests are hugely repetitive but there’s no denying I loved the rest of the game. Particularly exploring the open world which is incredibly rare for me. Hell, I even went back & got all the collectables & extras – something I haven’t done in an open world game since I was at school. Its definitely still worth playing through & if you end up enjoying the RTS sections there’s an online multiplayer & AI battles mode you can carry out from the main menu to add longevity.