For example, the first faction Eddie liberates are the head-bangers young men with enormous necks, thick from constantly banging their heads back and forth to mine rock. To do this Double Fine have utilised a real-time strategy approach that allows for real-time combat mid-battle.

Within this universe Eddie must help lead an army to overthrow the demonic Lord Doviculus – played by Tim Curry no-less – by rallying troops from various factions and commanding them in battle. The universe is one enormous pastiche to the world of heavy metal, and is an absolute joy to drive around, taking in landmarks of epic proportions and enjoying the gorgeously rendered scenery. There are obvious references to the likes of KISS and Black Sabbath, but around every corner lies another homage to the visual styles of the era razor-pigs resembling the bike from Judas Priest’s ‘Painkiller’, the beasts that roam the mountains appearing to be straight out of Motorhead’s ‘inferno’. To those in the know, much of this will deliver constant chuckles. The world lives and breathes heavy metal, and boasts a sort of unlikely beauty that stems from iron and stone, druid symbols and chrome-plated hot-rods. Trees grow exhaust pipes from their branches, the crumbling freeway down which Eddie enters the world is built on stacked Stone Henge-esque monuments, and even the creatures of the world are ripped straight from the covers of classic metal LPs. In the demon world that Eddie Riggs is transported to post-mortem, everything is made from some sort of heavy rock related item. That is, they’ve succeeded in creating a living breathing world built on the firm foundations of everything heavy metal.

With this in mind Double Fine have set out to bring heavy metal back to life, and with the help of some familiar faces they have indeed succeeded. The opening sequence in which roadie Eddie Riggs – played by the perfectly cast Jack Black – dies during a freak stage accident, features the utterance ‘heavy metal is dead’, a line which to many will echo with alarming resonance considering the current musical climate. In fact it becomes quite apparent from the offset that Tim Schafer – the man behind Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts and practically anything worth playing – is more than passionate about the music of the early seventies. On the surface Brutal Legend looks to profit from similar exploits, and in a way it does, but for the most part it delivers a far more satirical look at the music industry in general, whilst all along preaching a certain respect for the heavy metal sub-culture.

They exist solely to poke fun at the genre, and its surrounding ideologies, highlighting stereotypes and pointing and laughing. The likes of Spinal Tap and Metalocalypse base their entire premise on this notion. To the average Joe, the very nature of the culture of metal is something to be mocked, a reliable source for parody. Heavy metal is funny, isn’t it? All those forty-something year old blokes with their leather pants and their long hair, wailing to the sound of twenty minute guitar solos followed by another twenty minutes of break-neck drums.

Brutal legend ps3 rating