Now Playing: Brutal Legend

Picture if you will a world of heavy metal-fueled monstrosities and winged nightmares waging war across a flaming horizon. Now picture Jack Black snarking on it all, and you've got Brutal Legend, an umlaut-laden übertribute to metal that's both tongue-in-cheek and worshipfully referential.

The game looks and feels a lot like Guitar Hero meets Fable. As a recently deceased roadie, you roll across the hellscape in a battle car nicknamed The Deuce, hacking and slashing your way through 1980s hair band rejects while using your guitar to literally melt faces. Play a power riff minigame and you can raise shrines to learn more about the hilariously overblown birth of metal; or you can use the riffs to raise an army of headbangers which you can then command around the battlefield to help you turn away the forces of darkness and neon.

The story is overflowing with the wit of Black and designer Tim Schafer (Psychonauts, Grim Fandango), and it's littered with guest appearances from metal gods like Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, and Lita Ford. It doesn't always make a lot of sense aside from being an excuse to get you to the next joke or the next cameo or the next epic album-cover set piece; but you'll probably be enjoying the ride too much to care.

Whether or not you're a fan of the music - which is well-represented by its exhaustive licensed soundtrack, including the song below - the game is imaginative and fun enough that you'll enjoy it on some level, whether for the well-designed hack and slash gameplay or the arockalyptic humor.