Update: We just added a video supplement to give you readers a sneak peek on the later bits. Also, talk about Rocktober on our forums.

On the heavy metal-coated surface, Brütal Legend seems to emulate any recent third-person action game with a huge splash of open-worldness filled with oodles of collectibles, followed up with great writing and spiffy banter from the esoteric characters here. This is, after all, a Tim Schafer-written story and based on the likes of Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, you’ll be busting your sides laughing at the humor presented here. Right after the introductory mission that doubles as a tutorial, you can summon your rock automobile called the Deuce (with the power of guitar solos, by the by), ride on forth doing primary and secondary missions.

The latter is a variation of “kill x number of bad guys” ranging from strapping your car onto an elevator for turret duty, dropping mortars on enemies by painting the target for the videogame version of Kyle Gasse (of Tenacious D fame) while on the Deuce, to even fares like ramming mutant deers with the Deuce or racing against an Irish cab driver with exhaust pipes for teeth. These are great diversions, whether you just want to look around the beautifully-crafted world where Eddie Riggs got warped into, or earn Fire Tribute (i.e: Brütal Legend’s currency) to get upgrades for your attacks, weapons, and Deuce from Ozzy Osbourne. I mean The Guardian of Metal; no disrespect to him.

It’s when you start controlling your rambunctious army of headbangers, gunslinging girls, and bassist healers riding their motorbikes later on that things take an odd turn. Taking small cues from Overlord, Pikmin, and every RTS known to man, you use the d-pad to issue commands to your rock minions while also acting as an active general on the battlefield. Eddie Riggs can also grow wings and fly around the stage to make navigating and scouring the battle map easier. It’s basic, but straight to the point.

A few things don’t work control-wise: selecting individual types of units is hard in the midst of a fight, and A.I pathfinding for heading to rally points get a bit iffy sometimes. One moment I have my Ironheade units set up just fine on one part of the map, and other times a few of them got lost and end up huddled at the edge of a map. With that said, the A.I for said minions is efficiently straightforward when it comes to killing; they attack, stop and defend to your whim, while also attacking anything on sight. As long as you keep your fingers on the d-pad on standby, you’ll get through these segments fine in the story mode. Don’t forget that you can do a team-up move with a press of a button. For instance, pressing Y on the Xbox 360 pad (or Triangle on the PS3 pad) when you’re closeby the Headbanger units makes you perform the Mosh Pit maneuver, where the Headbangers surround Eddie Riggs and act as human shields. Double-teaming with story character Lars also lets you use his flame-sword area clearing attack onto groups of enemies in front of you.

Speaking of story mode, even after you finish the game, you can replay Story Mode campaigns to show off to your friends. That’s the problem with some open-world games: you want to show off certain missions to your friends but you can’t because the game won’t let you. Double Fine heard your pleas and added in the Chapters option so that you could do just that.

Multiplayer is also available, either for skirmish or for online mini-RTS fighting. The three factions offered have their distinctive strengths and weaknesses: Ironheade’s the brutes, the Drowning Doom are dependent on support units for buffing and debuffing, and the Tainted Coil are speedy, fast-loading buggers. While not profoundly deep, it’s incredibly fun nonetheless, like how an old school Command & Conquer gets. Only with devil horns and Motley Crue’s Live Wire blaring in the game’s soundtrack.

Brütal Legend is a daring experiment in the action genre. It’s not a perfect one, mind you. Technical glitches like slowdowns and late draw-ins are present while traversing the lush world, while the aforementioned RTS segments can get incredibly chaotic and, in the worse case scenario, uncontrollable until you get the swing of things. Would having the game remade on the PC with spiffed-up controls be an option in the future? After all, Psychonauts DID come out on PC too.

However, an action game inspired by the untold tales of rock album covers and the music genre’s culture combined with a cool story of redemption and standing up against the odds doesn’t come around too often in this day and age filled with space marines and shooters. Here’s to Double Fine for a great first attempt at a hybrid, and hopefully a spiritual sequel of sorts work out the RTS kinks.

In other words, get it. Now.

Oh yeah, and please let’s see more intros in other games that mimic Brütal Legend’s live-action intro.