Tim Schafer (left) watches as Jack Black does something with a ridiculous expression on his face. Jack Black is a funny man.

What’s in a name? In the case of Brütal Legend, a whole hell of a lot.

• Jack Black stars as Eddie Riggs, the world’s best roadie who’s transported to a dimension of awesome metal-inspired brutality.
• Rob Halford, Lita Ford, Lemmy Kilmister, Ozzy Osbourne and…Tim Curry all have been tapped to lend their voice talents to the game. From what’s been shown so far, each looks to be perfectly at home in his or her element.
• Tim Schafer is the game’s creator; his previous credits include Full Throttle, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and Psychonauts.

Schafer’s games all have an expected pedigree of quality when it comes to establishing setting, story and characters — in that regard, Brütal Legend won’t disappoint. But what about the game’s design? How well is it implemented?

After romping through the demo four times, there’s little doubt that the game itself does an admirable job of wrapping all this larger-than-life, metal-soaked goodness into a tasty little love burrito.

Double Fine has missed no opportunity to adorn Brütal Legend with all kinds of small details that should make the game all the more enjoyable in the long term. For example, I’ve played through the demo four times now, and each time I started the demo I heard a new singer belting out a sustained “Double Fiiiiiiiine!” at the developer’s logo screen before the title screen. It’s one of those little details that will stand out to players as they return to the game over and over. One day it’s Lita Ford’s forceful yell; next it’s Rob Halford’s Painkiller-pitched scream; another time, it’s Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train-inspired version.

And while it’d be a shame to spoil it for anybody, the title screen deserves recognition as being perhaps the most inspired main menu ever.

Like any Tim Schafer game, Brütal Legend is filled to the brim with witty, inspired dialog. While the game appears to follow Psychonauts’ lead in featuring lots of cutscenes — which are admittedly hilarious — a great deal of the game’s conversations also play out in real-time while the player is actively engaged in hacking, slashing and shredding. It makes for a more seamless transition between active and passive segments, and the humor permeates throughout the game with ease.

It may not boast all the bells and whistles of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves’ pristine, lush visuals, but Brütal Legend more than compensates with its brilliant sense of style. Charming, exaggerated characters spring to life and define themselves with expressive animation and excellent sound and voice work. Though only a couple scenes were visible in the demo, each was appropriately overblown and impressive. Schafer has said that the game’s art design is meant to bring fantastical album covers to life; based on initial impressions, it looks as though Double Fine has had no difficulties in living up to its goal.

While the demo left me even more eagerly anticipating the game’s October 13 release date, a couple of critical aspects of the game were absent from the preview:

1. The Open World: Brütal Legend promises a massive, metal album-inspired world to explore with myriad tasks to perform. The demo only includes a portion of the very linear introductory sequence, so it remains to be seen how cohesive and enjoyable the full game’s exploration segments will be.
2. Massive Battles: Later in the game  and while playing online in multiplayer, Eddie will command minions in epic rock show battles in a cross between the game’s basic hack-and-slash combat and the strategy elements of Pikmin. Combat feels solid but a little simplistic while just playing as Eddie, so it’s likely the game’s long-term enjoyment will hinge on how well the game’s large-scale battles play out.

They’re legitimate concerns, but they shouldn’t be enough to dissuade anyone from playing the game. What Double Fine has presented in just a short demonstration is more than enough laugh-out-loud humor, satisfying combat, top-tier writing and — well, inspirado — to guarantee an enjoyable time for anyone who’s not afraid of a little bit of everything your parents warned you about.

Let's call this a "Coversplosion"

Red Faction: Guerrilla (RFG) is a third-person action title set on Mars and the third entry in THQ and Volition, Inc.’s Red Faction series. It’s been nearly seven years since Red Faction II, the last game in the series, and since then Volition has been hard at work perfecting its new game engine in an attempt to revolutionize environmental destruction in videogames.

Players enter the 10 minute-long demo as protagonist Alec Mason in a rather spacious but sectioned-off demo map  — straying too far will invoke the wrath of a game over screen.

Even so, the assorted set pieces, ranging from granite buildings to explosive metal tanks, fit the Mars aesthetic well. This certainly is a large demo to explore, and subsequent play-throughs nearly always result in discovering something new to blow up. To think this is just one tiny slice of the full game is quite encouraging.

But don’t wander off too much the first time through: the demo has a 10 minute time limit. It’s not so bad, as you’ll likely want to replay the demo again and again to continue experimenting with RFG’s destruction capabilities. Trust me, everything can’t be seen in one playthrough. You might not even reach the first objective before the time’s up because of all the available fun.

At its core, Red Faction: Guerrilla is a demolition simulator, plain and simple. There are numerous ways to go about tearing apart the game world, like explosives and firearms, but the absurdly brutal sledgehammer you begin the demo with is the most enjoyable. The ostrich-like weapon can smash through everything and packs the strongest melee attack in the demo. Swings are either vertical or horizontal depending on which button is pressed, and the variation is a simple but welcome addition; one button-hammering with a few animations wouldn’t have been as immersive.

Room with a view

The rest of the demo’s weapons — a pistol, shotgun and assault rifle — dig down to Red Faction’s FPS roots, and all handle well thanks to the tight firing mechanics.

Unfortunately, the weapons provided are going to be the most vanilla ones seen in the retail release, which will include around 24 over-the-top weapons like the Arc Welder. But demo players wouldn’t know that unless they had watched a few videos. If anything, the solid gunplay left me wanting more, but I suppose that’s the point.

The perspective change from first to third is one of RFG’s most significant alterations to the original Red Faction formula. Thankfully, Volition has done an excellent job with the over-the-shoulder style of camera, and everything seems to follow the player character well. Third person is more conducive to observing the full extent of your destruction anyway.

In terms of the demo, RFG flaunts its Geo-Mod 2.0 engine but doesn’t require players to level every building to achieve their objectives — it’s just more fun that way. Surprisingly, the cover mechanic is sufficient enough that you could treat the game as an average action title without too much of a problem. However, players are going to get a lot more out of the title by trying different strategies, and that’s apparent even in demo form.

Just walk away, Alec

The destruction element is the star of the demo. Girders can be taken out and the structures will collapse realistically without proper support. No canned animations here, and no limited destruction like in Battlefield: Bad Company.

Buildings are almost like “destruction onions,” with multiple layers to expose and destroy. Starting from the outside: first comes the outer covering, next a stone and rebar wall, then the steel beams and finally the chicken wire and drywall-like innards. And although the textures on some materials are pretty low-resolution, it’s absolutely engaging to pick apart a wall or bunker piece by piece.

My main complaint with the demo, and likely the retail release, is its health system. Without knowing the full version’s upgrade system, it’s hard to say what, if any, additions will improve Alec’s lifespan. The health regeneration is too typical, ironically, for a game so outside-of-the-box in its technology. Hopefully the retail game lets players add to their health pool or increase their defenses in some way.

Whoops.

Multiplayer also remains in the dark, and it’s something we’ll have to keep an eye on. It could be extremely fun to hunt enemies down in a game where “cover” means absolutely nothing. If multiplayer keeps the demo’s single-player mechanics, then great. But the retail title will need some unique modes to give online a long life; perhaps a Burnout-esque mode where players are scored based on the monetary amount of damage they cause.

Simply put, the emphasis on destruction is not a gimmick. It’s a fantastic way to enhance replayability, even in a demo. I’ve played this thing over 15 times, and each time I find something new and fun to do. If 10 minutes of a title can promise that much enjoyment, I can only imagine what the full version is like. So, despite some hesitations in what wasn’t shown by the demo, Red Faction: Guerrilla is still shaping up quite nicely.

Red Faction: Guerrilla releases June 2nd on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, but without Steven Tyler's gaping, Lovecraftian mouth.

Color me disappointed. I was all ready to title this demo review “Sad but True: The Guitar Hero: Metallica demo is out,” thinking I’d cleverly turned a Metallica song title into a jab against the band’s very own game. But after playing through the handful of included songs, I’m writing this article with an unexpected humility. It’s definitely not for everyone, but Neversoft is slowly (and finally!) starting to breathe new life into a franchise that’s quickly beginning to show its age.

I’ll be honest: I’ve been hard on Neversoft in the past. But frankly, they’ve deserved it. After all, it’s largely accepted that the once-brilliant Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise has gone down the toilet, and Harmonix’s brilliant upstart franchise, Guitar Hero, suffered a significant drop-off in quality once Neversoft took the reins. The game’s mechanics only got messier with Guitar Hero: World Tour, which tried to replicate the successful formula of Rock Band and stumbled significantly in executing the full band gameplay mechanics. I’m unable to say whether you and your musician friends will encounter a friendlier experience when you jump into Guitar Hero: Metallica, but I can say with some confidence (and relief ) that the interface and presentation have been given a much-needed (albeit subtle) facelift.

When Neversoft added the note counter into the Guitar Hero III in-game interface, it was catering to the game’s hardcore fanbase in particular: the ScoreHero junkies who argue over optimal Star Power paths and other minutiae that can be leveraged to squeeze out every last point from the game. Released around the same time, Rock Band shied away from intensive stats tracking in favor of a new in-game display that indicated how many stars your band’s performance was earning in real-time. It was a subtle but useful indication of your band’s ability, and it did away with the suspense and frustration of waiting to the end of the song to find out you were just a few thousand points away from that last five-star score. That score indicator is now present on-screen in Guitar Hero: Metallica, along with the other score-optimizing accoutrements that have remained a staple of Guitar Hero. Rather than seem tacked-on, however, it’s actually more of a best-of-both-worlds type of situation. The interface is generally cleaner while also being more informative.

Another area the game had been struggling in — character animation — has been tuned up significantly. While you’ll still be able to create your own rockers or play as the same ones as in Guitar Hero: World Tour, digitized recreations of Metallica’s members appear on-stage when you play any of their songs. It’s clear thatNeversoft’s art team dedicated the majority of their time to making Metallica’s on-stage performances come alive, and they’ve succeeded marvelously. Lead singer James Hetfield’s lip syncing is impressive and easy to follow, and his singing is complemented by gestures (such as him holding a finger to his lips to shush the audience during a quiet segment, or spit flying from his mouth during a particularly thrashing chorus) that add greatly to the game’s characterization. Drumming and guitar playing animations are all motion-captured quite well, and they’re personalized enough to resemble the Metallica members’ play styles; in other words, they don’t just look like generic rocker dolls with Metallica’s faces spraypainted on.

Conspicuously absent from the demo was one of the hallmarks of Metallica’s music: Difficulty. Each of the demo’s four songs could be played on any setting between Beginner and Expert, but none of the demo’s songs will present a challenge to anyone who’s halfway decent at Guitar Hero. But it makes sense: When it comes to music games, metal is the one genre most closely associated with sprained wrists and shattered plastic.  The guys at Neversoft instead opted to include a couple of relatively simple (but enjoyable) classic Metallica songs, as well as a mellow Alice in Chains tune titled “No Excuses.” Good move.

But the most bizarre inclusion has to be Queen’s “Stone Cold Crazy,” which marks the triumphant return of Queen to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band series — conspicuously absent since a cover version of “Killer Queen” graced the very first Guitar Hero. Out of the full game’s 49 song tracklist, “Stone Cold Crazy” promises to be one of the most distinctive songs. It’s just a shame that vocalists eager to stretch their falsetto to the breaking point will have to pick up a game dedicated primarily to a metal band; unlike how the Rock Band Track Packs can be exported for play in Rock Band 1 and 2, Guitar Hero: Metallica’s songs can’t be exported from the disc to the hard drive in order to be played in Guitar Hero: World Tour.

This is a game that won’t have a hard time finding its target audience. If you like Guitar Hero or Metallica, this game is probably gonna be for you. None of the bonus features or
“History of Metallica” elements were present in the demo, but the game looks and plays solidly enough. Odds are it’ll be worth at least a rental to anyone who enjoys music games, but if the game delivers on its promise of delving deep into the band’s history and dynamics, it could make for a pretty solid purchase for any Metallica fans. Look for our full review when the game hits store shelves on March 29.