Brutal Legend isn't a very smooth game, which is surprising considering the low-rent graphics engine. It seems like it was built so it could be scaled down to the Playstation 2. It suffers from bad frame rates, details magically popping into the near distance, and lots of blunt "you can't go here!" level design. A lot of the gameplay is similarly clumsy or basic. The fighting is standard-issue. The driving is rudimentary. You have to play a rather complicated real time strategy game at certain points in the story, which is going to give some people fits. At times, Brutal Legend is flat-out bad in terms of gameplay.

But that would be a pretty short-sighted way to evaluate what developer Double Fine has created. Regardless of how it holds up as a game, Brutal Legend is a staggeringly imaginative, sincerely heartfelt, joyously child-like place to go, full of innocence and wonder and awesome cussing and cool characters and hidden jokes and sweet places to drive your bitchin' car and heroes to fight alongside and villains to vanquish and secret destinies to discover. It is like being fourteen all over again, and I'll take that over a slickly done game any day.

Read the review after the jump.

Brutal Legend is the creation of Tim Schafer, so I have to make a confession: I'm not very well versed in Schafer's games. I haven't played Maniac Mansion or Full Throttle, I got about a third of the way into Grim Fandango, and I only played the first two levels of Psychonauts. So I feel a bit disingenuous gushing about how good Brutal Legend is when many of you guys probably could have figured that out on your own.

But however it holds up next to Schafer's other games, I can tell you that Brutal Legend is the best story, the best writing, and the best characters in a videogame this year. Given the cartoony graphics and the way Jack Black is lending it his celebrity, you might think it's just a big fat funny goof. Boy, are you wrong.

Think of Brutal Legend as a heavy metal Wizard of Oz, but instead of a young girl with magic shoes re-imagining her family, it's for men remembering their childhood when cars and music were as fascinating as girls. It's got arcs of redemption and discovery. It's got genuine romance, with a far better "romatic quadrilateral" than the more serious Uncharted 2. It's got regret and sadness. It's got clowns and soldiers and sidekicks. It's got a villain who doesn't have to chew scenery because he's plenty ominous as is. It's got a grand Shakespearean feint where you think you know what's going on and you're wrong.

The voice acting is every bit as good as the writing. Most of the main characters play it straight, with Jennifer Hale as the love interest who's more than just a love interest and Tim Curry doing his usual mellifluous villain. A few legendary metal performers lend their voices and even likenesses, with Lemmy from Motorhead being one of the most comfortable fits, making clerics seem cool. Ozzy Osbourne's Guardian of Metal - he's basically the merchant at the upgrade store - steals the show. You know how you normally just want to buy your stuff from an NPC merchant and get back to the game? Here Osbourne warmly greets you, offers comments for each available item, and then sends you off with various hearty farewells. As if spending your money wasn't already plenty of fun.

Jack Black is constantly present as lead character Eddie Riggs, a roadie somehow gone back in time to save humanity from demons. It's got elements of a Western where the out-of-town gunslinger sets things right, but it's mostly a fish-out-of-water story. Eddie gets to comment on this strange world. But it's a world built from something he knows. He's comfortable here. Unlike most fish out of water, he's in his element. Think of Ash in Army of Darkness. A little trans-dimensional time travel isn't going to flummox a true hero once he's found his purpose.

Black's enthusiasm shines, and he seems invested in the character and the world. He can get outrageous, singing out Double Fine's name during the opening splash screen, proclaiming Call of the Wild as his favorite book when playing a solo to summon local fauna, or relishing the dialogue's rich profanity. He shrieks and mutters and gloats and teases and even has a little banter with Kyle Gass from Tenacious D. But he also plays it quietly and sincerely when the story calls for it. There's no sneer here. Black fits the game's sense of humor and tone perfectly. I don't pretend to know what an actor is really thinking, but it sounds like Black didn't just lend this game his voice. There's a sense his heart is here as well.

The basic gameplay takes its cue from post-Grand Theft Auto 3 open-world games, but it has the luxury of not having to create anything remotely believable. If you thought Red Faction's Mars was out of this world, you ain't seen nothing yet. This is a place full of strange sights and sounds, with its own weird ecology and a surprisingly deep mythology. The more you discover, the more you want to discover. Collectibles are built to show you the scenery, tell you the story, and advance your powers at whatever pace you want. The game can be short if you just barrel through the story missions, but it's a bit ironic that many of these side activities are anything but peripheral.

Some of the story missions are a bit, um, unexpected. There are times when you have to play a real time strategy game. Yep, a real time strategy game, complete with resources and training units and ordering them around on a map and unit counters. There are only a few RTS missions and they're reasonably short. Some of them require that you figure out a gimmick and they might take a couple of attempts. And they require a lot more interface grappling than you have to do in the rest of the game.

Now I was in hog heaven during these parts of the game, but I'm a guy who loves real time strategy games. That's not going to apply to a lot of people who pick up Brutal Legend because they like heavy metal, or Jack Black, or imaginative open-worlds. So while I personally applaud Double Fine's decision to put an RTS at the heart of their game, I also have to wonder if that was a smart thing to do. You'll have to make up your own mind on that one.

But if that's the price of admission, so be it. This is a fantastic display of imagination and storytelling. It's a virtuoso combination of voiceover and artwork. It's someplace you've never seen in a videogame. And most importantly, it's someplace worth being.

(Tomorrow, I'll review the multiplayer, which is something Electronic Arts really doesn't want you to know about. And I can't blame them.)