What we want to see at E3: Brütal Legend

Here is a pretty film-oriented trailer for Doublefine's new beat 'em up, Brütal Legend, out in October. Conceived by Tim Schaefer (known for Psychonauts, Grim Fandango) and starring Jack Black, this game looks like it's going to be very hit or miss for most gamers.

The refinement in a Tim Schaefer game is found more in the writing than game mechanics, so here's hoping the game can live up to its own presentation.

The main character is Eddie Riggs, a roadie who gets transported via magic belt-buckle to a world straight off a heavy metal album cover. There are towering piles of bones, lightning-shooting guitars, robed demons, giant beasts of burden, hellish machinery, sexy nuns, head-banging teenagers, flaming Harley-Davidsons... You get the idea.

In a flourish of typecasting, Eddie is voiced by Jack Black. Listening to some of his voice work in trailers, Black comes off as less wildly spastic than in his movies (School of Rock and High Fidelity come to mind). One wonders if this was due to a voice director having him tone it down or his own interpretation of the writing. Regardless, Black's presence is likely to suit Schaefer's goofy sense of humor quite well.

Also making an appearance, though how big of one remains to be seen, is Black's Tenacious D partner Kyle Gass and various heavy metal celebrities like Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford and Lita Ford.

Although we've been seeing a lot of news relating Brütal Legend's thematic elements,there have been no valuable revelations about gameplay.

The few videos of game mechanics available show Eddie swinging a huge axe and jumping around a bit. What we want to see at E3 is a real demonstration of how Eddie fights and maybe a boss battle or two that mixes things up.

Looking back on Doublefine's previous work, most recently Psychonauts, we see a mediocre action platform game with hugely endearing characters and story. In essence, the game held up because the writing was simply amazing.

But replaying Psychonauts really drives home how irritating it can be to deal with a poorly designed level (I'm looking at you, Meat Circus). We want gameplay that's fun and levels that genuinely and fairly challenge the player rather than being merely difficult to navigate.

If the game ends up having less than stellar play mechanics, we can overlook them as we have for other Schaefer games, but how much cooler would it be if Brütal Legend turned out to be a cohesive product?