Brütal Legend

Bring Your Contraughler To The Slaughter. Worth: $9
based on 360 demo

The Hell's Bells on my Crazy Train just called Doctor Love.

I only fired up this demo because the GamerGal made me. Within ten seconds we were both laughing our asses off, and not because the game was bad, but because the writing is fantastically funny. It helps that we both know a lot of musicians and went to High School back when Heavy Metal was in its heyday.

The voice actors spin the great writing into top-notch performances. The dialogue is delivered with just the right mix of down-to-earth, yeah-this-is-happening realism and over-the-top head-banger awesomeness. Jack Black is terrific, naturally, and perfectly cast as Eddie the ultimate roadie.

The game itself is pretty simple, essentially playing out as a button-masher where you pound A and X to fight and press Y to grab stuff. The graphics are at least four years out of date, but at this point graphics weren’t too bad four years ago. The music, as one would hope, is very promising -- as long as you’re into Metal. The story feels very linear and replay will be extremely limited.

This game doesn’t get a high score, but it’s a lot higher than the Zero I expected to give it.

Darkest Of Days

Shoot your way through history. Worth: $20
based on 360 demo

What a concept, an FPS with a concept!

Whenever I try out a new shooter my mind basically says the following: "Hey, a shooter. Wow, I can shoot. Yeah that's terrific. What else ya got?" It turns out that Darkest Of Days may have that rare quality in this genre: originality.

Bloody Harvest
The demo features the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American military history (23k casualties). After a few minutes you can see why it has this notorious distinction, as thousands of soldiers fight for a cornfield the size of a schoolyard. Huge volleys of gunfire fill the air with metal and clog the farm's drainage ditches with heaps of shattered dead and howling wounded. The scenes depicted felt spot-on to the descriptions I've read about this battle.

Why can't I get a cellphone signal in 1863?
The game has some similarities to the short-lived but excellent TV show Journeyman, where you travel through time so you can affect the lives of historically-significant people. Where Journeyman focused on everyday life, however, Darkest Of Days centers around history's great battles.

Point and shoot, and reload. Still reloading. Ughh, still reloading...
In the demo you began with a time-accurate 1860's single-shot rifle. Slow... inaccurate... you can see why they don't make a lot of Civil War era video games. But then your time-traveling handler gives you an assault rifle. Needless to say you suddenly become the highest casualty-producing soldier on the battlefield as you wipe out entire enemy companies with a single clip. This historical twist is an engaging "What If" scenario, which appeals to me because I like Alternate History as much as I like regular history.

Unique, fresh, and interesting
This game plays well, and although the graphics won't win any awards, it looks good enough. The demo presented me with what felt like a tightly-researched experience, and promises much more from other times and battles. Good stuff.