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The Most Overlooked Video Game I've played, since Titanfall 2

Once in a while I breakdown and buy myself a game that either people recommended to me, or something that tickles my fancy. Once upon a time, a friend recommended The Witcher 3 because I was craving a game like The Legend of Zelda, without me having to buy a Nintendo Switch; and that game instantly made me fall in love with The Witcher series. A similar event happened with this game, except Double Fine Studios haven't expanded on this game. DFS literally launched this game, didn't just blow my mind, they blew my effing soul, and refused to elaborate.
Story
You play as Jack Blac-- Eddie Riggs, who is the "worlds best roadie" for a "heavy metal" band known as Kabbage Boy (quick authors note: all of the members of Kabbage Boy give me strong MGK vibes; Tourist at the Vampire mansion). An problem occurs on stage during Kabbage Boy's performance resulting in Eddie dying but his blood trickles into his belt buckle, which was actually an amulet for Ormagöden, the Eternal Firebeast. The beast kills the band and takes Eddie to his temple, where Eddie awakens and enters an unnamed world, inspired by Heavy Metal (hereafter: HM).
Once in the Heavy Metal World, Eddie finds out there's factions of demons, humans, and the living dead. As a metal head myself, I have so much fun talking about these characters, so buckle-up buckeroo. HM world, all of the characters/factions represent different genres of metal.


Faction
Musical Inspirations/Style


Ironheade
Traditional Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal, Power Metal, Speed Metal, NWOBHM, and "Hard Rock"


Hair Metal Militia
Glam Metal


Drowning Doom
Black Metal, Doom Metal, Melodic Death Metal, and gothic subculture


Tainted Coil
Industrial and Alternative Metal sub-genres, BDSM, and Gore (think Hellraiser + Metal band)


I can go on for days about how fun this world is, so lets not waste anymore characters on it. If you're interested by now, get the game.
Gameplay:
I heard a YouTuber say, "The best way to describe Brütal Legend, is to describe what it isn't." That's because you have three components of the game.
- Open World: You can either do side quests, exploration, or just cruise around in your car, known as "The Deuce". Side quests include static defense mini-game, mini-skirmish with opposing factions (known as an ambush), racing Fletus and his ride "Squealer", a mortar mini-game with Tenacious D's KG, and a few other random things (such as a timed beer run to a beach party).
- Battles and Multiplayer: This game's core, is the battles among factions. Much of the early Main line story revolves around building an Army. Once you get the Army, it's about battling other Army's and helping mankind overthrow their demonic oppressors. It plays like a Real-Time Strategy (RTS), while you still manipulate your character via Third-Person. The Battles are the core of this game and take some getting used to; however, once you do, there is a lot of replay value added to the game.
- Rhythm Game: Guitar Hero and Rock Band were top sellers in the industry at the time and being milked for all its worth until about 2012. While in battles or certain Side Quests you can perform "Solos"; which I would describe as magical powers.
The Bad:
The game's multiplayer is dead, combat feels a bit janky on a mouse and keyboard, and the developers cut content that they were going to put into a sequel, but EA cancelled because it didn't make them enough money and EA hates singleplayer because they don't make as much money as MP's with microtransactions. Simple really.
Also the Side Quests do get repetitive, a common error of late two-thousand adventure games where the filler was just copypasta side quests with no story and you mostly complete them just to perfect the save file. The turret side quest was easily the worst (known as Riding the Death Rack.
The Good:
I do not have enough characters (letters per review) to list everything I love about this game. The world is so much fun as a Metal head, the gameplay even on the hardest difficulty isn't that hard (on a first playthrough, you can complete it on Brütal difficulty until the end-game, where you will need to be very proficient with Ironheade during Battles against other factions. I don't think the game qualifies as down-right hilarious but there's some funny moments that will spark a chuckle and seeing all the Metal inspirations in the game is heart warming.
So... here's two of my favorite cut scenes before I wrap this up.
Authors Note: These following videos contain spoilers. I recommend you only watch 30 seconds of what I posted.
Ozzy Osbourne plays 2 roles in this game, but where he is in traditional Ozzy apparel (prior to 1983/bat head biting era), he is the Guardian of Metal and is the game's in-game shop. Everytime you visit him, he has some intro like any NPC merchant in a video game. But on this instance...
"Ozzy"
This occurs after you enter the Heavy Metal world and battle a few demons. After killing a few demon spawn, one does not attack you and just strafes around you. Just when you think the demon's guard is down you strike and...
"Hot babes"

Final Verdict:
BL came out on Rocktober 13th 2009. One of the most anticipated games of all time (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) came out less than 30 days after. It's no surprise a singleplayer-focused game that could best be described as a Action-Adventure, RTS would not receive the reception it deserved. BL suffered a fate of a greedy publisher, who didn't realize the potential of a game turning into a franchise. DFS would go on to win the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack, and nominations for Outstanding Character Performance, Outstanding Achievement in Original Story, and Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction. (The games it lost to respectively: Batman: Arkham Asylum; Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, twice). This game lost to one of the greatest games of all-time (Uncharted 2: Among Thieves) and EA saw that as a failure.
How I do scoring:
10 = Perfect (Not only innovative but also industry changing)
9 = Ground breaking (It took the standard and far exceeded it)
8 = Above Average (Whatever I'm referring to, it's REALLY good)
7 = Average (It meets the standard, anything between 7.1-7.9 is slightly above average)
6 = Below Average (Something that needs fixing in future updates/installments to the series of games)
Anything below a 6 I will not recommend. Anything with a 6 I will recommend with a caveat.
5 = Bad (Really if a game gets this score, a below average is its only saving grace)
4 and below = Seriously do not buy


Category
Score


Graphics
8


Controls
7.5


Sound Design
8


Gameplay
9


Fun Factor
9.5


Overall
9.5