Tuesday Trivia: Metal games

Hey, what’s your favorite metal game? Mine include:

• moshing with metal attachements on my boots
• throwing a glass beer bottle at a concert behind me and seeing how many people bleed
• kicking a wigger

I’m kidding of course. Except maybe for the last one. The games we’ll be covering today have nothing to do with concerts. In fact, they’re my favorite games — the ones that don’t make you leave the house. Make the jump and get familiar with some of the heavy metal video games.

First thing’s first – we have to cover Guitar Hero, and we’ll do it shortly. Probably the single reason a bunch of people still know that there are genres of music outside of Lady Gaga, and the one reason guitar sales internet downloads have seen a surge in the past few years, Guitar Hero was a controversial title, and it ended on a not so much of a high note — after running out of mainstream acts to cover in their special title section (some include Aerosmith and Metallica), and after about 30 releases, the franchise has been shot dead earlier this year.

When we mention Guitar Hero, we can’t avoid mentioning Rock Band, it’s ugly/pretty (depends on which fanboy you ask) twin sister/brother. The one thing Rock Band had it going was that they introduced an entire line of fake instruments, as opposed to Guitar Hero’s guitar only approach (they’d later copy this).

They can play Guitar Hero. Acoustically.

Further going back, this brings us to 2009, the year we saw Brutal Legend, an action/strategy game that promised lots of fun for the entire family. If your family’s last name is Adams or something… (name was stylized as “Brütal Legend” to appeal to the stereötypical metalhead btw). To this day, this game is the most metal ever made (and a proper game, not a gimmick like Guitar Hero). Considering it had Jack Black as the voice actor for the main character, it says a lot about the state of metal in video games. Oh well, at least it had Lemmy, Rob Halford, Ozzy and Lita Ford in it to be slightly more legit. I’ve never played it myself, but I’ve seen this video and I’m not really impressed.

2009 also marks the date the only real metal video game we would want to play – Metalocalypse: The Video Game – was announced, but the project was short-lived, and a year after — officially canceled.

Jack Black: Metal, or simply retarded?

Did you know Marilyn Manson was involved in video games as well? Luckily he didn’t sing and/or direct, but he did lend his voice to Edgar, an alien in the first person shooter video game Area 51, along with David Duchovny who was the voice actor for the main character.

When it comes to other video games in the last decade (or well, the end of the one before it), we can’t help but mention Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2. What’s funny about it is the following: despite the name, this game is actually a sequel to the animated film Heavy Metal 2000, which itself is sequel to another animated film from 1981 called Heavy Metal, which in turn is based on stories from the Heavy Metal magazine. The funny thing about it being that none of these things have anything to do with actual heavy metal music, but the game will always pop up in any of your search results, so I just did you a favor by explaining what it really is.

When it comes to game soundtracks, metal has had more luck, mostly because every sports game under the sun has utilized some heavier tracks (notable example being Twisted Metal, which utilized heavier tracks, and at one point even offered Rob Zombie as a playable character). Original soundtracks and original scores are a bit harder to find, but collaborations with metal (or at least ‘rock’) musicians go as far back as 1996, when Trent Reznor collaborated with id Software as the sound engineer on the first Quake game. He was also supposed to return to the role on their Doom III game in 2003, but after failing to do so, Chris Vrenna stepped in.

When it comes to pre-2000, the choice of games would actually surprise you. Did you know there were two Journey games? I didn’t, until I read this article at 1UP. Considering that anything I could write would just be second hand posting, I urge you to read it yourselves. I have however taken these two videos and will be posting them here:

That’s it! Know of any metal video games I’ve missed? Let me know, and I’ll update the post accordingly. If you’re a girl, feel free to send any nude pics, I’ll update the post with those as well!