So Brutal Legend dropped this week, and it rules. And it got me to thinking – the pomp and pageantry of heavy metal is certainly ripe for video game exploitation. There are some obvious ones, like country, and there are some that have been done with varying degrees of success, like rap (Def Jam: Fight for NY was great. 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, not so much). That being said, there are plenty of other styles and genres out there that could produce fun, compelling, or just plain weird video games. I mean, have you SEEN the Frankie Goes To Hollywood game? It may not be good, but it's definitely incredible. So here are a couple of contenders and how I'd do them up:

Love & Murder: An Appalachian Folk Tale

Music genre: American folk music

How it goes: Building off the eerie yet joyous traditions of 1920s and 1930s “hillbilly” music, you play as a roughneck character in a little town way back in the holler. On your wedding day, your wife-to-be is found hanged, and it's up to you to uncover what happened. Think Fallout 3 meets O Brother Where Art Thou. The big thing here would be a real morality system that actually changes the game's outcomes – as you explore the backwoods, you have to keep your reputation high both with the locals and with the lawmen who are hunting you – the more your kith and kin like you, the more they'll hide you from the cops, but get on their bad side, and you'll get turned in for the reward money. Your actions in the game would directly determine the ending - finish as a hero and find out your girl was killed a rival; finish as a villain and find out that she hung herself rather than be married to such a monster.

Funkentelechy: The P-Funk Experience

Music genre: Parliament/Funkadelic

How it goes: George Clinton is a weird, weird dude. So's Bootsy. So weird, in fact, that all the old P-Funk albums have an interconnected mythology about aliens bringing the power of Funk to Earth in order to enlighten everyone and overcoming ignorance through dancing and funky understanding. You play as the Starchild, defending The Mothership Connection from hordes of unfunky aliens. The music would be P-Funk, the character designs would be awesomely exaggerated and 70s, and all the creatures and whatnot would be drawn from P-Funk lyrics, right up to your final battle with the massive Maggot Brain. The end result is the best videogame to play while tripping since Rez.

The Harder They Come: The Game

Music genre: Reggae and rocksteady

How it goes: This one's pretty straightforward – loosely based on the awesome Jimmy Cliff film, you're a kid from the country who moves to Kingston looking to make it big as a reggae star. Instead, you get caught up with crime, drugs, girls, and all the other troubles of the rudeboy era. Will you pursue your recording career, or will you give it up for a life of vice? Think of it as Grand Theft Auto, but darker – no matter how big you win, you're going to lose in the end. Throw in an awesome soundtrack of 60s and 70s Jamaican sounds; the happy-sounding stuff that's actually about grinding poverty and rampant crime and corrupt judges and hungry children in the streets, and you've got the game in a nutshell; bright colors and bouncy music smashed up against fear and violence and paranoia.