Watch Jack Black play as himself in his YouTube channel's first actual Let's Play

Jack Black has committed to this whole YouTube gamer thing, at least in the sense of regularly uploading videos to his channel. Now after months of teases, Black's finally sat down on camera and played himself a video game. Or played himself in a video game: the first proper subject of Jablinski Games is Brutal Legend, starring Jack Black as the voice of roadie hero Eddie Riggs.

The video starts with an introduction from YouTuber Ricky Berwick, then goes into a few minutes of Black having an awful fever at home. It's nicely produced and all but you can skip to 4:12 if you just want to see him start his playthrough of the 2009 action/strategy game. Before you ask, yes, it does get confusing hearing him speaking as both Eddie Riggs and himself at once. Maybe I'd be more used to that if I ever watched movies with the commentary track on? Oh well.

Black plays through Brutal Legend's intro, praising Double Fine and studio founder Tim Schafer for the game's unusual live-action intro, its soundtrack, and of course its metal-as-hell aesthetics: "The whole world is made of skulls. Heavy metal skulls". Unfortunately, the controllers in his battery run out and he stops playing before the part where you escape in the Hot Rod, easily one of Brutal Legend's coolest moments.

It's left unspecified whether the next installment will have Black continue Brutal Legend, move on to a new game, or go back to just sort of circling the concept of playing video games (with an occasional fake Fortnite session). I hope he does at least one more session in Double Fine's realm of rock because I still have a huge soft spot for that game. Even the real-time strategy parts. I swear it's fun if you remember to use Eddie as a super-capable unit himself and not just as a bird's-eye-view commander! 

Find more to look forward to in our list of the new games of 2019. 

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.