In my last blog I said I would write about Brutal Legend when I had finished it but the truth is I haven't had the desire to. You see, I bought Brutal Legend for the PS3in mid-January and played it roughly 3/4 of it. Then I bought Mass Effect 2 the day it came out which instantaneously sent Brutal Legend back into its case. Finished Mass Effect 2 as a Renegade and Paragon and I thought the time had finally come to finish Tim Schaefer's latest game but no, a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a while gave me Borderlands as late Christmas present for the PC. As a huge fan of virtually any game with loot systems, I gave in the insanely addictive joy that is Borderlands.

Now I look at the awesome Brutal Legend poster I have up on my wall and I realized that it'll be a while until I finish Brutal Legend. Why? It sucks.

Okay, maybe that's too harsh. The soundtrack is awesome to listen to, specially as youdriveyourhot rod acrossa really interestingopen world filled withspectacular metal landmarks andthe cutscenes are very well presented due, in part, to the excellent voice acting but mostly to the excellent writing and facial expressions of the characters.Now let's behonest, everyone expectedBrutal Legend to be a nice homage to metal and to carry thetrademark TimSchaefer humor. So in that aspect, my expectations were met. From the trailers and the advertising, it was also safe to say that I expected a 3rd person action game. Instead,the good folks at Double Fine presentus with an interesting hybrid:part 3rdperson action, partRTS.My expectations were no doubt product of a deceiving marketing campaign by EA which onlyaccentuates my dissapointmentin Brutal Legend. I understand that it's a lot more marketable to sell a 3rd person action game with Jack Black than to sell an RTS.... with Jack Black.

There is alessonI have learned overmy years as a videogamer: RTS's don't work on consoles.Any console controler lacks the amount of buttons of a keyboard and the precision of a mouse to successfully.

The gameplay in Brutal Legend basically works like this: the first mission starts out as a standard 3rd person action game but as you progress you develop several new skills and tricks that you will use in Stage Battles to create new troops and command them. Depending on the objective you will need to use different strategies involving different types of troops to fight the enemy. This isn't groundbreaking stuff, RTS's have been around for years but as I said they only work on the PC with a mouse and a controller in front of you. With a controller, the battles in Brutal Legend are, due to the imprecisionof the controls and incompetence of your AI, a huge pain in the neck, one that you have to endure for quite a while( some battles can take up to 20 minutes, not counting the times I had to try over again)to access the next cutscene.

Another complaint I have is the absence of mini map to help you guide around the open world since you do a lot of driving in this game. That's a minor complaint but it'sstill a nag. I could also complain about some pretty evident gaps in the soundtracklike Metallica, Iron Maiden but that's just a minor nag.

I guess that my true issue with Brutal Legend is that I have a hard time believing this was a game developed by the same team as Psychonauts and created by the same genius who created Grim Fandango. Due to the pedigree of the dev team and the deceiving marketing campaign of the publisher I expected a different kind of game, a better game. Even with different expectations, Brutal Legend just can't compare to games to the AAA games of 09 and the upcoming AAA games of 10.