Alright, I take that back: Brutal Legend might have needed two more years in the studio. Despite having finished the story in under seven hours, I got pretty bored of the game's sidequests; which is much to its detriment, because the good writing and killer soundtrack can just barely compensate for the core gameplay.

I threw in the towel and dropped down to "Gentle" (easy) in the third-to-last stage battle, because I wasn't good enough at the game to get anywhere, and I didn't care to get better. I don't know if I needed more upgrades, or different tactics, or to work faster, or what -- I really have no idea. For all the complexity of its stage battle sequences, Brutal Legend does a really poor job of explaining them.

So, let's recap:

• A mini-map with pathfinding and sidequest tracking
• More sidequests, and more unique types of them
• A fuller story (I never even saw huge swaths of the game's world map)
• A more gradual and complete stage battle tutorial
• Real, honest-to-Ormagoden rebalancing; stage battle combat is too hard
• I shouldn't have to buy the radio (even for free), it should be in from the beginning
• Try for a solid frame-rate
• Fix the annoyingly visible bug where an old subtitle shows up briefly before being replaced by a new one

Then this game would be awesome.

As it is, Brutal Legend is a short, interesting, sometimes fun, but ultimately mediocre experiment.

Better than: CIMA: The Enemy
Not as good as: Pikmin
I wish: real radio was as good as this game's

After getting to know the map and mechanics a little better, Brutal Legend has grown on me. The RTS parts of the game are pretty silly to start out, but once you apply some basic strategic technique - namely, stealing the enemy's resource nodes, and maintaining a front line - they aren't too bad. The controls are pretty weird, but I think I'm finally getting used to them.

Brutal Legend tries to do a lot -- an ambition prone to failure. Luckily, Tim Schafer has ensured that the characters and dialog are witty and charming enough to hold everything up. But the core design decision to generally remove a visual UI has me frustrated; the overworld needs heads-up display elements to more usefully indicate where I can go and what I can do. Mini-maps aren't a new thing, guys. As it is, I really doubt I'll bother with the majority of Brutal Legend's assload of unlockables.

Those aside, the game is pretty short, which is a bit distressing. After four-and-a-half hours of playtime - which includes some amount of sidequesting and tooling around - I'm about three-quarters of the way through the campaign. Actually, given the size of the game world, I get the impression that a much longer story was planned, but largely scrapped.

You've got to cut the cord eventually; but I think Brutal Legend could really have benefited from one more year of development, and some intensive QA feedback, to polish up its many diverse elements.

As a side note, once I found out where to buy upgrades (which took entirely too long), I discovered the most important upgrade in the game: the radio. Brutal Legend has a stupid huge soundtrack, and banging around the surrealistic countryside with some rocking tunes is pretty awesome.

Brutal Legend is set in a charmingly imaginative world, and is filled with great writing and funny character interactions. The presentation suits it well, with facial animations that are very human, just exaggerated enough for dramatic and comedic effect. And it's remarkable how well the voice acting works, especially when it includes real luminaries of metal and rock music. It's kind of a shame, though, that the gameplay doesn't measure up.

Solo play is fun enough -- as I saw in the demo, the simple combo system is fresh enough to be interesting, but also familiar enough to easily get into. Driving doesn't work as well as I remember it, but is workable, and there's plenty of wildlife to decimate with the Druid Plow. The overworld map, though, is a bit too scenic for its own good; you can set a waypoint, but the game isn't very helpful in getting you there (turn signals on the car are a neat aesthetic touch, but extremely unclear from a navigational standpoint).

And where it really gets awkward is in the army command mechanics. I'd be happy to just slay stuff with my own axe and magic powers, but the legion of headbangers that follows me around the field is a little difficult to manage properly -- and it's hard to tell when they're actually being effective, or when they're dying in droves. I worry that I may be forced to rely more heavily on these jokers later on, and the controls and HUD really aren't up to it.

Nevertheless, as long as Brutal Legend doesn't get frustratingly difficult, I intend to see it through just for the story and writing's sake.

Since the game was announced, something like two years ago now, my attitude toward Brutal Legend could best be described as wary intrigue. Sure, Tim Schafer is a fine piece of development pedigree, but a beat-em-up in a setting inspired by a genre of music? Well, the demo is on Xbox Live now, and after playing it I've changed my stance to lukewarm interest.

The game world is very finely crafted; even the brief demo shows off some richly imaginative creatures and environments. A big draw is Jack Black's commendable voice acting - which, combined with a seemingly endless amount of witty dialog, is a very good thing. Still, there were some parts of the presentation I felt fell flat, notably the character animation in cutscenes and the female sidekick's dialog.

Brutal Legend's hand-to-hand combat feels somewhat fresh, at least as far as the demo went with it. By no means does it revolutionize the action-combat game, but in the current deluge of God of War knock-offs, Brutal Legend's creative moves and simple controls do stand out.

What really caught my eye in the demo, though, was the vehicular manslaughter segment. I maintain more than a passing interest in the sport of cars-versus-pedestrians, and the driving section of the Brutal Legend demo did not disappoint! Eddie Riggs's "customizable hot rod" is a box-cover bullet point, so I'm hopeful that the full game's implementation can continue to satisfy.

The demo shows promise, but I guess I'm still not sold on the whole concept coming together. We'll see how it fares in the review trenches come Rocktober 13th.

Oh yeah - in the demo at least, there was no health bar. Which is great for a clean interface, but I had no idea if I was about to die. Hopefully there's something I'm missing here, else unexpected deaths could get pretty frustrating pretty fast.