Though there are moments of brilliance, elements of the game fight against each other and prevent it from being the instant classic it could have been — not unlike another long-awaited metal masterpiece.

Tim Schafer may be the funniest guy in video games. His resumé of classic adventures like The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and the later cult favorite Psychonauts have put him on the short list of designers whose name alone can draw an audience. He’s also one of the few people to put as much thought into game writing as level designing, penning dialogue as memorable as the strange worlds his characters inhabit.

So the potential of a heavy metal fantasy epic with a script by Schafer and Jack Black as the lead character — a match made in metal heaven — rightfully put Brütal Legend among this year’s most anticipated releases. But sadly, though there are moments of brilliance, the final result is more of a charming jumble than the instant classic it could have been. The biggest problem being that the game has too many ideas, with individual elements fighting against each other and preventing it from coalescing into a satisfying whole.

Sound familiar? The issues with Brütal Legend have a strange parallel with another metal masterpiece that didn’t quite deliver: Guns N’ Roses’ long-awaited, mildly-received Chinese Democracy. That’s not to say that Tim Schafer has anywhere near the same issues as Axl Rose; as many recorded interviews and public appearances can attest, Schafer is by all accounts an amiable, sane guy who has never thought corn rows would be a good look for him. Nor is this game’s history as troubled as the infamous album; that crown would immediately have to go to the as-yet-unreleased Duke Nukem Forever.

But there are still similarities worth mentioning. Schafer does have a body of early work that’s so strong it’s considered canon, creating huge expectations for his next release. His latest effort has taken years (granted, not a decade plus, but five years is pretty long between games), including delays and issues with parent companies that cast doubt on whether the game would even surface at all (for a brief time it was uncertain if Brütal Legend would find a distributor after Vivendi merged with Activision, before eventually getting picked up by Electronic Arts). Most importantly, now that’s finally arrived, fans everywhere want very much to call it a triumph, when in fact there’s an uneasy feeling that it’s not quite what we were waiting for.

The issue, as mentioned earlier, is that there are so many ideas crammed into the game, it never quite finds its groove. For every masterful choice, another design decision weighs it down.

For example: the game is set in an amazing world that meshes the grand imagery of every over-the-top album cover imaginable. A stonehenge of swords, giant chrome-plated spider webs, foggy swamps, gothic spires, icy mountaintops, haunted forests, hellscapes of fire; every mythic theme worth shredding about comes together in a wonderful amalgamation, crafted with an obvious love of metal lore. Every chapter reveals another vista of rock and roll majesty that’s a joy to behold. But for the better part of the game, you’re either speeding through the world in a car (albeit a bad-ass one) and missing the details, or trudging long distances on foot with nothing much to do but look at the scenery. You’re rarely led through an area with as much care as the world deserves to really show it off.

Equally frustrating is the character interaction. Jack Black nails the lead role. The rest of the cast are eccentric, funny and well-voiced, down to the lowliest grunts. There are cameos from metal legends like Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy Kilmister, and Rob Halford, plus comedians like Brian Posehn and Kyle Gass, making the story scenes a pleasure to watch. But most of your time is spent either wandering the lonely expanse completing quests, or engaged in massive team battles too chaotic to notice the rapport over the noise. It gets to where you want more cutscenes, not less, just so you can finally spend some time getting to know the other people in the game. The open world is so open, there’s rarely an opportunity for incidental dialogue otherwise.

Other small conflicts keep the game from reaching its stride as well. The idea of using dual axes as weapons — one double-bladed, one six-stringed — sounds perfect on paper. But just as you’re getting the hang of how to rain down blood and lightning, the action shifts from man-to-man combat to large-scale wars, forcing you to become more of a general than a soldier. The metal soundtrack is skillfully compiled and perfectly matched to tearing around this world in your roadster, but you have to leave your car, and therefore your stereo, behind to complete most meaningful tasks in the world.

So as you’ve probably noticed by now, there’s a lot to like, combined with a lot of ‘buts’, and that’s the heart of this game’s problems. It’s as if you’re being constantly teased with perfect pieces of a game that never quite fit together into a complete experience.

Overall, Brütal Legend suffers from the opposite problem of most games. In many big titles, there’s a token story with hackneyed characters and cookie-cutter environments that are barely worth noticing as you enjoy the central mechanics of the game. In this game, oddly, there’s a well-written fable acted out by well-voiced characters in an incredible world, held back by a game whose moment-to-moment play is merely adequate.

Or to put it another way, like Chinese Democracy, it’s a lot of creative flashes of brilliance in need of nothing more than some editorial oversight to focus it into the genius it could have been. As is, it’s still worth playing, just as Guns N’ Roses are worth listening to, because no one else makes games like Tim Schafer does. In fact, the comparison may be unfair in the end, because Brütal Legend isn’t a flop or a train wreck the way most people perceive Axl’s masterwork to be. It’s just a game that we all wanted to be a must-play masterpiece, which ended up more of a borrow-and-check-out or buy-at-a-discount bit of fun.

But also unlike Axl, there’s still hope for Schafer. Chances are he’ll use this experiment as a learning experience toward something better in the future, and that keeps me from fully regretting my Brütal Legend purchase. Out of the two, I’d rather have the latter making a mistake here and there over a long and fruitful career, and the former end up the crazy hermit in a bandana.

A few footnotes:

Visit the Brütal Legend offical site for a wealth of videos with the people behind the game. It may make you think, “Wow, I have to play this!” despite everything written above. If nothing else, there are some fun interviews with the metal masterminds.

But let me say one thing to be clear: I don’t hate this game! In fact, I quite enjoyed parts of it, and even agreed with Chris Dahlen’s (of Save the Robot) take as published in Edge Magazine. There’s good stuff in here if you’re willing to work at it.