Brutal Legend. It's my favourite game beyond any doubt, because even though it's definitely flawed, aspects of it are done so well that it completely overshadows the negative points. The stage battles have the most fun and well-designed gameplay I've ever seen in a game, the world is beautiful to look at and even after playing about 400 games of it online, I'm still hearing the characters say lines I've never heard before that make me burst out laughing. That said...
- Although the stage battle gameplay is amazing, it's not very well explained. At all. So many people were put off the game because, in the absence of any real explanation, they tried to play the stage battles like a conventional RTS, i.e. by staying in the air the whole time and trying to win by directing troops around and nothing else, and failed completely because they were ignoring most of the mechanics and options they had available. Although I love the game now, I did this at first too.
- The world is beautiful, yeah, but there's something about it that just... Irks me. It's not really in aid of anything - it's all just beautiful scenery that's there in the background, but you don't actually interact with. Not really a huge problem... It's just that when you drive past a giant tree wrapped around a rock with eyes all over it, over a road made from a twisting railtrack that leads through a swamp, and through an enormous collapsed cathedral - all within the space of about 15 seconds - it just feels like a huge wasted opportunity.
- It overall just feels a bit unfinished, probably because it was - when EA picked up the game after Activision refused to publish it they rushed Double Fine to put it out before it was really ready, and it shows. What should've been the third act of the campaign is squashed into one battle, and there are little things that are just a little irritating - running over troops in Ophelia or Doviculus' car doesn't produce the nice thump and blood splatter that Eddie's car does, for example. And the side missions feel kind of out-of-place and boring.
- Trying to find and double team with a specific hierachy unit within a large Coil army is an exercise in frustration.
But despite all that... The game is just so great in other ways that's still my favourite game ever.