Going into the month of Rocktober, I tried very hard to fight back any information concerning Brütal Legend. Sure, at E3 I got a healthy blast of stuff I wanted to save for the first boot up, but for the most part I was able to avoid learning about this game before sitting down in comfort to rock. So most of the gameplay within was a complete surprise for me.

Brütal Legend started out as a multiplayer title. In development, Double Fine began by tooling the multiplayer section and then building a campaign to accompany it.  Knowing this, the focus of the game should have been multiplayer.  It makes sense, right?  The developers spent a good deal of time there so the rest of the project should be rather lacking.  Well, despite its length, the single-player side of Brütal Legend is absolutely fantastic.  You can tell that its purpose was to serve as a robust tutorial for the multiplayer portion of the game, but that's only because you're learning new ways to fight right up until the last hour of story.  So, if you're thinking this single-player can be compared to that of an Unreal title, you can put that fear to bed.  Schafer and Double Fine did everything they could to make the campaign experience a glorious one.

It is, however, very short.  Checking in at below eight hours for my first go around, Brütal Legend's campaign mode comes and goes a little too quickly.  As you draw near the conclusion of the game, you'll find yourself wanting more.  That speaks volumes for the gameplay and story as these two elements leave you so thirsty for more that you'll likely spend time post-credits rolling around completing side missions.  This is something I never do, but I found myself wishing for more campaign so badly that when I finished the game I played for another two hours merely feasting on repetitive side quests.

So, yes, the side-questing does get a little repetitive.  Races, ambushes and turret-defense sit at the core of the side-questing lot of challenges.  There are a few oddball missions tossed in for variety, but the bulk of the non-campaign experience can be described as quite repetitive.  Thankfully, the gameplay elements you use to complete the same missions over and over are done well enough so that this isn't too big of a problem.