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The worst moment in all of Brutal Legend is the level titled "Sanctuary of Sin." The setting is a lavishly decorated palace courtyard that would be befitting of Liberace. You mission is to lead your troops to destroy the stage of General Lionwhyte (voiced by Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford). However, two large turrets guard the enemy's stage and instantly decimate any troop that you send at them, well any troop except for the invisible yet slow roadies. To send just the roadies and not your whole army, requires such a tricky finger styling that many times I sent my ranged infantry (the Razor Girls) to their death. After my 3rd failed attempt, I almost quit the game right there. I kept with Brutal Legend because I like Tim Schafer so much.

In the lead up to the game's release, I watched every one of Tim Schafer's appearances nervously. I want other people to like him. I imagine it is like watching your child's first day of school - hoping that they will befriend him and praise him for who he is and super-afraid that they will just dismiss him as a nerdy gamer. I want him to do really well but I know that he appeals, mainly, to a niche market.

However I can't blindly stand by him. From the Sanctuary of Sin level, the game got strangely easy and well, boring. Each battle involved a simple cycle of building up troops, sending them out to destroy the enemies stage. Again and again, each battle had one goal: destroy the other stage. I held out that these were just training levels and the classic Tim Schafer inventiveness would emerge. It never did. There was no twist that showed that other games in the RTS genere were not living up to their full potential.

Schafer was able to show that not all 3D platforming had been done and that there was still room for improvement in Psychonauts. He and his design team created the warped world of the paranoid milkman that was built around fractured spaces years before Super Mario Galaxy. Psychonauts also contained one of my favorite platforming levels, OF ALL TIME - Waterloo World. In order to beat the level, you had to work a single map from three different levels by making your character grow and shrink. It was great approach and it could be interpreted as the multiple levels of strategy and mental gymnastics we use as we play boardgames.

As I slogged through the final mission which required me to destroy two towers before attacking the final stage, I couldn't help but hope for another mission that might be the twist I was looking for. But there was no such thing.

Coming soon... Why I did like Brutal Legend