Oct. NPD: Brutal Legend sold 216k; DJ Hero sold 123k

The Hell With Modern Ware Fare and The Hell With Kotick Too !

When I bought this game, I was really surprised that it turned out to be sort of a RTS like game. I wish they had clarified the genre/gameplay mechanics a little bit since I don't care for RTSs at all... even the demo (which, really is what sold me on the game) didn't make this clear in fact it made it much less obvious (to me anyway), I was thinking it was going to be a third person brawler with adventure/RPG elements. The section covered by the demo is in some ways one of the best parts of the game. I wish the whole thing went much more like that.

I love Metal and enjoy Jack Black's contribution to the game, so I'll play it some more but I also got Uncharted 2 and MW2 within the same one month timeframe, so needless to say, it's probably going to sit on a shelf for half a year. So, I wish I had let it sit on the shelf at Gamestop and saved my self $30 when it cam time to actually buy it. ;)

To all you Schafer fans: I'd say this combining multiple types of gameplay and not being really great at any of them *is* a design fault, I don't think it had anything to do with the studio or his team technically. A lot of the reviewers were saying in the pre-release hype that fthat with Brutal Legend we were going to get a proper marketing and budget push so finally we'd get to experience all TS's design brilliance properly. Needless to say, that theory didn't pan out. The game was good but not great.

Schafer seems to be good at coming up with humorous, original, and entertaining concepts but not really getting the execution down well enough in terms of actual gameplay design. I know critics love him (probably because of his originality) but, IMHO. everything he's worked on outside of Lucas has fit this description. Next time, I see his name on a product, it is going to be a wait and see situation for me, even if I do have a playable demo.

When I went to Hot Topic the other day I didn't see one copy of Brutal Legend. That's a good place to market it if you ask me. Although it might be too late since Twilight is about to take over the store again.

DJ Hero wasn't a surprise, however. That one wasnt going to have much momentum. I am more interested in Tony Hawk Ride in next month's NPD.

Schafer's last game, Psychonauts, only sold about 400K over the first two years of its life. Brutal Legend coming out with 217K in it's fist few weeks (and with the holiday season in swing) seems like quite the improvement and could at least make it a profitable game.

In five days they managed 123k copies at a stupid high $120 price point on what is (to a lot of people) a new IP, and what is definitely a new game with some new gameplay to go with it. Honestly, I don't think that's all that bad. Drop that to $100 early next year and I'll buy it without question.