In recent years, Electronic Arts have consistently published high-quality and well-designed games that have crossed genres and broken boundaries because of their accessibility. Their bread-and-butter staple series of franchise sports games set the bar early for the way they build intuitive interfaces for the dedicated followers who keep them in business.

Take their Black Box expansion acquisition of the "Skate" engine and how they combined innovative analog controls with intuitive, realistic skateboarding--something that no other game in history has been able to accomplish before. Read more about Brutal legend below.

Their newest publishing collaboration is with former LucasArts developer Tim Schafer's new company Double Fine who started their console game catalog with "Psychonauts" a few years ago and is mostly known for their web content. This surprising teamwork has yielded their salivating public with Brutal Legend, an action-RPG with a heavy metal soundtrack--and the attitude to match.

Fusing heavy metal music (and culture) and the speed of its blazing guitar solos, with hot-rod driving elements, and the fantastical tale of a disenchanted roadie who wakes in a dream world of bones of dust (and metal--heavy metal that is), this fledgling gaming company is changing the way we look at games.

Littered with classic rock humor and intense action, not to mention a gorgeous spectrum of color, Brutal Legend is more than just another hack'n'slash, world-sprawling RPG.

It opens with Eddie Riggs, career roadie, backstage at his latest show--a classic metal extravaganza featuring a tween-demographic-based metal-rap-pop-emo group--disappointed at the obvious state of modern music. His misguided young performers cause the monstrous stage to collapse and Eddie is buried under the rubble.

He wakes to find himself in a strange, mystical land and must quickly find a weapon to battle some skeletal bad guys. After slashing them with a huge axe, he also attacks with his stringed Axe, "Clementine"--in all her distortion pedaled glory.

If you are familiar with Double Fine's action comics or free online games, this sense of humor shouldn't surprise you. Of course, casting Jack Black to deliver your epic lines is pretty genius too. Half of the dynamic musical comedy duo, Tenacious D, Black is well known for his quirky, high-energy personae, which translates fluidly into the ogre-sized roadie who must save the land from evil. It is a deep, introspective examination of a world without 'Rock', and what one lowly roadie must do to restore it, and ultimately peace in all the land.