Legendary

November 12,2008 - For every tame, vapid game, there are a dozen fantastic examples of just why our hobby is held so sacred. In playing Legendary, you’ll realize just how good other first-person shooters (FPS) are, and just how much we take for granted. We’ve become used to tight controls honed to perfection, sumptuous visuals and, admittedly, a smattering of clichés, but while Legendary achieves the latter, it fails to perfect the most rudimentary of genre mechanics. 

The screenshots tell a tale. This is a first-person shooter with guns and mystical creatures, but it’s a game with guns and mystical creatures done badly. Playing as Charles Deckard, you’ll trudge through a plodding plot simultaneously battling the broken controls and cursing the staged nature of the game. Monsters are onset by obvious trigger points, set-pieces are elaborate yet underwhelming and the action fails to excite, entice or endear.

Pandora’s Box is an old ploy. Here, it’s taken as literally as possible. Deckard, upon opening the sacred container, unleashes an array of demons. Snore. While clichés are difficult to avoid, good games overcome them. If the story is poor, the action is exciting. If the action is underwhelming, the characterization is strong. With Legendary though, the developer’s are expecting you to be excited by scurrying werewolves and swooping griffons. Yes, they’re not found in your average Call of Duty, but they’re not very enjoyable to fight either, and ultimately wind up as nuisances.

The level design itself is uninspired. You’re forced to adhere to the most rudimentary of gaming staples, unlocking doors in drab levels, while questioning your reasons for trudging forward. This is a linear game, but it also goes too far in this regard and resolutely pushes you down its path, shutting out any room for exploration. Then again, you probably wouldn’t want to explore anyway.

Granted, Legendary contains the elements of a passable FPS. It has guns and gore and plenty to shoot. It just isn’t done well, and you’re aware, all the way through, that games have been doing this sort of thing for years. Animus, for instance, smells strongly of BioShock and its plasmids, and while you can use Animus to regain health and blast enemies, it’s a derivative feature that fails to amount to much. Legendary is liable to slow down considerably Animus use, too and the game does a poor job of keeping the framerate halfway acceptable.

Even the Unreal 3 Engine has been misused. Legendary has a B-grade look to it that isn’t dreadful; all the same, you won’t be showing it off to friends and family alike. The Werewolves have been paid the most obvious attention and they animate impressively. Their penchant for scaling buildings is a delight to behold, in fact. The odd lighting effect is done well too, though the poor textures and unstable framerate have the last laugh.

The music itself is decent: it’s of standard rock lineage that is married to routine sound-effects. Do the sounds work? Yes. Are they alright? Of course. Do they slip up? Not as often as you’d expect. This doesn’t lift Legendary out of the mire though. Sound can often propel a game forward, but in Legendary’s case, it’s about the only selling point.

There’s a multiplayer component in there somewhere too. Still, the foibles of the single player game are all too evident here too. And with only four maps and one, lonely game-mode, anyone braving this (which is a slim figure, we assure you) will soon be lost.

All things told, the game reeks of derivation. It lacks a brilliant streak, and while the odd set-piece is mildly entertaining, we’ve come to expect more in 2008. Even the most hardened fan of mystical mythos should search for their fix elsewhere, and FPS aficionados should resist the urge of a rental. Legendary is a poor first-person shooter; one that doesn’t even deserve a joke at its title’s expense.

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