Legendary is a FPS (First Person Shooter) developed by Spark and published by Gamecock. This title is based on the Pandora's Box mythos which describes a box that was created by the Greek god Zeus for the created woman Pandora as a plague upon the earth. The game describes this box as not actually a Greek mythological object, but a real life tool that has been fought over throughout the course of history as it contains powers that can make kings or destroy civilizations.
The game enters with a secret order called the Black Order hiring your character, Charles Deckard to open the box known as Pandora's Box. Now knowing the legend behind Pandora's Box, something tells me no amount of money in the world would get me to open that box. Regardless, this guy apparently has some major debt to pay off because he actually opens the box. Enter crazy numbers of mythical creatures including werewolves, minotaurs, griffins, golems, a huge kraken (which was a boss fight) and these really annoying faeries.
Now, once Deckard opens the box, a magical signet is impaled into his hand allowing him to suck up a magical life energy from these creatures and using it for not a whole lot other than to heal himself and to power EMP and other similar devices.
The Bad:
The reason I picked this game up was that it was fairly cheap from a used game store, and I like mythical creatures and what better way to show my love of mythical creatures than to fire thousands of rounds of digital ammunition into them? So, I was very disappointed when I found out that much of the game was centered around fighting the Black Order and not fighting awesome critters. Not to say that you do not fight a bunch of mythical beasts, but much of the time it feels like werewolves are being thrown at you just so you have some way of recovering health, since this magical energy is generally not just laying around. There are moments where fighting the creatures is enjoyable, such as the first fight with the griffin and the first fight with the minotaur, however, many of these creature fights feel like you are just suppose to blast a couple hundred rounds of ammo in the creatures general direction until they die, while dodging like crazy in hopes of not being eaten. There really was no good strategy for fighting beyond that and as stated before, the signet isn't much good for fighting any of the really challenging creatures, other than the extra health bar it provides.
Some of the other downfalls of the game were related to actual game play mechanics. Jumping felt like an after thought. You jump too quick and the height is too short. It feels like they decided that they needed jumping for one or two levels based on their design and instead of making sure the rest of the levels couldn't be jump broken, they just decided to make the distance/height of the jump so small that it was impossible to jump except for the few exceptions that it is required.
Also, in some parts of the game, the models when hiding behind things, appear to be providing a clear line of sight on the enemy, however, when firing you still hit the object you are hiding behind. I am aware that this is a common issue in games that result from the model's collision model being less detailed than the in game rendered model for computational reasons, yet in this title it just felt like it was really an problem and at times a hinderance. In fact, sometimes it felt like I was standing next to a fairly primitively shaped object and would still have the problem of firing around the object. The most amusing thing is that the AI apparently had trouble with this too, as it is notoriously bad at throwing grenades and would end up killing itself in the process. This made me laugh more times than I can count.
Other minor things included: door sizes being too small in areas, making it frustratingly difficult to traverse in some locations. Also, some levels were laid out very challenging, with check points too far apart in my opinion. I hate having to spend 15 minutes to get to right before the next check point, only to have 4-6 werewolves back me in a corner where the controls start acting up making it so I can not move. Not to say that I do not like challenging games, but there were at least 3-4 spots in this game where I just felt ripped off by the game as if it were denying me my justly deserved checkpoint.
The Good:
Some positives of the game; I thought the voice acting was decent... not the best I've ever heard, but no Resident Evil 1 for the Playstation by any means. Also, cut scenes, although couldn't be skipped, were entertaining and the between chapter art work was fairly nice. All hand painted and well narrated. There was also one part of the first "chapter" that I really liked, where the faeries move around an EMP device that you are suppose to charge. I thought that part was well executed and I give that script writer props and I hope he got a raise for that.
I also really enjoyed the ending.
***SPOILER ALERT***
Not for its cheesy way it kills the bad guy, but because of the way that it didn't meet my expectations of being a Bioshock rip-off. I was totally expecting the game to take the overly used twist of "The guys you are working for are really the bad guys and they have just been playing you this whole time you poor defenseless player! Oh wait, your not defenseless, lets go kick their ass!". No, it didn't take that twist (well not entirely), instead Deckard becomes friends with the animals after busting out of the Councils jail where he is imprisoned for study of his signet after destroying the original box. However, none of this part is playable, instead they just choose to wrap up the story nicely in cinematic form. I do give them credit for this as it is not done as often as was my expected ending to a good vs. evil vs. monsters game ending is.
***END SPOILER ALERT***
Overall, I enjoyed playing the game, it was a nice 3 day experience for me. It doesn't win any awards in my book, and the game play did feel a little lacking. I would rather have seen them rip-off Bioshock and provide some sort of mini game while hacking door locks instead of just having me wait 20 seconds in a room with no dangers, just cause they want to add some extra button press usage. However, story line was decent, acting wasn't "terrible" and the art and animation of the creatures (especially the Griffins) were well done. I would say that I would give this game a 55 out of 100, or about 5 out of 10 stars, or an C to a C+, depending on your scale. Either way, I would recommend this game if you're bored, have nothing else that you really want to play, or do not have much money in these hard economic times to buy a good game, but still want to play video games instead of finding a real job. (Thats right you heard me you bum, get off my couch and get a real job!)
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