Developer: Spark Unlimited
Publisher: SouthPeak Games
Rrp: £3.99
Released: 1st December 2008
Available on Steam
Legendary is one of those games which has a great idea for a premise but fails to do much with it. I mean it’s hard not to like the actual idea behind it, creatures of myth reappear one day and modern man must learn to adapt and survive. The movie Reign of Fire had a similar concept except in that it was dragons rather than creatures from mythology. And like Reign of Fire this game just doesn’t live up to the idea, which is a shame because if the right team got hold of this they could do great things.
Anyway, Legendary is a FPS and you play as Deckard, and he is a thief. He’s hired to open Pandora’s box and steal what’s inside. Of course doing so does not go according to plan and opening Pandora’s box releases creatures from mythology into the modern world in a violent fashion. As I’m sure you can imagine griffons and various other creatures of myth suddenly appearing in New York causes large amounts of rather bloody chaos.
In the first stages of the game you develop something called a signet, with this you can absorb an enemies life force (animus vitae) once their dead to regenerate your health or use it to knock them back.
You carry two weapons at a time, a fire axe and grenades/Molotov cocktails, you can swap out the weapon your carrying for another by holding down the ‘interact’ button.
While on the subject of weapons I found that most of them felt like they lacked punch, perhaps that was a conscious decision by the designers to show how ineffective they are against such creatures, but I highly doubt that. That being said there aren’t many games where you can use a rocket launcher on a griffon, so kudos for being unique.
It’s clear that this game was developed with consoles in mind, that’s no bad thing in a lot of games because the ports have been well done but sadly this one hasn’t. The controls are slow to respond and generally feel, what I can only describe as, loose. For example switching weapons on the mouse wheel should in theory be quicker than reaching for a button on the keyboard. But when you switch from one weapon to another there’s a slight pause between them, a pause that doesn’t exist if you use the keyboard. Another example is the inability to manually save, the game operates on a checkpoint system and while those are plentiful I’d rather like to be able to have a basic save function.
It has some nice touches though, like the pad you have that updates as you progress, giving information on characters, equipment and creatures.the thing that makes this good is that it doesn’t just give a flavour text to the creatures, it will update to take note of weaknesses and strengths. There are also collectibles in the form of pda’s that give a little background to the world around you, though I found those felt a bit half-hearted.
Sadly for all its uniqueness this game is sorely lacking in other areas. Levels are extremely linear and invisible walls are everywhere. There were plenty of times I was trying to get to an area that looked like it was accessible only to be confronted by an inexplicable inability to walk there or jump up a small step. Graphical inconsistencies are also abound, from occasional grates that you can’t fire through but enemies can, to enemies clipping through scenery. This is particularly annoying when fighting the werewolves, they can only be truly killed by decapitation. If the head portion happens to get caught in the scenery then your just going to have to wait for it to resurrect itself to kill it again.
Basically, I’m saying only get this game if you can find it for less and £1. The concept is great but the execution leaves much to be desired. Hopefully if you do buy this game you won’t run across the bug that made it impossible for me to complete it. On the penultimate level I kept falling through the floor of a a elevator that you HAVE to go in.
