Let’s face it, when you name your game “Legendary,” you’re basically asking for someone to give you shit. This is especially true when you make this game a first-person shooter, a genre so crowded that you need to do something incredibly special to stand out. Does Legendary live up to its name, or is it just an epic (perhaps even legendary) failure?

A talented young thief named Deckard has been hired to break into a museum and steal the contents of an ancient box. What he doesn’t know is that the job is actually a trap. This box is the mythological Pandora’s Box, and opening it unleashes a horde on monsters upon the world. You see, the title of Legendary isn’t actually a case of overconfident developer syndrome; it’s more of a reference to these creatures. Having played right into Le Fay’s hands, Deckard must team up with the enigmatic Council of 98 to prevent these monsters from destroying civilization as we know it.

Honestly, the story is pretty much the least compelling reason to play through the game. What it all boils down to is an excuse to shoot werewolves instead of aliens, Nazis, or Alien Nazis. The characters are all as generic as they come. Derrick is the typical disgruntled thief with a heart of gold. Le Fay, the grand villain, never once betrays a compelling motivation for his evil. He just wants a bunch of monsters, and he has some sort of evil energy weapon. Lexington, the commander of the Council, is the typical army guy. He’s angry, likes to shoot things, and thinks that you’re shit. Every single character is an FPS cardboard cutout. We never get to know them, and we are given no reason to care about them.

The main plotline isn’t any better. Sure, shooters don’t tend to have the best storylines, but the developers could at least try. Really, the main problem lies in how they present the storyline. A whole lot happens between each level, but you are only told about these events in the broadest strokes. The cutscenes, while beautifully handdrawn, are nothing more than bulleted lists of what happens between the playable shooting sprees. It would be all right if nothing really happened, but there are a couple of pretty dramatic plot shifts that you just aren’t completely filled in on. I might have actually cared about the fact that you suddenly shift from New York to London midway through the game if I was given more than a single sentence about how we found a lab there. It honestly got pretty hilarious in the end. Spoiler alert: Legendary ends on a cliffhanger. Whatever, it happens all the time. However, the game then shifts into a cutscene where they basically gloss over the cliffhanger that you just watched. Instead, they jump forward a few months and tell you what will happen later. What the hell, guys?

All right, so the storytelling has problems. Unfortunately, the gameplay isn’t much better. Legendary starts out — and mostly remains — competent. The problem isn’t that it’s bad, it’s just generic. The controls are FPS 101. If you’ve played any console shooter during the past six or seven years, you’ll be right at home. Of course, these games don’t set themselves apart through controls, they do it through some special gameplay mechanic. Don’t set your expectations too high in this department.

The Animus powers that you gain from Pandora’s Box are the only attempt that the development team made to distinguish their game. When he opened the box, Derrick’s hand was branded with an energy battery of sorts. Whenever you kill monsters, you can absorb their “Animus” into your brand. This energy can be used to either heal your wounds (taking the place of medpacks) or shoot a wave of energy to stun an enemy. Admittedly, the Animus is kind of a cool addition, but these powers are only useful because they force you to use it. There are no other healing mechanisms, and some enemies can only be harmed if you shock them. New mechanics are only interesting if they are new, not if they are skins for standard FPS mechanics. During later levels, you can use this energy to power a machine that temporarily makes monsters help you against Le Fay’s soldiers. In theory, this could be an awesome mechanic, and it would have been if there were any point to it. These devices always seem to be placed about thirty feet after they would have been useful. The only time where it’s actually helpful is when two minotaurs drop into a room filled with soldiers, and you still have to kill the monsters afterwards!

Before Legendary was released, there was a ton of hype for its monster AI. After playing the game, I just don’t see it. Supposedly, you can turn werewolves against each other, making your life easier. There wasn’t a single moment in the game where I saw an opportunity to do this. Admittedly, I was generally too busy keeping these werewolves from eating my face. I only saw the minimal shooter tactics in monsters. Werewolves will occasionally try to dodge you or cover their face, but they mostly just keep trying to claw you. Soldiers might run behind cover, but they would often just keep standing there. Maybe I missed something, but I never saw any real intelligence in the game’s enemies.

Graphically, Legendary is a pretty mixed bag. Some of the lighting and particle effects are spectacular. The glowing fields of energy and explosions look fantastic, and little things like the light streaming through a broken window look great. The rest of the game, however, looks like it came from the original Xbox. Some of the monster designs are really good. The glowing fire drakes show off the pretty fire effects, and the gryphons are pretty fearsome looking. The nari (demon fairies) are creepy as hell. One of the coolest monsters is the giant golem that stomps around Times Square. As it strolls around, it absorbs whatever scrap metal it comes into contact with. A giant beast made out of girders and cars surrounded by a field of energy looks just as awesome as it sounds. On the other hand, human characters look awful. They have this layer of gloss that just ends up making them look like wax figurines. I’m pretty sure that Vivian’s hair is actually a solid piece of plastic. The werewolves have the same plastic problem that the human models have — they should look a little fuzzy, but instead, they look like they bathed in KY Jelly.

There are so many shooters out there that ninety percent of them just get ignored. You need something special to rise above the muck. Gears of War, Halo, and Half Life all found that something, but Legendary is content to hover around the mediocre mark. It’s a shame, really. I thought that the premise was awesome. I had these grand images in my mind of God of War with guns in modern-day New York. It would have been, well, legendary. In the end, however, there just isn’t any reason to recommend Legendary. Go play some more Gears of War 2, you’ll thank me for saving you some cash.

Positive: Interesting premise, cool monsters, pretty lighting effects.
Negative: Bad storytelling, generic gameplay, dumb AI, ugly character models.

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