There are several things a person should not do. Some of these things are mate with a close sibling, snort Cocaine cut with rat poison and play a game called Legendary. That’s because doing acts such as these come with serious repercussions. These consequences would be conceiving some sort of deformed mutant baby, brain damage or death.



Story:

Legendary has you playing the role of some thief hired to steal Pandora’s Box. The heist goes wrong fast and you end up unleashing mythological beasts upon the world. The premise is so bad that it sounds like it could be the premise of the next Uwe Boll movie. You don’t care about the characters; you don’t care about the story and as soon as it begins you wish that it would end.
Rating: 2.0


Gameplay:

After Turning Point Fall of Liberty, which could best be described as a pile of demon poop, the very talented (wink wink) developers at Spark Unlimited decide to drop this bomb in out laps. Everything that could be done wrong with a first person shooter has been done wrong here. The aiming is sluggish and the hit detection of the enemies is piss poor. The experience of aiming at an enemy and emptying an entire clip into him only to have him get out of cover and keep on shooting at him is disheartening. I don’t know if it’s because the guns are inaccurate or the fact that precision aiming is a lot easier said then done or if it’s because when you move and shoot at the same time you will not hit the target most of the time. But this isn’t the only aspect of the gameplay.

Because of the botched heist the Pandora’s Box stabs you in the hand with some kind of spike and leaves some kind of stupid Satanic tattoo on your hand. This allows you to absorb the essence of the mythological creatures. This essence allows you to regain health and used for some special attacks. Because of this there are no health packs. While I don’t mind the omission of a regenerative health bar, I hate that what you use is tied to magic you’re never going to use and your acquisition of this is tied to enemy encounters.

Levels are also rather linear as well. In fact I haven’t come across levels this linear and tiny since I played Kingdom Under Fire: The Circle of Doom. When something important like a building for example goes down it will fall in just a way for the rubble to come down and restrict your movement to a constricted path. On top of this there are a lot of events that are scripted. As you’re running across the street in the opening level you’ll see a lot of Griffins flying around and eating hapless pedestrians. You think to yourself, “maybe I can save someone by killing this Griffin.” So you take your mighty axe and thrust it into the Griffin only to find that your axe has no effect on it. It doesn’t even hit it, the Griffin doesn’t respond to it either. All it does is sit there, eat the person and then fly away.



Another thing gone horribly awry is platforming. Your character behaves like somebody that flunked out of Phys Ed. He can’t even hop over an ant and to add further insult to his lethargic physicality he can’ even throw a grenade no more than two feet in front of him. There are the obligatory jumping puzzles. One such puzzle has you in a warehouse and you have to get a higher elevation. You don’t know where to go or how to get there, but eventually you realize that you have to shoot down an elevator. Sadly as your there trying to figure it out you’re attacked by infinitely re-spawning werewolves. While on the topic of these werewolves; they look terrible. On top of that they’re bullet sponges, and can only be killed after downing them and/or decapitating them. The A.I. tends to just stand there sometimes while you shoot them. If you do down them it takes several whacks to the head from your axe at a precise spot to decapitate them.

After about two hours (which is anymore then any sane individual should tolerate) you turn it off. After you do that you seek psychological counseling and do your best to wipe the experience from your memory. While you are presented with an interesting premise that has you shooting werewolves and Griffins and other crap instead of aliens, you quickly realize that Legendary is a steaming pile of garbage of epic proportions.
Rating: 1.0


Graphics:

Upon start up you're greeted with the Unreal Engine logo, which gives you a false sense of visual hope. You think to yourself “this game should look kick ass!” This is a sentiment that quickly fades. The shadows are terrible and boxy, your character model is some loser in a bad used car salesman suit and the textures at times are of PS1 quality, especially when you look at the ground. This is pretty much the first person shooter equivalent of Vampire Rain. The animation on the creatures is stiff and comical. The only remotely interesting thing I saw was when the Golem cobbled itself together out of buildings and cars like some sort of urban Voltron.
Rating: 2.0

Sound:

I guess I should keep this as brief as possible. The voice-overs are terrible your weapons, especially the submachine gun sounds like a semi-automatic super soaker and the music is terrible. It’s like they took the worst Stabbing Westward or Gravity Kills tracks (not insulting either group), mixed them turned off the bass and treble, and then gave them the audio fidelity of a worn out record and then proceeded to play it on a turn of the century Victrola.
Rating: 1.0


Replay:

Nonexistent. Sure there’s multiplayer, but no one in their right mind would dare touch it. Besides other people actually have to own the game for it to serve its purpose anyhow.
Rating: 0

Overall:

The only way to enjoy Legendary is to gather up Tom Servo, Crowe T. Robot and Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fame and have them crack jokes as you play it.
Rating: 1.5