Legendary – PS3 – Review

There are plenty of games out there
that try to tackle the “end of the world” scenario. Some take the avenue of
alien invasion, some think that the zombie apocalypse will fall upon mankind,
and some think that man will destroy itself in world war … the point being that
there are plenty of options out there to exercise your need to be a video-game Nostradamus. Legendary, is another attempt to harness that need to know how the
world will end, and there are some really nice parts of this game; but, overall,
this game just wasn’t fleshed out enough to me anything close to legendary in
status.

Before the release of this game,
there was a flood of behind-the-scenes footage released to the PlayStation
Network that looked really promising. Developers talking about the group thought
process of the AI, the depth in level design and character development; and
after watching the videos, I couldn’t help but be excited about playing this
title.

The concept has great potential. You play an art thief, Charles Deckard, who is contracted by a man named LeFey
to steal a piece of art that turns out to be the fabled Pandora’s Box. Once you
touch the box, you open it and become inextricably connected to the box itself
and the creatures that you have unwittingly unleashed upon New York City and the
world! You are immediately thrust into the middle of a struggle for control of
the box between the LeFey group, the Black Order, and the Council of 98. Two
groups with differing opinions on how to control the box and its contents of
destruction. Deckard fights his way through broken up streets, flooded subway
systems, destroyed buildings, fending off mythical beasts like werewolves,
griffons, minotaurs, and a few others on his way to finding out what is going on
with Pandora’s Box.

Sounds great, right? Definitely
different than most other first-person shooters which seem to be set in war
eras. This game was set in well known cities such as New York and London, and
there is a myriad of mythical beasts out there to place into the protagonists
way. So, where did this title go wrong, and what did it get right?

The gameplay is like many other
shooters, left stick for movement, right stick for camera movement, triggers to
shoot. Deckard does have some connection to Pandora’s Box after touching it and
you can collect Animus Vitae energy that is left behind after defeating the
various creatures unleashed upon the world. The animus power is absorbed into a
glyph in your left hand and can be focused to regain health or released upon the
creatures around using the triangle button. There is a good selection of
weapons to use throughout the levels, and the power of the weapons increases the
further into the story you are. The weapons range from a fire axe to mini
missile launchers and there is always plenty of ammo around to keep you stocked
up. Mostly the gameplay is just blast your way from checkpoint to checkpoint
between cut scenes, there are some platforming elements to levels and some puzzle
pieces to getting through certain areas, however, it’s mostly linear design.

The sound and graphics in Legendary
are the successful pieces to this puzzle. The soundtrack is kind of a blend of
heavy metal guitar and epic melodies giving a good feel to the scope of the
game. When you are in boss battles, or major sections of story, the music
compliments the style and mood of the game very well. Sometimes in the game
though, the music telegraphs if something big is about to happen when it goes
from silence in a tunnel and then you hear the music fade up it is easy to know
when to be very ready for action if you listen carefully.

The graphics look really good on the
PS3. You can absolutely tell that the team at Spark Unlimited really wanted to
make the pieces of this game fit the epic scale they were aiming for. The
creatures that you encounter are really great looking, for werewolves that show
damage to a giant building-sized golem that terrorizes Times Square, the
creatures look really good. The problem is, there isn’t enough variety. Werewolves are in a few different levels and some of the creatures are merely
background and don’t take any damage if you shoot them with an assault rifle. When I begin to think of unleashing all the bad in the world, I think that more
than nine different creatures will be unleashed. I understand that development on
more types of enemies becomes problematic and costly; however, if you are
shooting for “legendary” scale to the game, you have to throw in everything and
the kitchen sink. There are also easy paths to find your way around some beasts
like the Enchidna Tentacles. Finding the patterns and running through sections
faster will allow the player to avoid some enemies.

The design on the humans though
wasn’t great. With other titles out there that are setting the bar so high in
games with human NPCs, it’s hard to say anything except the human design was
average. Some humans are merely background and not meant to be interacted with
in any capacity other than to just look at them bleed out in a corner, or watch
them get dragged into a dark room by some unseen terror … you just can’t help
everyone I suppose. Even the characters like Vivian or the soldiers from the
Council or the Order don’t move very fluidly. There are just some glaring
differences between the creature design, which looks like it got a lot of
attention, and the human design, which seems a little like an afterthought. The
voice acting was good though, above average even.

The biggest issue that I had with
this title was disappointment. After watching all the behind-the-scenes videos about the development, I was really excited for the scope of a game that
talks about unleashing all the hellacious beasts from mythology into the reality
of New York and London. The problem was delivery, and the specific lack thereof. I really wanted more enemies, a larger variety mythology and a better
development in level design. Most levels are very linear and flat in design. Some of the underground areas look the same, turn after turn you enter rooms
that look so similar you get confused to where you are. The fact that some of
the griffon’s in the early levels are just there for design and don’t react to
bullets being fired at them and there isn’t even opportunities to just keep them
away from civilians in the street. They look good, but are not interactive.

Beyond this though, my biggest issue
with Legendary are load times and save points. When you first start up
Legendary into the PS3, you are greeted with a message that there will be 4GB of
information put onto your hard disk and you get to sit and wait for 15 minutes
while that occurs. Even with the 4GB of hard disk space taken up, there are
still a lot of loads in this game, there are long loads between level changes,
in levels between areas, before boss fights and sometimes for no real apparent
reason. And they’re not short loads, I timed one and it was two minutes. I
would think that after dumping 4 gigs of information onto my hard drive, there
might be pre-loaded stages at least. The save points also come very far in
between, so you’ve battled your way through tunnels of run-down subways only to
be struck by a runaway subway car that just plowed through some flaming wreckage
and now you have to start the whole level over again. I get it, that there
should be some difficulty in levels, but there are major achievements that you
pass that don’t “auto-save” for you and since there aren’t save points, you out
of luck.

Ultimately, despite the strong
points in this game like the graphics, there are just too many short-fallings to
keep the gamer wanting more. Finishing the story becomes uninteresting and the gameplay just doesn’t do enough to separate this title from some of the other
FPS titles out there that really are taking this genre to the next
level. Maybe worth the rent, but not much more.

Gameplay: 4.8
Legendary plays like many other shooters in the mechanics, but the aim can
get touchy and switching between weapon and anima blasts can become
frustratingly long and cost you in multi-enemy battles. There are also long
load times (even though there’s a 10-minute install upon first putting the disc
in), and the level design can seem repetitive and bland when you think about
being set in such a distinct locales like New York City and London. Creature and
AI intelligence are good – some creatures really behave differently in pack
situations. But, in several levels where you fight alongside other soldiers,
you find that they are merely fodder for creature decapitations and such. Once
played, there is little desire to play this again because the gameplay does
nothing to separate this game from the competition.

Graphics: 7.0
The graphics on this game are nice to look at. You can tell the designers
spent time with all the creatures that they decided to unleash from Pandora’s
Box. There are some amazing visuals of the golem walking through the streets
and some good cut scenes of creature violence and gore to go along with the
story as well. There are, however, some flaws in there too: load times for
levels that look exactly like the last one, slow-down when you are in a dense
area with many enemies and animas to collect. And, although the creatures look
great and move well, the humans don’t … you can tell when you play this where
the designer’s focus was.

Sound: 6.5
The soundtrack is a heavy metal fan-fest, with heavy guitar riffs and lots of
driving beats. Although this adds a certain tension to the “end of the world”
scenario that you are playing through, there is definitely times where music is
cued to rise in intensity before a boss battle or when you cross large
checkpoints and if you are listening closely, you’ll know something big is going
on or about to happen. The foley sounds of destruction and gore are really well
done though and are enough to make you cringe at times. Decent voice acting as
well.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 4.5
This is the one area that I was most disappointed. This is a great concept for
a FPS during a time when the primary type of FPS are world war based. This is a
fictional event, set in a really recognizable city, what could go wrong? Not
being fleshed out fully. The creature designs were good, but there wasn’t
enough variety … The level detail was good, but design was too repetitive and
got boring … and the story just wasn’t brought to life by the writing or the
level challenges enough.

Multiplayer: 5.0
Standard online multiplayer here … nothing fancy.

Overall: 5.6
I was severely disappointed with this title. Watching all the
behind-the-scenes footage supplied on the PlayStation Network before playing
this game, Legendary looked like it had real promise. However, there just isn’t
enough variety in gameplay to keep a player coming back for more. The concept
is great, just not fully realized causing lackluster gameplay.