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"[GAME] Legendary"

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Mon 28/06/10 at 13:56
Regular
"@optometrytweet"
Posts: 4,686
Legendary Review
As reviewed on the Xbox 360


Legendary, a game that doesn’t quite live up to its name. It must have only been a week since I was talking to my fellow reviewers here on freeola that people are going to lose faith in my reviews as all I seem to do is score high and recommend you to buy it. Well, I must have tempted fate as I have certainly picked up a bit of a stinker. Let me explain…

Legendary is a first person shooter, an already oversaturated market of poor rip-offs of other games and ideas. This one sadly is no different, bar the occasional use of mythical power that your character, Charles Deckard, seems to have control over. It is set between New York and London and the opening level sees your protagonist sneaking around a museum and opening Pandora’s Box. Upon doing so, this opens a whole can of worms (only these worms resemble rabid werewolves, huge griffins and malicious Nari). From there on in, the game sets out so your character can right his wrongs and remove the plethora of monsters from the streets.

Another event that happens as the box opens is that Deckard gets branded with a signet. This enables him to draw in the life-force of downed monsters, in the effect that it can heal any damaged health. It also allows him to produce a type of psychic pulse that can assist take on the many enemies. This sounds like a cool feature, but in reality it is really tricky to use and most of time hinders your progress instead of helping it!

The graphics, although now I know not to assume too much importance to them after Earth Defence Force 2017, are mediocre at best. With the likes of Halo 3, Modern Warfare and Red Dead Redemption setting the baseline for modern day shooters, Legendary falls very short of the mark. The special effects are kind of what you would expect from a game of this genre, but as it appears that Legendary is trying to be a blockbuster, it certainly fails to deliver that feel.

Similarly, the audio of the game is below par. Most weapons (although a varied selection) all sound similar and the age-old problem of footsteps sounding like someone knocking on a block of wood. Even the beasts all make similar sounds! I think the only good thing about the audio is the musical soundtrack, which does seem to capture the atmosphere the game is trying to create perfectly. Just don't get me started on the voice acting!

Although graphics and audio are nice touches to games, they are nowhere near as important as the general gameplay and the controls. The controls, following the examples set by the graphics and audio, is shocking! Honestly! First person shooters are a genre that require you to have silky-smooth control over your character so that you can flex your well-honed shooting reflex in order to be able to complete the game. I really felt that somebody had dropped my controller in honey before I started playing, as Deckard was so slow to respond! Likewise when firing the weapons, you lose control due to the weapon's recoil and because the controls are so sluggish, you cannot easily re-aim to shoot your target. Incredibly annoying.

I guess that fact that men cannot multi-task comes into play here as well. When using the mythical power bestowed to him, he cannot shoot (or do anything for that matter). The power takes about a second to initiate, which quite often is a second too long when facing hordes or ever-respawning opponents (and the fact you must reinitiate each time you are interrupted by an attack). Hopefully this makes sense of the statement I made earlier where this feature was more of a hindrance and a help!

My final comments on controls and movement is the way Deckard moves. Imagine if you will the speed your Modern Warfare 2 character moves when crouched. Cut this speed in half. This is the speed Deckard chooses to run at. Despite having rabid werewolves snapping at his rear end, it seems to make more sense to just amble from point A to destination B rather than moving at a speed more suitable for saving your life. There is of course the "insert rocket into bottom" button (otherwise known as sprint), where you will momentarily move as though you were breaking the land speed record on foot. This takes the problem too far the other way as you end up overshooting your platforms and plummeting to an untimely death. Furthermore, if you want to ascend anywhere, you had better counted on there being a wheelchair ramp. If there is a step of more than a few millimetres then Deckard will act as though someone has placed the Great Wall of China between him and the objective. Very disappointing!

Don't get me wrong, the game does have a few redeeming features. It manages to display your target destination well, so there aren't any "Where do I have to go?" moments. Also the in-game message updating system is good - with Deckard accessing his PDA with lots of different bits of advice. I also liked the pages in the PDA about the mythical beasts in the game as they have been written from a plausible scientific explanation (for example fire breathing creatures having highly exothermic metabolic pathways, combined with the flammable gases from their digestive systems, meaning every belch literally was a breath of fire).

I also liked the achievement distribution. There were set things to do in the levels (many were in fact unmissable) such as bypass the first security locked door or get stood on by a golem, along with the usual kill-based achievements and level/game complete achievements. What did confuse me was the way it had the level complete achievements as secret, but the little side-achievements on display. Surely it should have been the other way around as 99% of the time you expect a level complete bonus. The little ones as described would have been much more fun stumbling across than aiming for. Either way, they are quite easy to go for and who is going to complain about any increase in GamerScore?

The game does indeed feature a multiplayer option. However, the single player mode did nothing to wow me enough to take it online. My thought would be that the servers must be pretty dead on a game that never really took off and if I did manage ag game, the sluggish controls would annoy me into a state where I may have received a lot of negative rep! Therefore, as I have not played the multiplayer, I deem it unfair to pass my official comment upon it.

Overall, Legendary is one of those games that looked promising on first announcement, but in the end didn't deliver. I suppose it is an average first person shooter for those who just want something to play, but in all fairness there are many other games out there in th budget-end of the store that will provide many more hours of fun and I also sense they will do your blood-pressure much better too! A rent at the very most...but it's not even worth taking out of the box...

36%
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
Mon 28/06/10 at 13:56
Regular
"@optometrytweet"
Posts: 4,686
Legendary Review
As reviewed on the Xbox 360


Legendary, a game that doesn’t quite live up to its name. It must have only been a week since I was talking to my fellow reviewers here on freeola that people are going to lose faith in my reviews as all I seem to do is score high and recommend you to buy it. Well, I must have tempted fate as I have certainly picked up a bit of a stinker. Let me explain…

Legendary is a first person shooter, an already oversaturated market of poor rip-offs of other games and ideas. This one sadly is no different, bar the occasional use of mythical power that your character, Charles Deckard, seems to have control over. It is set between New York and London and the opening level sees your protagonist sneaking around a museum and opening Pandora’s Box. Upon doing so, this opens a whole can of worms (only these worms resemble rabid werewolves, huge griffins and malicious Nari). From there on in, the game sets out so your character can right his wrongs and remove the plethora of monsters from the streets.

Another event that happens as the box opens is that Deckard gets branded with a signet. This enables him to draw in the life-force of downed monsters, in the effect that it can heal any damaged health. It also allows him to produce a type of psychic pulse that can assist take on the many enemies. This sounds like a cool feature, but in reality it is really tricky to use and most of time hinders your progress instead of helping it!

The graphics, although now I know not to assume too much importance to them after Earth Defence Force 2017, are mediocre at best. With the likes of Halo 3, Modern Warfare and Red Dead Redemption setting the baseline for modern day shooters, Legendary falls very short of the mark. The special effects are kind of what you would expect from a game of this genre, but as it appears that Legendary is trying to be a blockbuster, it certainly fails to deliver that feel.

Similarly, the audio of the game is below par. Most weapons (although a varied selection) all sound similar and the age-old problem of footsteps sounding like someone knocking on a block of wood. Even the beasts all make similar sounds! I think the only good thing about the audio is the musical soundtrack, which does seem to capture the atmosphere the game is trying to create perfectly. Just don't get me started on the voice acting!

Although graphics and audio are nice touches to games, they are nowhere near as important as the general gameplay and the controls. The controls, following the examples set by the graphics and audio, is shocking! Honestly! First person shooters are a genre that require you to have silky-smooth control over your character so that you can flex your well-honed shooting reflex in order to be able to complete the game. I really felt that somebody had dropped my controller in honey before I started playing, as Deckard was so slow to respond! Likewise when firing the weapons, you lose control due to the weapon's recoil and because the controls are so sluggish, you cannot easily re-aim to shoot your target. Incredibly annoying.

I guess that fact that men cannot multi-task comes into play here as well. When using the mythical power bestowed to him, he cannot shoot (or do anything for that matter). The power takes about a second to initiate, which quite often is a second too long when facing hordes or ever-respawning opponents (and the fact you must reinitiate each time you are interrupted by an attack). Hopefully this makes sense of the statement I made earlier where this feature was more of a hindrance and a help!

My final comments on controls and movement is the way Deckard moves. Imagine if you will the speed your Modern Warfare 2 character moves when crouched. Cut this speed in half. This is the speed Deckard chooses to run at. Despite having rabid werewolves snapping at his rear end, it seems to make more sense to just amble from point A to destination B rather than moving at a speed more suitable for saving your life. There is of course the "insert rocket into bottom" button (otherwise known as sprint), where you will momentarily move as though you were breaking the land speed record on foot. This takes the problem too far the other way as you end up overshooting your platforms and plummeting to an untimely death. Furthermore, if you want to ascend anywhere, you had better counted on there being a wheelchair ramp. If there is a step of more than a few millimetres then Deckard will act as though someone has placed the Great Wall of China between him and the objective. Very disappointing!

Don't get me wrong, the game does have a few redeeming features. It manages to display your target destination well, so there aren't any "Where do I have to go?" moments. Also the in-game message updating system is good - with Deckard accessing his PDA with lots of different bits of advice. I also liked the pages in the PDA about the mythical beasts in the game as they have been written from a plausible scientific explanation (for example fire breathing creatures having highly exothermic metabolic pathways, combined with the flammable gases from their digestive systems, meaning every belch literally was a breath of fire).

I also liked the achievement distribution. There were set things to do in the levels (many were in fact unmissable) such as bypass the first security locked door or get stood on by a golem, along with the usual kill-based achievements and level/game complete achievements. What did confuse me was the way it had the level complete achievements as secret, but the little side-achievements on display. Surely it should have been the other way around as 99% of the time you expect a level complete bonus. The little ones as described would have been much more fun stumbling across than aiming for. Either way, they are quite easy to go for and who is going to complain about any increase in GamerScore?

The game does indeed feature a multiplayer option. However, the single player mode did nothing to wow me enough to take it online. My thought would be that the servers must be pretty dead on a game that never really took off and if I did manage ag game, the sluggish controls would annoy me into a state where I may have received a lot of negative rep! Therefore, as I have not played the multiplayer, I deem it unfair to pass my official comment upon it.

Overall, Legendary is one of those games that looked promising on first announcement, but in the end didn't deliver. I suppose it is an average first person shooter for those who just want something to play, but in all fairness there are many other games out there in th budget-end of the store that will provide many more hours of fun and I also sense they will do your blood-pressure much better too! A rent at the very most...but it's not even worth taking out of the box...

36%

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