Legendary

This could well be a surprise hit for those willing to invest the time. Despite a lack of polish, there's a relatively deep story for fans of mythology.

The single-player campaign is only eight hours long, but full of spectacular and varied scenes. It's a lot of fun, but too linear, and the use of generic weapons, imprecise controls and inconsistent graphics show a lack of fine-tuning.

The well-known legend of Pandora’s Box demands much more than what Developer Spark created here. Also, it just doesn’t seem right that Deckard is capable of force pushing and draining life-energy, but utterly fails at simple jumping. [Issue#17]

Legendary isn’t the most involved or technically excellent shooter to come out this season—Left 4 Dead and Gears Of War 2 outclass it. But it’s a fun change of pace with some extremely satisfying combats.

Legendary is by no means awful — it’s just about as vanilla as first-person shooters get. It all wraps up with a completely unsatisfying “wait for the sequel” type cliffhanger. We’ll see. [Jan 2009, p.66]

Legendary’s problems would be easily forgivable if the rest of the package came together well enough but it doesn’t. With only four different enemies to fight for most of the game (one is a second breed of Werewolf), a mostly useless selection of guns and annoying bosses paired up with a story that doesn’t go anywhere the game fumbles its execution totally.

Legendary is an acceptable, sometimes frustrating game, a simple entertainment until the great first-person shooters of the year are released.

With a mix of cool critters, macabre and some old school running-with-guns, no-place-to-hide gameplay, this simple, entirely linear and heavily scripted shooter bravely fights for some respect and appreciation, and it succeeds, to an extent. [Jan 2009]

In an age when intelligent, engrossing first person shooters rule the roost, Legendary feels positively ancient. [Jan 2009, p.100]

This supposed to be classic – and wait for it – entertaining action shooter turns out to be an average soon-to-be-forgotten FPS with a promising theme. [Issue#173]

This is a game that could have been much more. The game’s linearity really hampers immersion, and there are some odd animation elements that also distract from the game.

Entirely average. [Feb 2009, p.83]

Oh, and if you’re wondering, I used the word “boring” 7 times throughout this review.

Legendary is a breakthrough, a revolution as compared to Spark Unlimited’s previous shooter - Turning Point. This one has a story, better graphics, more frequent checkpoints and almost no slowdowns. However, it still can’t hold a candle to more serious competition.

Unfortunately, some good monsters and a decent multiplayer mode don’t really save the game from being mired down in its own mediocrity.

Stiff, confused. [Jan 2009, p.70]

Constantly spawning enemies… Solid walls that light can leak through… A bad first-person shooter experience.

Legendary is an awful game that brings to recent memories the disappointing Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. If you like a pain in the ass, this game is good for help you trying to massacre yourself, but if you are a smart person, run away from this one.

Monotonous and slightly broken; a herculean task just to complete. [Issue#16, p.65]

All things told, the game reeks of derivation.

By the time I'd defeated my 10th werewolf, I was already tired of needing to cut or shoot its head off so it didn't regenerate. By the time I defeated my 200th, I just wanted to turn the game off.