I almost wanted to stay away from Legendary for fear that the initial screenshots, videos, and reports were wrong. It looked almost too good, but I didn’t want to believe that the game could be anything less than amazing. Sure, it was being made by the development team behind Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, but you fight freaking werewolves and minotaur (minotaurs? Minotaurias? Minotai? Minute Bolls?)! Come on, that’s freaking cool!

And it is cool, I can confirm that 100%. Killing mythological beasts with shotguns might actually redefine cool. When it comes to the game playing well, though, that’s another story. It feels like a generic, clunky shooter. Anyone who has played Turning Point (raise your hands, all five of you) will be familiar with the gameplay. Both games feel very similar and run on the Unreal Engine, but luckily that seems to be where the similarities stop.

The game puts you in the shoes of Charles Deckard, art thief who opens Pandora’s Box, unleashing mythological beasts and giving himself magical abilities. The abilities aren’t actually all that powerful, amounting to a Star Wars-like “Force Push” and a healing move. Enemies, once slain, drop animus, which can be absorbed to use the powers, and the limited amount of energy you gain throughout the levels means that you need to find a way to ration it. A large focus of the game is a “three-way-war” between yourself, an enemy organization, and a whole bunch of monsters.

This all works, and letting a few enemies kill some monsters before moving in can have a tactical advantage, but it doesn’t add as much to the game as Spark Unlimited thinks it does. Gamers are used to a bunch of people shooting eachother and waiting until the perfect opportunity to strike, its been done in every online shooter in history. The fact that some of the enemies have guns and some have teeth doesn’t really shake the formula up as much as you would think, because they all need a hefty dosage of shotgun to the face.

At one point I had the chance to fight a Minotaur, which looked fantastic and was able to smash through walls to try and take me out. He seemed to have too long of a reach and be nearly impossible to dodge, even with the developer sitting next to me yelling “NOW!” when it was time. If I wasn’t able to do it with his help I doubt that the average gamer can without any, and this seemed to be a problem throughout the demo.

I am really happy that Legendary still has a few months left in the oven, and even though we were told that the game is in the “bug fixing” stage there is still a chance for success. Even with the problems I mentioned the game is still good, but falls far short of great, and a game this legendary in scope shouldn’t limit itself at average.

 

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