Have you ever heard the expression, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp”? That should be developer Spark Unlimited’s motto. After releasing their ambitious alternate-history shooter Turning Point: Fall of Liberty to critical and commercial indifference in February 08, the California-based studio continued work on their other project, Legendary. Now the game is out, and the studio’s epic take on the Pandora’s Box mythos is alternately awe-inspiring and incredibly frustrating.

Legendary puts players in the role of Charles Deckard, art thief extraordinaire, who’s hired by a reclusive millionaire to break into a museum in New York City, with the simple goal of finding and opening an antique box deep in the museum’s basement. What Deckard doesn’t know is that the box is, in fact, the real Pandora’s Box, and opening it unleashes all manner of mythological creatures on the world. Now the thief finds himself at the center of the action, caught in a three-way fight between the creatures and the two secret societies that each want to control the box’s power. Spark spent a lot of time and energy developing the game’s story, and it shows. It might not be the deepest or most involved game storyline of all time, but it’s written well and they’ve come up with a clever, unique take on the subject matter.

 
Pandora’s Box itself is the focus of many of the game’s plot points.

The developers have clearly taken some classes at the Half-Life School of FPS Design, as Legendary resembles Valve’s series in many ways. You’ve got the same 3-sided conflict (between the player, the monsters, and the human soldiers) in each level; switching between the two enemy types is nice for changing the combat pacing and style. Like Half-Life, levels in Legendary are strictly linear paths, which may not be to everyone’s liking, but which allows the developers precise control over exactly what the player experiences. Again, some players might feel that this style of game restricts their freedom, but in exchange you get some of the coolest, most impressive set-pieces of any game in recent memory.

 
Despite the open-ended feel of some areas, the player must follow a specific path
through the game. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is up to you.

With Legendary, Spark Unlimited has proven themselves to be the undisputed master of the scripted sequence. To see what I mean, look no further than the game’s opening sequence — Deckard’s escape from the museum through the streets of downtown New York. This is the first time you encounter the creatures you’ve unleashed, as a gigantic flock of griffons assault the city streets in force, and it’s a truly awesome sequence. As you make your escape, there are crowds of terrified people everywhere, griffons eating people and dropping cars in your path, and the ground beneath your feet is cracking and breaking. Eventually you witness the formation of the golem, a towering monstrosity that pulls itself together out of cars and building debris before crashing its way through skyscrapers. All the events are scripted, so every time you play the level it occurs the exact same way, but it’s such a powerful and epic sequence that it feels like you’re living through a big-budget action blockbuster. The game is full of moments like that, but nowhere is it more impressive than in the first few minutes.

It’s chaos in the streets when the griffons attack, and as you run through the action you’ll witness plenty of awesome moments.

Besides its epic scripted sequences, the game holds a few aces up its sleeves. The monster designs are really well-done, and each creature has its own unique way of moving, attacking, and interacting with the environment. Many of the creatures can come at you from all sides — some, like griffons and nari (evil fairy-like beings) can fly, while others, like werewolves, can climb pretty much anywhere — which brings an awesome sense of tension to the game, as you could literally be attacked at any time from any angle. There’s also a bit more depth to the combat than simple run-and-gun antics. While opening the box, Deckard gets a magical symbol, the Signet, branded on his left hand, which grant you a few different combat options. The Signet can store the magical energy (called Animus Vitae) that the creatures leave behind when killed, and this energy can be used to either heal Deckard or unleash a gravity gun-style blast of energy that propels enemies and environment objects flying.

 
One of the coolest enemies you’ll face is the Minotaur, who can and will smash through walls to get to you.

But it seems that for every thing Legendary gets right, it gets something else wrong. For starters, fighting against human soldiers is nowhere near as fun as fighting against the creatures. The human AI is pretty good, and nothing about these sequences is done particularly badly, it all just feels kind of bland, like every other FPS that’s ever pitted you against special-ops enemies. While there are plenty of areas that pit you against monsters against soldiers in a kind of three-way battle that’s pretty fun, when it’s just you versus evil troops the game loses much of its magic. And while I mentioned before that the game followed in Half-Life’s footsteps, it does take one central element from a different source, the Halo series, and that’s the two-guns-at-a-time thing. Some players love the way systems like this force you to make strategic decisions about your armament, but I would have much preferred the classic “walking armory” style, especially since there are some guns that appear so infrequently that if you switch it out early in the game, you might not see it again until about halfway through the story.

Some of the game’s problems are more technical in nature. Clipping is a definite issue throughout; it’s somewhat easy to get yourself stuck on the environment, or even worse, stuck between a wall and an enemy or enemies. Clipping problems also account for some immersion-ruining enemy death animations, like when you drop a werewolf and it gets stuck halfway through the floor, twitching rapidly.

Other frustrating elements of the game are due to questionable design decisions. Sometimes enemies will respawn as long as you stay in an area, which would be understandable (still not great, but understandable) if the path to leave the area were always obvious, but that’s not always the case. There are few things more frustrating than being stuck in a game environment with no clue how to progress, but one of them is being stuck in said environment while you’re under constant attack from all sides. Also, as much fun as the creature combat is, certain monsters’ have infuriating attack patterns — like the nari, who are quick-flying creatures that can turn incorporeal at will. When you’ve got six or eight darting around your head, draining your health with quick attacks, and you’re trying desperately to draw a bead on one while it’s solid, it’s easy to get exasperated.

 
With a creature as quick and hard to hit as the nari, the spread attack of the shotgun is really your best way to go.

Legendary’s visuals aren’t flawless, and there are certainly more technically impressive games out right now, but they’ve done a great job of capturing the epic scale of the story. Some of the game’s environments are a bit bland or repetitive or generic (like the sewer stage), but others are simply gorgeous, with great design and awesome lighting. Again, the monsters are a high point — each creature animates with a real sense of power, weight, and aggression, so facing down a werewolf or griffon is a genuinely intimidating experience. The human characters don’t look as great as the creatures (especially their faces), but you’re really not dealing with other humans all that often (except enemy soldiers, who wear combat gear and masks). The game’s music is great. From the title screen on, the soundtrack is epic and emotional — a mix of sweeping orchestral scoring and powerful guitar rock keeps the energy high.

 Legendary is a flawed game, to be sure, but it does some things exceptionally well. It delivers action-movie thrills in playable form, and it tells a pretty good story. It’s packed with memorable scripted sequences, and facing off against mythological creatures is exciting and satisfying. It does certain things in ways that not everybody is going to love, but personally it’s become one of my sleeper favorites of the year.

Gameplay: 7.6
Legendary plays pretty much like you’d expect a first-person shooter to play, so no real surprises there. The game’s real focus is on exciting, visceral combat against mythological creatures, and this aspect of the game (despite some issues and concerns) remains fun and engaging throughout.

Graphics: 7.4
The visual style of the game is superb, and the scope of some scenes is unmatched. Animations are incredibly well-done, and each creature feels like a real living being that wants to kill you. There are some technical problems that drag the visuals down a bit, but overall it’s a great-looking game.

Sound: 7.8
There’s some great music in this game, from the rockin’ intro track on. The game’s voice acting is reasonably good, for the most part, and the creature noises are spot-on. When you’re walking through an area and you hear the infant-giggle sound of incoming nari, it sends chills down your back.

Difficulty: Medium
The game’s no push-over, but the fact that every enemy drops healing energy keeps it from getting too challenging. There are definitely some tough sequences, but reasonably-placed checkpoints keep you from ever having to redo too much.

Concept: 8.7
Using mythological creatures as enemies in a first-person shooter is a great, unique idea, and seeing them run rampant in modern-day cities is simply awesome. It sounds strange to say that seeing a griffon fly off gripping a police cruiser in its talons is deeply satisfying, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Overall: 7.5
The game tells a compelling story, is loaded with exciting combat, and is chock full of memorable moments. It could have used a bit more polish in certain areas, true, but as an interactive summer blockbuster, Legendary delivers.