Not a legend, but it’ll do | Legendary game review

This fall I was immediately reminded of the memories of category “B” games from the end of the last decade. No matter how controversial they may be, these games still evoke some nostalgia, longing for bygone times and make you want to go back to the time when they came out TimeShift, Turok, Darkest of Days, NecroVision and other games that, for one reason or another, are still etched in our memory. Today I bring to your attention one of the representatives of this series, whom someone loves, and someone remembers only to curse… this is a game Legendary.

The plot of our guest today from 2008 revolves around the mythical Pandora’s box, however, in Legendary it turned out to be not a legend, but quite a real artifact, because of which, like the Apple of Eden from Assassin’s Creed, For thousands of years, humanity has shed rivers of blood. There was no end in sight to the endless wars for the right to own this ingenious device, until a group of guys who retained common sense were found who hid the box away from the greedy hands of the rulers who had gone. The guys worked in conditions of strict secrecy, membership in this organization was passed on only by inheritance, so that no outsider could penetrate its ranks. They even took an inconspicuous name for themselves: Tip 98. Why the Council and why 98 – no one is in a hurry to explain, and until the end of the game the answer to this burning question remains a mystery. The council hid the box so reliably that at the beginning of the 21st century, amateur divers accidentally discovered it at the bottom of the sea..

The fantasies of the members of Council 98 can only be envied. “Hide” the most formidable weapon on the planet by dropping it to the bottom of the sea.

Besides these careless guardians, there was another secret organization with the ominous name Black Order. Its head is an evil guy named Le Fay was yet another powerful grandfather with raking hands who was going to take possession of the box, and with the help of the box, the whole world. To do this, he hires the best thief in the world – Charlie Deckard. He goes to the New York museum, where the artifact was placed as an exhibit, opens the protection and is about to seize the object, when suddenly the box “opens”, gives Deckard a stylish tattoo right on his arm and opens a portal to an unknown location… but from this “out of nowhere” a legion of mythical creatures falls onto the earth, creating chaos throughout the planet.

Unfortunately, with the exception of a rather entertaining introduction, the rest of the plot remained completely unremarkable, incorporating all the most common clichés: as I already said, the main villain is trying to take over the world, the main character is betrayed by his boss, who is hunting him because he knows too much; In addition, the GG, by tradition, becomes the chosen one, he must save his own skin and the whole world at the same time, in which he is helped by good guys, guardians of the world, rainbows and unicorns. And the only thing that’s almost “this is the turn”!"occurs only at the very end, right before the credits, when everything is over, and again, this turn cannot be called particularly cool, although it stands out against the background of the monotonous story.

Immediately at the start of the gameplay, we are given the main feature of the game: the seal Deckard received from Pandora’s Box not only fashionably emphasized the individuality of our “chosen one,” but also endowed him with the ability to accumulate and manage anima energy (lat. anima – “soul”). In Legendary, anima is a kind of supernatural substance from another world that the hero could collect from the corpses of monsters. This energy could be used in two ways: restoring hit points (that is, anima thereby replaced first aid kits and potions in the game) or using it against enemies, sending energy discharges into their impudent faces. But they didn’t receive any damage from this, we just pushed them back and knocked off the disguise of those who had it.

I can’t say that anima magic https://luckyowlclubcasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ in Legendary was impressive: at first, yes, it seemed like a rather unusual move, but after an hour of playing, when you realized that that’s all, and you won’t open any new skills or upgrade your seal in any way, it became sad and all this action quickly turned into a gray routine.

The shooting in the game also turned out to be very bad in my opinion. Legendary could be forgiven for a lot of things, but not this. In action films, we are used to turning a blind eye to a weak plot, weak characters, design flaws and everything else, but what we can’t forgive a shooter is boring action. This, in my opinion, was the main problem of Legendary. It’s just not fun to shoot. Any gun that comes into our hands when we press the trigger is practically not felt at all (except for a shotgun), be it a pistol, a machine gun or a machine gun. Although I took on the flamethrower with some kind of pleasure. He himself, in exactly the same way, was weakly felt in the hands of the hero, but he burned out enemies in a time or two. There was only one murder weapon in the game that was truly enjoyable to swing – a fire ax. Of course, running with him was very risky, especially if several opponents were rushing at us at once, but still, swinging and slashing was always fun and, oddly enough, you could even “feel” his blows.

The enemies acted both as soldiers of the human race and as various fantastic creatures. And here Legendary could resemble Turok, which came out the same year. There, fights with people were boring and I wanted to quickly meet the next pack of lizard-like monsters in order to plunge into the sea of ​​fun and meat again. In Legendary, the situation is absolutely identical: the soldiers of the Black Order did not arouse interest, but the monsters directly brought. But not all. For example, these firestone… it’s unclear who, for some reason named dragons, miracles of tactics were not shown. They constantly spawned from flaming holes in the ground, rolled like sausages on the asphalt and slowly shot fireballs at us. It was very easy to deal with them, even with only a pistol (or an ax) at hand. But werewolves almost aroused delight. Not only were they very dexterous, crawled along the walls, went around the flanks, attacked from above, behind and below, and after several blows they liked to run away and climb somewhere on the roof where we could not reach them, but these devils could also be resurrected if we did not blow off their heads. And there were also special werewolves that moved in a sort of “ghostly” form, and in order to inflict damage on them, you first had to hit them with a wave of anima energy.

Flying ones were especially annoying Nari, which were also immune to damage most of the time, but before attacking you with their claws and teeth, they briefly acquired a corporeal shell. And they could attack not only this way. These scum also had telekinesis, and could throw at us everything that was not nailed down. Eventually they could fly through walls. In general, as you understand, very unpleasant creatures. By the way, each creature, weapon or character was recorded in a separate menu along with documents and notes that also took place in Legendary. From here it was possible to glean a little background about the characters who appeared on the screen, as well as, even more interesting, information about the monsters, albeit partly fictitious.

I’ve been waiting for a very long time to meet griffins, which teased me from the very beginning of the game, but it was only possible to deal with them in the second half. The first such battle, like the first encounter with minotaur, truly it was something like a boss fight, which caused, albeit not profuse, but still some sweating. But only later, when the most powerful weapon in the game fell into our hands, even these powerful creatures did not become a hindrance for us. And these collisions didn’t look so impressive anymore. What would you expect from shooting a griffin with an RPG?? Heaps of meat scattering in all directions, blood rain, clothes of brains mixed with feathers… But for some reason in Legendary, when a bazooka shell collides with the carcass of a living myth hovering above the ground, we only see how the model of the feathered creature simply disappears after a moment, and in its place appears a pair of pitiful pieces of flesh, molded from 2 polygons, which soon also evaporate. In the game, in general, all the corpses quickly disappeared, which couldn’t help but upset.

But returning to the bosses, there were still two monsters in the game that could claim to be true bosses – these are Golem And Kraken. However, with one or the other, the battle with them was no longer as impressive as their appearance itself (in the case of the Golem, there was not even a battle as such)..

I wouldn’t say that the game looked outdated for its age, but at the same time I would note that it lacked a little detail, a little polish, gloss and, damn it, more colors and contrast, without which the picture in Legendary seems so faded and inexpressive, which also influenced the perception of the “Hollywood” epic that the game is full of. I liked the monster models, I remember some really good views, but it was precisely because of the pallor of the colors that the level design was not perceived as it should be.

Not everything was all right with the sound either. My main complaints relate to the sound of the weapon, which both feels and sounds like a toy. Sometimes there was a lack of filling sounds like steps, creaks and the like, which was especially acutely felt in the intervals between battles, when the sounds of battle died down. This didn’t always happen, but when it did, it was very unpleasant. But the developers did a good job on the monsters (again), in terms of their voice acting. The screams of griffins, the growls of werewolves, the roar of minotaurs etc.d. — Legendary pleased me with this both in 2008 and during my replay in 2019. But most of all I was pleased with the game’s soundtrack, which I wanted to immediately find and add to my playlist immediately after completing. Take at least the main theme from the menu.

Legendary is an absolutely linear game in which you can’t even take a step to the side; even the developers placed all the electronic notes literally on the “side” of the main “path”, so there was no need to carefully explore the levels. To some this might seem like a big minus, but for me, a narrow corridor filled with spectacles is better than a vast, but empty and dull world. I have already mentioned the Hollywood spirit here, and I will say it again, because this is one of the main positive features of Legendary. Everything that happens on the screen, even despite the rather cheap shell, was more exciting than any Call of Duty! Well, okay, maybe not just anyone… Maybe not Call of Duty, but still the authors managed to hook me with so many epic scripts and staged scenes per square meter of the game.

But on the other hand, all the spectacles remained outside the boundaries of the interactive. We simply walked along an invisible rail track from which we couldn’t turn off, and watched as the apocalypse happened around us: for example, we saw a griffin tearing apart some unfortunate person before our eyes, but we couldn’t do anything with him, and he himself seemed to be looking through the hero – that is, this is just a living decoration, which, although it looks great, does not affect the hero in any way, which is why the immersion effect is lost.

An endless stream of epic triggers and the genocide of monsters from another world were slightly diluted interspersed with solving simple problems, most of which were tied to finding a tap, by turning which we let water flow and extinguish the fire that occupied the desired passage. Somewhere it was necessary to shoot a beam, somewhere to break into an electrical panel to open a door… all this is not only puzzles, but it’s somehow embarrassing to call them tasks. And yet, at least one iota, they brought variety to the game.

You also can’t ignore the bugs… which I almost didn’t encounter in the game (with the exception of the mentioned moments with the unreasonable loss of footstep sounds). If there were any minor bugs, I simply didn’t pay attention to them, but right before the finale, no, no, yes, the developers should have left such a big bug in the elevator, in the Le Fay tower (when the script was activated, when the elevator was supposed to start moving up, the character fell through the floor into the textures). Fortunately, the solution to this glitch was easy to find on the Internet.

I won’t say that I didn’t like Legendary. This is a good, average game, but there was something missing in it to call it good: maybe it’s the boring shooting, the gray scale, which seems like a trifle, but still changes the emotional mood, and not for the better; maybe there wasn’t enough drive or a more detailed portrayal of the only heroine, Vivien, who could very well be a pretty lady… After all, Legendary had many positive aspects: a spectacular apocalypse, a bestiary (you won’t find such werewolves in any other game), a flamethrower and music… Although this is a one-time game, which not everyone paid attention to in the year of release, and is unlikely to pay attention now, I personally don’t regret time spent on it. Despite all its shortcomings, I still managed to get some pleasure from passing. I know that not everyone will agree with me, these are just my impressions, and I would like to know yours in the comments under this post.