Legendary (Xbox 360)

[  « Previous Page | 1 | 2  ]

There's no denying that Legendary is action packed

While you'll be facing off against members of both organisations in locations as exotic as New York, London (Big Ben gets destroyed) and Durham (yes, we said Durham, the Black Order is holed up there), Legendary's creatures are the stars of the show, even stealing the scene from Deckard himself. The game will end up with between 10 to 15 different creatures, most of which will be variants of the base creature classes, including the Werewolf and the Gryphon. The Werewolf, with its huge, deadly claws, can climb on walls, ceilings and generally defy gravity. Unlike the grounded human troops you fight in the game, werewolves will dart about surfaces, making them much harder to kill, and pick up in-game objects to chuck at you. They'll regenerate too - you can see their skin healing after you tear it off with weapons fire. The Fire drake is a creature of living lava. Not only can you be burned by its body but it can set the game world alight. That fire can then travel, burning up more of the environment dynamically, keeping things nice and fresh each time you encounter one. And we're told the Shadow of the Colossus-esque Titan class creatures, like the Golem we described at the beginning of the preview, won't be able to be killed with conventional FPS weapons. Developer Spark Unlimited isn't giving away much, but has told us that you'll have to use the environment to destroy them. Interesting.

Taking on the game's beasts on their own sounds cool enough, but taking them on in a gritty three-way street battle, involving werewolves, members of the Black Order and you, sounds even cooler. Lucky enough, we got our grubby mitts on an Xbox 360 pad to do just that. Legendary plays very much as you'd expect a gritty FPS would, with traditional dual thumbstick controls, a sprint button, assault rifles and shotguns, so it will be extremely easy for FPS fans to get to grips with the game. The level we played started with a narrow residential street shoot out. The Black Order are battling werewolves on the streets, in alleys and in buildings themselves. We have a decision to make - kill the werewolves, then deal with the Order, kill the Order then deal with the werewolves, let them kill each other or storm in and run and gun. We locked and loaded and stormed the streets.

 Advertisement

Werewolves need to be decapitated to be killed (we found a close range shotgun blast did the trick). Otherwise they'll gradually regenerate. If you build up enough Animus you can do a force push style move, useful for crowd control. A Werewolf is being kept in a cage - what to do? Release it and hope it helps with the Order, or leave it there, its claws far from your neck? We approach a clearing off the beaten track - an imposing Minotaur is making short work of some Black Order troops. It turns on us, smashing through walls as if they were paper thin. It tears a Celtic cross out of the ground, converting it into a devastating club. We die.

The enemies you face can be pretty enormous

It's clear that Legendary's combat can get pretty crazy pretty quickly. It feels like an FPS arena game at times, which is no bad thing. We don't know much about the multiplayer offering right now, but what has been confirmed is Legendary will support four versus four games with each team playing as either the Black Order or the Council of 98. To spice things up a bit, AI controlled creatures will be running around the multiplayer maps, ensuring the three-way fighting from the single-player campaign makes a strong appearance in the multiplayer. Expect the traditional deathmatch and team assault modes too, but there will be one or two surprises thrown in - including Safari, where both sides hunt the game's creatures against a time limit.

Even at this early stage, Legendary instantly looks a lot better than developer Spark Unlimited's last FPS, the disappointing Turning Point. Built on the Unreal Engine 3, hardened FPS fans might be thinking: "here comes another generic FPS", but the concept feels fresh - the man versus myth idea is one that's piqued our interest. Legendary is certainly worth keeping tabs on. Look out for a closer look soon.

Legendary is set for release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in late summer. A demo is planned for sometime in June or July.

[  « Previous Page | 1 | 2  ]