LEGENDARY RIP OFF!! MUCH OF THE GAME DESIGN IS A DIRECT COPY OF HALF LIFE 2!!
THE GOOD - Flamethrower that Rocks!
The Flamethrower actually works!! This is the one thing in the game that works perfectly. I have played many games that have a Flamethrower available, but they never seem to deliver, either due to their range being too short or b/c they lack the stopping power to be effective against powerful enemies, and I normally end up running from them. But in LEGENDARY the Flamethrower has sufficient range and killing power to make it the weapon of choice, and is simply a pleasure to use ........ and it looks GOOD
THE BAD - Everything Else
Everything every other negative review critics is completely true ........this cannot be stressed enough! The level designs are Horrible, especially in the first few chapters. It is often hard to spot what trivial handle, tap or ladder you are supposed to shot open, while constantly re spawning enemies obstruct your view and prevent you from exploring the environment in the manner the level design is forcing you to do. Whole chunks of this game feel like no one has ever even played through them once to test their play ability during the production process. (I'm especially refering to a later part of the game where there is a bunch of the Bloodtick producing creatures hanging everywhere sending a rapid flow of their offspring at you while you frantically run around trying to workout what you are supposed to do, there are so many you can hardly keep yourself from being hit even if you stand on the stop let alone if you need to walk around and search for the irrationally placed trivial handles that need to be turned or shot at, at the same time .........you'll die at least half a dozen times just to workout what needs to be done ..........irritating beyond belief ......but we are just scratching the surface)
The environments feel baron and lack any interaction
The jump function simply doesn't work, YOU CAN'T JUMP ONTO/UP TO ANYTHING! Not even a single step on staircases. This makes the movement around the environments very labored. The monsters, especially the Werewolves, move too fast and you never see the damage your attacks are making. It also makes it impossible to kill them from any distance except when you are face to face with them.
The grenades can only be thrown a very shot distance and there is no aim function for them.
When Vivian speaks to you, whether during Clips or Action scenes her face remains blank.
WHERE IS THE ARMY???? why are armed gangs running freely around an invaded NY City without an Army intervention??
The whole game feels like the decade old Duke Nukem 3D FPS, except with inferior level designs thrown in and a broken jump function. The whole time I played this game I felt like I was playing something made by a couple of Uni Students who were designing their first game rather than a professional design team working full time on a commercial project.
The game is really short, which is a blessing as by the end of it I felt like a tortured prisoner who just wanted to be put out of his misery.
Conclusion: The fact that this game is retailing for $99.95 AUD in Australia is an insult to the consumer ..........especially when Duke Nukem 3D is avaihttp://au.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/legendarythebox/post_review.html?tag=scoresummary;edit-reviewlable for $5.00 on XBOX LIVE and is a much better game.
If you have played HALF LIFE 2 (or play it directly after playing LEGENDARY) it will become plainly obvious that much of the game design of LEGENDARY is a direct copy of elements which appear in HALF LIFE 2. I am astonished just how of much has been directly copied with little effort made to hide this (WHY HASN'T GAMESPOT POINTED THIS OUT IN THEIR REVIEW?). Here are 5 examples; the GIANT propeller bit, The look and explosions of the Grenades, the rocket launcher and the refill cases that never run out of rockets, End of the game which takes place at LE FEY's Tower looks almost identical to the Citadel of HALF LIFE 2 including the 3 generators that need to be shut down! The Black Order soldiers look very similar to the Combine soldiers with the Black masks in HALF LIFE, The story structure is the same - you start in one place travel to another place and come back to where you started for the final showdown. ..........I could go on and on.