Okay, guys and gals. My name is "surdanis" Jeff, and you're reading my first blog entry on GameSpot.com. I've been a member of GameSpot since 2004, though I've definitely been frequenting this site for some time before that year. And while I'm somewhat of an amateur at blogging, I am by no means the new kid on the block when it comes to writing. So, I've finally decided to enter into the fun world of video game blogging, and what better way than to kick off my little adventure than to start with a blog on a demo of that rare gem of a game that comes along at least once a year Legendary for PC.

I remember waiting in utter anticipation of this game many months ago, eager to see a novel story idea unfold. If you don't know already, Legendary, for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, is a first-person shooter that puts you in the shoes of Charles Deckard, who is a thief that unwittingly opens the mythical Pandora's Box--unleashing beasts of legend onto the world. (Yes, I stole part of that from the game's blurb on GameStop.com.) Minotaurs? Gryphons? Werewolves? You bet! All inside this little box... that is, they WERE in the box. And so now you are caught up with some mysterious order trying to fight another mysterious order in a world full of these crazy creatures from yesteryear trying to demolish the world.

Now let me just say that I think that demos are a fairly good indicator of whether or not a game will be any good. While I generally don't buy a game if the demo turns out to be poor, I often do buy it if there is some promise. I bought Left 4 Dead after trying out the demo, and I even convinced my friends to buy it with the pre-order promotion off of Steam. But then there was Turok. I first tried the demo out for that game on the Xbox 360, and I instantly knew that the game needed work because of the grass. That's right: the grass, which looked like it was a holdover from the 8-bit era. Turok didn't make a good first impression, but I was sure that the PC version would be better.

But I was wrong, as I am now quite wrong about Legendary, I am sure. If anyone is something of a forum troll like me, they will have noticed that someone posted a not-so-flattering in-game screenshot of a corpse. If memory serves, this picture included quite a bit of blood: Low-res pixelated blood. It's blocky like the grass in Turok. It looked like someone had gone into Mario Paint and imported their blood decal into a spray paint ala Counter-Strike and bam! There was it was. Now imagine playing the demo, which begins with a short tutorial in a level all its own. At the very end, you are forced to kill a werewolf that is feeding on a corpse (presumably one of your good uniformed buddies in that cliché order you are forced to join as part of the story)--with block blood everywhere. I thought to myself, the entire demo couldn't be like this. I even restarted it and made sure I had my video settings maxed out all the way (on a settings panel that can be described as "sticky"). Later, you'll meet more bodies that have suffered the same fate--as the blood, where they are poorly textured, as if they were stricken with a fatal de-pixelizing disease from that stupid box...

Now it is also in this tutorial that you are introduced to the gimmick powers. Yes, the gimmick powers. F.E.A.R. had the bullet-time; TimeShift had the time control; Crysis had the nanosuit abilities; BioShock had the plasmids; Wolfenstein will feature Black Sun. Legendary has the animus (No, this is not a spin-off of the outstanding Assassin's Creed, sadly.). Think of the animus, which looks strangely like fairy dust, as akin to the Force power you can absorb in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. You can store this animus to heal yourself or to unleash an area of effect attack, which can damage enemies--and send unsuspecting crates to the ICU. While an interesting idea, it seems lacking, at least in the demo. Frankly, I feel that we can do away with the gimmick powers since the gimmick is already in the various enemies that you face.

So after the tutorial, you are thrown into the real meat of the demo, which takes place in some ruined city (obviously due to a certain someone that can't keep their hands to themselves). The run-through begins to involve a regular shootout with you and your teammates, who are guys in lightly armored suits with guns, and the enemy, who are also in lightly armored suits with guns. As you rush to engage the enemy down at the end of a street, you notice your first mythical creature: A werewolf. You fight a few of those and are forced to dispatch them either by one-shotting in the head or shooting their head after they "die" the first time since they regenerate and come back to kick your ass. While the blood spattering on the camera lens is cool and never really gets old, it is hardly realistic. It is, however, tolerable as a game standard. On the other hand, claw marks that appear over everything when a werewolf hits you gets old and is utterly immersion breaking.

Speaking of immersion breaking, you will notice that werewolf heads don't explode or simply roll away from the body when you hit them: Instead, they just disappear into fairy dust! In fact, all dead bodies disappear (minus the fairy dust) in less than a minute as if they've been instantly teleported away. Corpse removal is simply not needed in such a game as this, as it is hardly a system breaker. Might as well make the corpses disappear into fairy dust, too, and add a little Tinkerbell chime in there to boot.

While that would definitely be a game maker of a sound right there to add to such a darling piece of video game "art", I can tell you that the developer's choice of sounds in general isn't exactly the best. From the get-go, you are treated to an opening menu with the mouseover sound from hell. The sound is worse than the menu sounds in Mass Effect, being so high-pitched as to make you want to pull an Oedipus--only with your ears and not your eyes, and using really thin screwdrivers since a brooch pin might not be long enough to reach your ear drum. The small sampling of a soundtrack is hardly anything worth remembering. The weapon sounds are rather tame. And apparently, corpses in this game world occasionally suffer from acute rigor mortis, causing your fireman's axe to clang.

Anyway, more on what you actually do in the demo. I mentioned the fireman's axe. There is really little explanation here as to why you have it. You start out the demo with three weapons: the axe, a submachine gun, and an automatic shotgun. There are also pistols and scoped semi-automatic rifles in the game, which you can pick up later in the level. After that first encounter with the bad guys and some werewolves, you get to play with a force field (likewise, low-res) to let your buddies through, get to another force field, rinse, repeat. You eventually make your way to a sewer, where you meet your second mythical creature, the Nari. What the heck these are supposed to be, I don't really know. They appear as apparitions, laughing like spooky ghost children; and while they add to the creepiness of this section, they don't do anything other than fly around!

You then make your way up the ladder into a cut scene, where two bad guys meet a minotaur. The cut scene ends and you are forced to fight the minotaur after he easily takes down the bad guys. You proceed to run around in circles as the minotaur charges at you and breaks through the destructible walls. The walls, mind you, actually break apart into large chunks that can damage you if you're in the wrong spot. After many shotgun shells and several "fake-out deaths" (where the jerk takes a breather on one knee, gives me enough time to walk up close to him in my lame attempt to finish him off, and then proceeds to lunge back up at me), the minotaur finally collapses. This was the only part of the demo that I actually enjoyed, due mostly to the challenge of finding a good spot to reload without having the minotaur blow the wall apart in your face. Destructible terrain is a great idea, and I wish the developers had gone into more detail in creating the combat area for this boss fight. You see, the entire battle took place in an open rectangular "garden" with nothing but walls. More dynamism in its design could have heightened the tension and drama. Perhaps, they could have enclosed the space or added multiple levels with destructible floors, ceilings, and sundry objects lying around.

After the boss fight, you kill some more lowly goons and make your way up some stairs. The demo ends rather abruptly right there, but not after you get to see some giant tentacles attack through a wall. When the demo stopped, I was sure the darn thing had froze on me. It didn't, but I was sure glad my experience was over. I tried it on a whim, hoping it wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be. Critics be damned!

The demo certainly needed some polishing though, and from what I understand the real game isn't too far off from this little sampler platter of legendary creatures. If you're considering buying this game and are one of those people who actually have pride in their choice of PC games, then you'll at least want to try out the demo first to see just how horribly designed it is. With a Metascore of 42, there is a reason it is labeled in "warning red."