Legendary

"A Good Idea Ruined by Lousy Execution"

It's a really neat idea for a game: you're a professional thief, hired by a mystery man and his really hot assistant to steal a certain artifact from a museum in New York. You get in, find the artifact, do what you were told to do with it, and all hell breaks loose. You've opened Pandora's Box! And now you have to deal with the monsters that have come out of it, while simultaneously dodging an army of mercenaries sent to kill you by the guy who hired you. Meanwhile, you find yourself in league, both with the really hot assistant, and a mysterious organization that has tried to keep the box's existence secret for centuries (kind of like the Mejai in the Mummy movies). Should be a great game, right?

"Should be" is the operative phrase. The reality is pretty awful. For one thing, the motion is so fast and jerky it gives you vertigo. For another, once you've released the monsters there's not much to do but run like a maniac and try to fight them off. You have various tasks to perform, but they really don't seem to mean that much, and why you're the only person who can do them is one of life's little mysteries. The story gets bogged down very early, and never really recovers that I could see.

The worst part, though, is the monsters themselves. This game is one of those lazy-programmer things where the enemies just keep coming and keep coming and keep coming until you somehow complete your task, then they suddenly vanish. It's stupid. And of course, you just never quite have the right weapons to deal with them effectively; the werewolves require half a clip from an assault rifle just to knock them down, then you have to somehow decapitate them or they'll get up again. You can do this either with more bullets, or with a fire ax that your character carries. If you use the ax, be prepared to give it half a dozen whacks before the blasted thing's head actually comes off. Who knew werewolves were made of cast iron? Then there are the Nari. These are nasty little flying baby-things with really sharp claws, and they can become corporeal or incorporeal at will. So one can fly at you at 150 miles an hour as a ghost, and as soon as it reaches you it can become solid and slash the crap out of you. And there's a kabillion of them, and none of your weapons can really handle them because they move so bloody fast. They were what finally killed the game for me; I never got past trying to activate the three EMP generators to destroy the Golem, because these little annoyances just plain ruined the game for me. They just kept coming, because of that lazy-programmer problem I mentioned. Of course, several times when I battled them, such as in the soda machine room, they vanished altogether as soon as I achieved the goal. Huh? It's the same with all the monsters, and it's just poor game creation. In this day and age, there's no excuse for it.

Ultimately, even within its own fantasy-based universe, the game isn't believable. And it's just too busy. There's always so much going on, and the controls are so touchy, it's impossible to keep your mind on the task at hand, much less any kind of overall story. I really wanted to see where the story was going, but by the time I was most of the way through the third level I didn't care any more. The idea is a good one, but this game made a mess of it.

Unlike some of the other reviews, I can't even recommend it as brainless fun. It's not fun. It's more of a chore than anything else. I found that I couldn't dial down the look sensitivity enough to make the controls controllable, which only made matters worse. My recommendation is, leave this one on the shelf and play Bioshock, or TimeShift, or one of the F.E.A.R. games again. If you pass on this game and get something else, you won't be sorry.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/03/09

Game Release: Legendary (US, 11/04/08)