Legendary
Preview
Pandora's Box has been opened...
by T3HDX
previewed on PC
What's inside Pandora's Box?
Legendary, previously known as Legendary: The Box, is soon to be another FPS on the market. However, will this unique mix of human and beast enemies give it enough edge in the market to stand out from the competition?
You are Charles Deckard, an art thief, and you’ve been hired by a shadowy, mysterious organisation to steal the Pandora’s Box. However, during the heist, Deckard, ignorant of the dangers and reality of the box’s power, opens the box, causing hoards of angry beasts from every myth, folklore and fairytale to escape the confinements of their prison. Chaos seeps out into the streets of New York, and eventually all around the world. Now beasts are fighting the mankind along with the cities themselves, attempting to return the world to the state the beasts once knew. Deckard is left with a strange signet, which may be the key to the mankind’s salvation.
You need to look deeper
At the first glance, Legendary looks to be just another ‘brown’ FPS. By brown I mean the same old dark, gritty, done-so-many-times-before style. It’s not until you look a little closer that you start to notice the unique features of Legendary.
For starters, I’ll talk about the different enemies available. First off, there are the Black Order soldiers. They are typical run-of-the-mill enemy soldiers out to stop you from saving the world, so nothing really new there. However, with Pandora’s Box open, they are not the only enemy you have to fight. When Deckard opened the box, he unleashed all kinds of horrid and nasty creatures into the world. Some of these include griffons, werewolves, golems, minotaurs, kraken, echidnas, fire drakes, harpies and salamanders. But it doesn’t stop there. In addition, there are two kinds of each beast: the ‘alpha’ and the ‘beta’ form. The ‘beta’ version of creatures are just the regular enemy version and the most common you’ll see. However, the ‘alpha’ version is much stronger, with sharpened AI, making them much more vicious.
The AI is one of the best I’ve seen. With only Left4Dead being a potential rival to this advanced AI, there is certainly a lot expected from it. The AI allows the enemies to understand their surroundings and react differently depending on the situation and location. For instance, if a werewolf was in an open area being fired upon by half a dozen people, it would try avoid the fire, trying to break through the enemy lines at the slightest opportunity and to get behind you and your allies. The AI also reacts to however many AI characters are chasing down its current choice of target. If there is more than one, the AI will split the chasers up and take different routes in order to trap their prey. Also, if an obstacle gets in their way, such as a pillar or a piece of debris from a pillar, various creatures may throw it at you, kick it out of the way or even smash it to pieces and carry on charging straight at you.
