Legendary

A Short While into Legendary you meet up with a female sidekick. Later on, you find yourselves together in a small room communicating with a man by monitor screen, who looks both respectable and evil. Your character says nothing. Earlier, you are rescued from danger by a policeman/security guard who bumbles about affably before dying on you. I'm not going to name the obvious 'reference point' for these particular ideas, as I think it is pretty obvious.

Legendary is a game that has surprisingly little going for it. For a start, it has been released when so many other games are clamouring for your attention and, unfortunately for Spark Unlimited, it doesn't do much to make itself stand out.

It would be a little harsh to say the word 'generic' was invented for Legendary (perhaps the choice of name was deliberately ironic) but I'm struggling to think of anything that I really thought was 'good'. Oh, here's one: the opening scenes of destruction and mayhem were pretty exciting. Well, they were until I realised I wasn't in any real danger and they then became an exercise in just finding the way through the rubble. The massive 'wreckage' creature that carves a path through the city is excellently done too. It is much easier to just rail against everything that I found boring or just terribly average. I've never been one to make things difficult for myself, so here goes.

Not For High Jump

Your character, Deckard, cannot jump more than 10cm off the floor; I got stuck in the scenery twice in the first 10 minutes; all doors in major cities are sealed-by keypads that can be 'bypassed' by jamming two wires together; you can't jump when standing in a puddle of water; respawning is too frequent; the weapons feel very insubstantial, and so on.

There's nothing that's absolutely terrible about Legendary, just that the whole thing feels insipid and uninspired, as if the developers became fed up with the project and finished it as quickly as possible. There's no sign that any real love or attention has been put in and, therefore, players will feel very little beyond apathy and a gnawing sense they are just wasting their lives playing it. Which sadly is pretty much what Spark Unlimited seems to have done.