GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs MUSIC: Last.fm | MP3.com MOVIES: Metacritic | Movietome TV: TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Games

Playstation Reviews
PS3 | PS2 | PS One | PSP

Xbox Reviews
Xbox 360 | Xbox

Nintendo Reviews
Wii | DS | GBA | Cube | N64


PC | N-Gage | Dreamcast

How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Games In Our Forums

 

Upcoming & Recent Releases

sort by name sort by score

xx Altered Beast
58 Arkanoid Live!
73 Banjo-Tooie
xx Battlefield 1943
76 Battlestations: Pacific
xx Bigs 2, The
70 Bionic Commando
xx Black College Football: The Xperience - The Doug Williams Edition
90 BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
57 Blazing Birds
xx Burnout Paradise: Big Surf Island
77 Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
71 CellFactor: Psychokinetic Wars
82 Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, The
xx Comix Zone
52 Crystal Defenders
37 Damnation
75 Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, The
xx Droplitz
59 Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires
49 Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2
61 Fable II: See the Future
82 Fallout 3: Broken Steel
83 Fallout 3: Point Lookout
76 Fallout 3: The Pitt
66 FIFA Soccer 09: Ultimate Team
88 Fight Night Round 4
xx Final Fantasy XI: A Crystalline Prophecy
68 Flock!
65 Fuel
xx G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
xx Garou: Mark Of The Wolves
73 Gel: Set & Match
80 Ghostbusters: The Video Game
65 Godfather II, The
84 Guitar Hero: Metallica
76 Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
xx Gunstar Heroes
xx Hannah Montana: The Movie
69 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
73 Hasbro Family Game Night: Battleship
71 Hasbro Family Game Night: Boggle
74 Hasbro Family Game Night: Connect Four
78 Hasbro Family Game Night: Scrabble
71 Hasbro Family Game Night: Sorry!
xx Hasbro Family Game Night: Sorry! Sliders
78 Hasbro Family Game Night: Yahtzee
xx Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
xx Infernal: Hell's Vengeance
xx King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match, The
xx King of Fighters XII, The
25 Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust
76 Lode Runner
79 Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers
xx Midnight Club: Los Angeles - South Central
63 Monsters vs. Aliens
74 NCAA Basketball 09: March Madness Edition
xx NCAA Football 10
50 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
68 Ninja Blade
79 OutRun Online Arcade
74 Overlord II
89 Peggle
xx Phantasy Star II
xx PopCap Arcade Vol. 2
78 Prototype
76 Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
73 Raiden Fighters Aces
85 Red Faction: Guerrilla
85 Resident Evil 5
57 Resident Evil 5: Versus
70 Rock Band Track Pack: Classic Rock
82 Rocket Riot
72 Sacred 2: Fallen Angel
xx Saints Row 2: Corporate Warfare
51 Saints Row 2: Ultor Exposed
74 Sam & Max Save the World
70 SBK 09 Superbike World Championship
xx Shinobi
79 Sonic The Hedgehog 3
80 Space Invaders Extreme
53 Star Trek: D-A-C
48 Stormrise
64 Superstars V8 Racing
49 Terminator Salvation
65 Texas Cheat 'Em
82 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10
66 Tomb Raider Underworld: Lara's Shadow
64 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
66 Trivial Pursuit
83 UFC 2009 Undisputed
77 Uno Rush
65 Up
56 Velvet Assassin
71 Virtua Tennis 2009
73 Virtual-On: Oratorio Tangram
73 Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Ep 1: Fright of the Bumblebees
62 Wanted: Weapons of Fate
64 Wheelman, The
59 Wolfenstein 3D
81 Worms 2: Armageddon
69 WSC Real 09: World Snooker Championship
71 WWE Legends of Wrestlemania
75 X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Uncaged Edition
64 Yosumin Live
49 Zombie Wranglers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed games.



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums
Legendary xbox360 Game Reviews
Legendary
Critic Score
Metascore: 47 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.4 out of 10
based on 39 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 53 votes
Read user comments
Rate this game

(Also known as "Legendary: The Box") Legendary tells the story of Charles Deckard, an art thief who is duped into stealing Pandora’s Box. When he inadvertently opens it, he releases hordes of beasts thought to be fictional – such as werewolves and gryphons – into an unprepared modern world. A full scale war between man and myth begins, and it is quickly complicated by the actions of powerful secret societies. As the person responsible for releasing this terror, Deckard’s unwittingly become the only person capable of containing it once more and saving civilization from being destroyed by the terrifying creatures. [Gamecock Media]

PUBLISHER: Gamecock Media
DEVELOPER: Spark Unlimited
GENRE(S): First-Person Shooter
PLAYERS: 1
ESRB RATING: M (Mature)
RELEASE DATE: November 4, 2008

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

77
Game Chronicles
Legendary is a fantastic thrill ride that you won’t soon forget.
Read Full Review
75
Official Xbox Magazine
While the formula feels a bit dated now, the result is a shooter that is still incredibly fun. [Dec 2008, p.90]
Read Full Review
75
Gameplanet
This could well be a surprise hit for those willing to invest the time. Despite a lack of polish, there's a relatively deep story for fans of mythology.
Read Full Review
75
MS Xbox World
Now that I’ve beaten the game and stand back to surmise my feelings, I can honestly say that although there were a few times when my blood boiled and I was tempted to reach for the teabags, cups and saucers(because of cheap moments); Legendary is actually quite compelling and solid fun.
Read Full Review
75
GameZone
The game tells a compelling story, is loaded with exciting combat, and is chock full of memorable moments. It could have used a bit more polish in certain areas, true, but as an interactive summer blockbuster, Legendary delivers.
Read Full Review
70
GameFocus
When I first heard of Legendary I was honestly very excited for the concept of shooting mythological creatures and monsters with guns because it is a rare concept. The final product has me on the fence with is it a worth while game to recommend for first person shooter nuts like me, or to leave it be and forget you ever saw it. As a person who enjoys Clive Barker’s Jericho for its unique first person shooter story and gameplay mechanics I would say this is an easy rental.
Read Full Review
70
Team Xbox
Accept that Legendary won’t wow you with the gameplay polish of a budget-busting title, and you’ll likely have a good time fighting to shut Pandora’s precious package.
Read Full Review
70
GameDaily
Legendary is sure to be lost in the shuffle this holiday season, which is sad because it's actually pretty good.
Read Full Review
68
ZTGameDomain
Everything about Legendary from the story to the set pieces screams epic proportions and honestly I really wanted to like the game a lot more. However, the small setbacks really take away from the experience and cause the game to go from legendary (pun highly intended) to just plain decent.
Read Full Review
67
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Legendary isn’t the most involved or technically excellent shooter to come out this season—Left 4 Dead and Gears Of War 2 outclass it. But it’s a fun change of pace with some extremely satisfying combats.
Read Full Review
65
GamingExcellence
Legendary’s problems would be easily forgivable if the rest of the package came together well enough but it doesn’t. With only four different enemies to fight for most of the game (one is a second breed of Werewolf), a mostly useless selection of guns and annoying bosses paired up with a story that doesn’t go anywhere the game fumbles its execution totally.
Read Full Review
65
Deeko
Spark has produced a shooter that crams as many fun monsters and insane action packed scripted events as possible into one game and lets gamers shoot them to their hearts content, which makes it perfect for a weekend rental.
Read Full Review
65
Game Informer
Legendary is by no means awful — it’s just about as vanilla as first-person shooters get. It all wraps up with a completely unsatisfying “wait for the sequel” type cliffhanger. We’ll see.
Read Full Review
65
PTGamers
Legendary is an acceptable, sometimes frustrating game, a simple entertainment until the great first-person shooters of the year are released.
Read Full Review
63
GamingXP
Beside some drawbacks in graphics and speech the idea around Pandoras box - for itself really great - cannot get off. The world isn't really interacting with the player, the gameplay is very sterile.
Read Full Review
54
Xbox World 360 Magazine UK
A frustrating mix of good and bad - we'd take it over "Blacksite" and co though. [Christmas 2008, p.63]
50
Level7.nu
Even though this game is built on top of a great mythology, the one about Pandora's Box unleashing chaos onto the world when opened, developer Spark never manage to make the actual game interesting in any way. The game structure is linear, the presentation is bleak at best and the gameplay is rather poor. This sums up to one mediocre experience.
Read Full Review
50
Official Xbox Magazine UK
The problem with this is that Spark is relentless at throwing a huge number of beasties your way, crowding you into a corner and ripping you to shreds. There's not enough breathing space for you to heal yourself and absorb energy to use it effectively as a defensive measure. To say this had us throwing the controller at the telly and cursing is an understatement.
Read Full Review
50
Cheat Code Central
There are just way too many better shooters available to make this game worth your time and money.
Read Full Review
50
GameShark
Spark has made a better game this time around than its previous attempt but it still isn’t on par with the elite of the genre. In the end, Legendary is a cool idea wrapped inside an average shooter.
Read Full Review
50
Variety
Though it brings gusto, wit and a sharp eye for horror cliches, Legendary is still at its core a clunky, mediocre first-person shooter that’s likely to vanish under the mountain of topnotch actioners shipping this month.
Read Full Review
50
DarkZero
The Minotaur says with his sad cow eyes glistening “Don’t worry guys, everything will be alright”, but the Minotaur knows it’s not going to be alright… it’s not going to be alright at all.
Read Full Review
45
Planet Xbox 360
The only reasoning I can see behind playing Legendary is to see the awe-inspired mythological creatures in action.
Read Full Review
40
Gameplayer
The overall experience left us with a bad taste in our mouths and an almighty “WTF?” resonating from our lips. Sigh.
Read Full Review
40
games(TM)
Every hour, you are presented with the ideas that the developer had but simply couldn’t afford, and that only serves to make Legendary’s unrelenting run-and-gun approach harder to swallow. [Christmas 2008, p.96]
40
X360 Magazine UK
So many cliches, so little time. [Issue#40, p.103]
40
360 Gamer Magazine UK
A game that simply doesn’t stand out from the crowd. Constantly spawning enemies. A lead character with no hands. Unskippable cut-scenes you must continually sit through. Solid walls that light can leak through. NPCs that can be shot at, but not harmed. Action sections that feel like a movie you just happen to be walking through, and not interacting with.
Read Full Review
40
Edge Magazine
The dev team has an eye for spectacle – a towering golem comprised of cars and other metallic detritus is a visual highlight – but these moments mostly serve to illustrate how dull your actual actions are by contrast. [Dec 2008, p.98]
40
AceGamez
What we've ended up with is a shambles, a game that looks boring and plays badly - a game that feels as ancient as the mythical beasts that you must vanquish.
Read Full Review
38
3DJuegos
Constantly spawning enemies… Solid walls that light can leak through… A bad first-person shooter experience.
Read Full Review
35
GameSpot
This frustratingly bad first-person shooter is not the stuff legends are made of.
Read Full Review
33
Gaming Age
All together, Legendary had a decent idea behind it that's been marred by some poor design decisions. Shooting and controls feel ok, but everything you shoot at, interact with, or run through is lackluster, broken, or just plain boring.
Read Full Review
27
Gamer 2.0
All things told, the game reeks of derivation.
Read Full Review
25
1UP
By the time I'd defeated my 10th werewolf, I was already tired of needing to cut or shoot its head off so it didn't regenerate. By the time I defeated my 200th, I just wanted to turn the game off.
Read Full Review
25
IGN
The gameplay comes across as messy and incomplete, the arrangement of hazards and threats from monsters is ineffective at best and boring at worst.
Read Full Review
20
EuroGamer
Legendary is the gaming equivalent of cheap supermarket own-brand beans, but instead of costing eleven pence it costs the same as a prime steak cooked by a top chef. It's a bad, bad game. One of the worst I've played on this generation of consoles, in fact. In that regard, at least, the title is surprisingly accurate.
Read Full Review
20
NTSC-uk
The basic ideas behind Legendary were quite sound. Unfortunately it seems they were never properly realised, instead cobbled together with the digital equivalent of shredded newspaper and masking tape.
Read Full Review
16
Game Revolution
Legendary is in the same league as Battlefield: Earth and Turok of how not to do something. How bad is this game you ask? It's Superman 64 bad. Well, maybe not quite that bad, but Legendary sucks more that a Hoover on overdrive. It's bad like ET for the 2600 bad. You might even say it's Legendarily bad.
Read Full Review
16
Gaming Nexus
Legendary is something of a marvel. While I've played a lot of terrible first-person shooters, I never realized that there would be one that missed the mark so completely.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now! The average user rating for this game is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 53 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jason L gave it an8:
I really had a ton of fun with this game - sure it doesn't bring anything new to the genre, but what is here is an action-packed adventure with addictive gameplay, decent graphics, well thought-out sound design. I avoided this game due to the critic review scores, but now I have first hand experience, and can honestly say that it's well worth a play-through.

Rooster Illusion gave it a1:
Behold God's mistake. I rated this game a one because I'd like to thank the designers for making good games look even better. The lighting in the game was fair and that's the only positive. The story line has been done how many hundreds of times before and there is no originality or thought to any concept. Can designers actually be hit with plagiarism? Might wana look into that with this game. With a bland plot one would think this game would have graphics. Uhmm, no, I have regular Xbox games with better texture and shading. The models were horrible. The game play is anything but smooth. It is choppy at best and being hung up on small benches and bushes is very frustrating. I can't believe you guys rated this game higher than Too Human. Are there any real gamers out there or will we just play any first person shooter these guys will stick in front of us?

Jack S gave it a7:
This game is not the best game ever witnessed by Pc or todays consoles. But it by far isnt the worst. The fact that it came out amidst the likes of Farcry 2, Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead and the countless other great games that were released over the last couple of months, and the fact tht it was labeled the same price tag left it as an obvious thing for critics to jump at and give a bad review, but the problem is people are to busy comparing to all these great games that they can;'t step bacvk and relise what a great game this actually is. Legendary tries hard to create a game that at times leaves you in awe and wondering why it got such a bad score, whether you stopped dead in your tracks by a ginourmous Kraken clawing at the big ben, or chased through New York City by a giant golem ripping apart the realisitic city sceneary, your never left unsatisfied after a play on this game. Yes, it has its flaws, and plenty of them, but Sparks Unlimited really did put everythin they could put into this game with thier budget, and they did a bloddy good job of it too. The ytried there best, tried something new and were slated unfairly for it. I'll be surpries if Sparks unlimited ever takes off after pulling off thid game and seing the pathetically negetive revbiews its got. A good buy if your looking for an action packed, massivle cinematic game, but are not hoping for anything truly ' Legendary ' I give this game a justified 7 out of 10

Justin G gave it a4:
The story line to this game is awesome and really unique, but it could have been way better in a lot of things. For example graphics and controls. I mean the graphics weren't terrible, but they were not as good as i was hoping. And the controls are not that bad either, but the aiming seems a little off and the difference in the weapons strength is a bit ridiculous. Im not so fond of the jumping either. Its a good game still, but a lot of it is just plan annoying. All in all the whole thing about pandora's box is awesome, now only if they could have fixed a lot of other things. It was a good try at a game though.

Dylan gave it a7:
Legendary is definitely a case where the developer's reach exceeded their grasp. Sure, not every technical element of the game is spot-on. Sure, the pace might be a little jumpy sometimes, and it's probably too hard alltogether. Still, Legendary is worth playing, on the strength of its spectacle alone. The developers have mastered the art of the scripted sequence--Half-Life's have nothing on what happens here. The first twenty minutes alone make Legendary required playing for anyone who can appreciate a game that makes you feel like you're living through an epic summer blockbuster.

Discuss this game in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use