NEW LEGENDS (XBOX)
There’s something oddly fascinating about standalone games, those which garnered only a single instalment due to a myriad of factors. Be it commercial failure, developers collapsing or just finishing on a conclusive ending, many of these one-offs exist in relative obscurity. New Legends would prove a different beast in this category: the only game to come from Infinite Machine, a developer comprising of many staffers from Lucasarts. Sadly, commercial failure and an inability to acquire publisher funding for their next title saw the studio shuttered after this lone game. But as those unlucky enough to play this attest to, it was a lack of quality that proved the biggest issue here.
New Legends offers hack-and-slash action revolving around an uprising in China. As Xao Gon and his superpowered offspring take over the land, Sun Soo witnesses his father’s death and the technologically advanced land being dominated by this new regime. After a breakout at the mine he is imprisoned in, Soo begins to gather allies to fight against the tyranny which oppresses his land. The story isn’t short on content, with plenty of cut-scenes and dialogue during gameplay. However, poor voice acting, generic writing and lacklustre animations quickly see the thread start to bore. While watching friendlies attempt to chat with you as they’re being attacked during combat is quite the sight, this style of storytelling falls flat and will see most players switching off.
There’s something oddly fascinating about standalone games, those which garnered only a single instalment due to a myriad of factors. Be it commercial failure, developers collapsing or just finishing on a conclusive ending, many of these one-offs exist in relative obscurity. New Legends would prove a different beast in this category: the only game to come from Infinite Machine, a developer comprising of many staffers from Lucasarts. Sadly, commercial failure and an inability to acquire publisher funding for their next title saw the studio shuttered after this lone game. But as those unlucky enough to play this attest to, it was a lack of quality that proved the biggest issue here.
New Legends offers hack-and-slash action revolving around an uprising in China. As Xao Gon and his superpowered offspring take over the land, Sun Soo witnesses his father’s death and the technologically advanced land being dominated by this new regime. After a breakout at the mine he is imprisoned in, Soo begins to gather allies to fight against the tyranny which oppresses his land. The story isn’t short on content, with plenty of cut-scenes and dialogue during gameplay. However, poor voice acting, generic writing and lacklustre animations quickly see the thread start to bore. While watching friendlies attempt to chat with you as they’re being attacked during combat is quite the sight, this style of storytelling falls flat and will see most players switching off.
Muddy textures, a lack of detail and bland design mean New Legends has some of the worst graphics of any Xbox-exclusive
Things barely improve with the gameplay. Divided into more than thirty stages, most see you partaking in combat or navigating using light platforming. Levels are rather large but sometimes resemble a pre-alpha game with how little detail, intricacy and interaction there is, resulting in bland battlegrounds. Heading indoors proves even worse, thanks to a troublesome camera that gets stuck on objects and corners with alarming ease. This makes combat or platforming indoors a daunting prospect, leading to many cheap moments where you simply can’t see what’s coming. While Soo can tank a fair bit of damage, dying reveals a lack of mid-mission checkpoints, and with most stages taking between 10 and 30 minutes, you can lose a lot of progress with these issues, seeing the experience descend into frustration. It’s worth mentioning that you must save manually to retain progress, and while you can save at any point during a mission, you still start from the beginning upon death.
It's a shame because combat offers a lot of weaponry to experiment with. Sun Soo can equip weapons in both hands, and consequently, smaller armaments can be dual-wielded. You can also find a plethora of two-handed weapons such as staffs and axes. Guns, both smaller and heavy, can also be found, and often prove handy against similarly equipped foes. Along with typical strikes, you can perform a special move after charging your power meter and parries with a well-timed block. There’s a lot of room for experimentation here, be it wielding a smaller blade and a firearm or trying a bigger weapon, and you can easily swap between four selected weapons during gameplay. It’s just a shame that combat grows repetitive and tiring due to the AI. Friendlies are borderline useless, getting stuck on objects and dealing little damage to foes. Enemy AI is only slightly better, mostly due to being able to stun-lock you as multiple foes sequentially attack you, but it’s not what you’d call fun. Things reach a nadir with bosses, whose tedious attack patterns and cheap tactics prove teeth-grinding.
It's a shame because combat offers a lot of weaponry to experiment with. Sun Soo can equip weapons in both hands, and consequently, smaller armaments can be dual-wielded. You can also find a plethora of two-handed weapons such as staffs and axes. Guns, both smaller and heavy, can also be found, and often prove handy against similarly equipped foes. Along with typical strikes, you can perform a special move after charging your power meter and parries with a well-timed block. There’s a lot of room for experimentation here, be it wielding a smaller blade and a firearm or trying a bigger weapon, and you can easily swap between four selected weapons during gameplay. It’s just a shame that combat grows repetitive and tiring due to the AI. Friendlies are borderline useless, getting stuck on objects and dealing little damage to foes. Enemy AI is only slightly better, mostly due to being able to stun-lock you as multiple foes sequentially attack you, but it’s not what you’d call fun. Things reach a nadir with bosses, whose tedious attack patterns and cheap tactics prove teeth-grinding.
It doesn’t help that New Legends might be one of the worst-looking Xbox exclusives. Everything looks muddy, unflattering or jittery, like a high-res fifth-gen title. Textures are flat and garish, animations look woeful and character models lack detail. Levels may be large, but they suffer from pop-in and plenty of hideous texture work and some of the poorest-looking skyboxes you’ll see on the console. Worse still, performance is extremely jittery, even seeing the game pause for a couple of seconds during the busiest action, which affects timing and inputs. Even for a 2002 release, New Legends is really ugly, especially next to the likes of Dead or Alive 3 and Halo. Sound fares marginally better thanks to some decent, fitting music, but with poor looping causing tracks to take several seconds to restart, it feels jarring. Combat effects are okay, but often drown out the dialogue and music.
Perhaps mercifully, New Legends is rather short. Even with all the frustrations, most players will likely finish it in under 10 hours. Those hoping for unlockables or additional content will be disappointed, as completion offers no tangible rewards. For everyone else, the feeling of relief will likely outweigh this. It felt like a game rushed to market, not helped by the fact that bugs and glitches are prevalent. One jump even resulted in Soo getting stuck and unable to jump back to escape, forcing a mission restart. There’s an alarming lack of polish.
Perhaps mercifully, New Legends is rather short. Even with all the frustrations, most players will likely finish it in under 10 hours. Those hoping for unlockables or additional content will be disappointed, as completion offers no tangible rewards. For everyone else, the feeling of relief will likely outweigh this. It felt like a game rushed to market, not helped by the fact that bugs and glitches are prevalent. One jump even resulted in Soo getting stuck and unable to jump back to escape, forcing a mission restart. There’s an alarming lack of polish.
Neither the story nor the gameplay will motivate players to persist
New Legends would end up falling into obscurity along with its developer Infinite Machine, forgotten by even the most ardent Xbox owners. To be honest, it’s for good reason. While some parts of the experience form a slither of fun, these are drowned out by shoddy gameplay, frustrating design, game-breaking bugs and a woeful presentation. Not even dual-wielding knives can salvage the combat, which is undone by an uncooperative camera and cheap AI. As an action game, it fails miserably. As a story of hope, it’s comically underwhelming, and unless you simply must own every exclusive the system would see, Xbox owners would do well to pass on this mess.
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VERDICT
"New Legends suffers from shoddy gameplay, frustrating design, game-breaking bugs and woeful presentation. Xbox owners would do to give this a wide berth." OVERALL: 3/10 |
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