Joystiq impressions: Legendary: The Box

Legendary: The Box is quite possibly the worst name given to a game with a massive amount of potential. They could have called it Pandora and used one perfect word to describe this first-person shooter in a nutshell -- but they didn't. Thankfully, developer Spark has till Spring of 2008 to change the name. Pandora Legendary: The Box starts with a thief being hired to break into a museum to steal a box. Oops, turns out it's Pandora's box which the thief accidentally activates and all hell breaks loose -- literally. In an incredibly intense scene reminiscent of a Call of Duty or Medal of Honor sequence (coincidentally that's what the developers from Spark worked on previously), the world just plunges into chaos. You'll watch the whole thing happen in real time. From the moment the box is opened you'll attempt to escape the crumbling museum, avoid the griffins, try your best to soak in the insanity that ensues around you, and run away from a golem created from cars and building parts. If your character stops, he'll die.

A later piece of the game takes place in an English cathedral infested with werewolves. Yes, the developers are quite aware the issue there and are looking to tweak it. The controls are your standard FPS stuff and the weapons we saw are based on modern weaponry. You get ammo off the fallen soldiers belonging to the private army of the man who hired you to "steal" the box. Also, the box infuses you with the power to suck life force from fallen beasts to recover health. The game uses the Unreal Engine 3 and considering we're still a little under a year from seeing the final product, the game is already looking fantastic. The developers say where they invested time was in enemy recognition of objects and surroundings so that the experience is never the same twice. The werewolves don't take the same path to a target every time and they'll crawl walls, drop from the ceiling, jump over boxes and the only way they'll stay dead is by shooting off their heads.

The developers also said that multiplayer will be different, utilizing the creatures into various multiplayer types. Humans vs. creatures already sounds like a good and obvious multiplayer experience. We're excited to see more of this game as it comes along. It's still way too early to tell if the game will be any type of good, but a game that utilizes Call of Duty intensity with a modern tale of Pandora's box sounds very cool. Now somebody please change the name of this game to accurately convey how great this title could be when it releases.