Word is once again making the rounds about Legendary, the “you opened Pandora’s box and now werewolves and gryphons are attacking the city” first-person shooter from Spark Unlimited. It was recently shown off at PAX, and by all accounts it’s actually exceeding expectations.
The werewolves in particular are getting some very positive comments. From Bart Robson’s review at Thunderbolt Games:
While being attacked by a particularly ravenous wolfman, I literally found myself swearing out loud – with the demonstrators present, no less. The atmosphere is perfect, so moments like that are incredibly tense – the relief and amusement I felt when I finally managed to jam my shotgun into the offender’s mouth and pull the trigger was insurmountable.
In this interview with Play.tm, Spark Unlimited’s CEO Craig Allen talks about how the werewolves are his favourite creatures in the game:
…with the werewolves, the team wanted a creature that could move on any surface and use the environment as intelligently as the player – which meant they not only had to build a system for all surface navigation but for tagging objects as destructible, throwable, and burnable.
Further, to make the creatures even more believable, they added rage and damage states to reinforce their predator like behavior and intelligence. Because of this you’ll actually be able to see changes in the attack priorities of the creatures based on how you’re engaging them and what they have to use in their environment. They actually adjust strategy from at first using long range attacks by seeking out objects they can throw, to a kind of run and slash, to an all out mall attack when they’re completely enraged.
Legendary ships October 21st in North America (over a week earlier than previously reported), and you can preorder it from Amazon for Playstation 3