Legendary - Updated With Screens/Previews Etc..

LEGENDARY: THE BOX was one of the best games at E3, a shooter where you battle the beasts of myth using real-world firepower.

From the guys who brought you the first slew of Medal of Honor games comes Legendary: The Box, an insanely intense first-person shooter where Pandora's Box has been accidentally unlocked (whoops), forcing you to battle a fearsome cast of mythological beasts. Not only is this the best game in independent publisher Gamecock's lineup, it's one of the most visually stunning games shown at E3 overall.

Apocalypse Now
Legendary begins by placing you in the role of Deckard, a professional art thief who has been hired to retrieve an artifact from a New York City museum. But the heist doesn't go as planned when the chest clamps onto his hand and sears a symbol into his flesh, which triggers the mythical Pandora's Box to open. The museum begins to crack and crumble as the first round of mythological creatures spew forth from the box. Armed with nothing, you must escape the museum before you are buried in hundreds of tons of concrete. You run for the exit with other museum guests, dodging falling rubble and earthquakes. This whole sequence is one of the most impressive first-level sequences since the original Half-Life train sequence.

Man vs. Myth
Downtown NYC rattles, cars bounce around on the street like toys, and an Armageddon-like hail of debris rains down on the city as enormous Griffons fly through the sky. If the player stands still for more than a moment they will be literally eaten alive by the Griffons, which are already chewing off the heads of everyone around you.

The game has a distinct action movie quality to its gameplay--as the rock music starts up and you're firing lead into monsters, flicks such as Aliens will come to mind. But the blockbuster feel to Legendary isn't done in such a way that makes it feel like a mindless arcade kill-everything-in-sight kind of game. Spark, the game's developers, notes that there is very little scripting in the game, and even though there are many moments of where the action is extremely thick, there are calmer moments where the game relies on slower-paced suspense to builds up to the massive fights with mythological creatures.

A Legendary Experience
Legendary is a shooter at heart, but there are several gameplay elements that add more dimension to the player's experience other than just annihilating enemy after enemy. For instance, you can extract life out of dead enemies by utilizing the power of the scar left on you from opening Pandora's Box.

The game is spread out across 8 episodes, the first being the New York City level just discussed. Another episode, titled Cathedral, takes place in London where huge werewolves are running around that you have to decapitate with bullets in order to keep them from resurrecting themselves. The werewolves behave depending on their mood, meaning that at first they will fight casually, throwing things at you, but once they become filled with rage, you'll have to wield deadlier weapons such as the Saw (a powerful automatic gun) to put them down. Human enemies who are part of the Black Order are also encountered in this episode.

Multiplayer modes will also be available for Legendary, but the developers insist on not doing it the way every other FPS game has done in the past. There will be no deathmatches, team deathmatches, capture the flag, etc. Instead, expect to play modes that you've never seen in any other game, modes that "have to include creatures," the developers explain.

Legendary: The Box ships in early Spring 2008 for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC and its sure to catch a whole lot of gamers by surprise.