During a heavily scripted opening sequence, huge Griffins appear in the middle of New York, sweeping away people and cars. A towering Golem, made out of vehicles and bits of buildings, rampages through the streets, ploughing straight through everything in its path. Werewolves prowl through the ruins, shredding anyone unfortunate enough to get in their way. Amidst the chaos, Deckard is literally scarred by his encounter with the box, the image of the Animus burnt on his hand. With this he is able to absorb the energy of dispatched creatures to replenish his own health, but it is also the only hope of resealing the box and undoing his mistake.

All this certainly sounds promising, and during the initial sequence the carnage is undoubtedly entertaining, with a real sense of scale. However it’s not long before it starts to fall apart faster than a timber yard managed by a pyromaniac who's lost his medicine.

Powered by the Unreal 3 engine, there’s no denying that some parts look pretty good – the Griffins and Werewolves, which feature heavily in the game, are brilliantly animated. The hazy low-level light of some levels looks nice; well, at least until you start to look too close and realise you can actually see the light source object from the game's engine. If your alarm bells hadn’t been ringing before, they certainly will be by the time you first meet up with your in-game assistant. Not only does she sound like a middle-aged schoolmarm, she’s also so badly put together that she looks like a square-jawed transsexual.

By the time you start seeing the same character models being reused over and over (just how did that guy survive being torn in half/trampled on/eaten alive?) and civilians writhing around spurting blood from their groins (it’s anyone’s guess as to whether that’s intentional or not), you’ll be well prepared for cut-scenes where the humans bounce along at high speed like they’ve got springs in their shoes. It’s like the staff of some God-awful, low budget PC adventure have been let loose with the engine as part of an in-house training day.

All of this might be bearable if the game was up to scratch, but sadly there’s not even a rough diamond underneath it all. The aiming, essential to any half-decent shooter, is twitchy and frustrating, with the player's turning speed seriously limited when firing. With enemies being much faster than the player, this makes shifting targets a frustrating experience but ultimately even this doesn’t matter since the hit detection is so poor. You can unload as much ammo as you’d like into a moving human enemy, but there’s virtually no chance of hitting them no matter how good your aim.

The human enemies are actually one of game's biggest problems. Not only are they dressed like laughable, B-grade superhero rejects, they’re also capable of destroying your health in seconds flat from an impossible distance - more than a close encounter with a Werewolf and its razor-sharp claws. Due to poor implementation and rubbish aiming, you aren’t even able to return the favour at any great distance, especially since they seem to soak up whole clips of bullets. It gets even worse when the game glitches and they actually become invincible, leaving you no option but to die and start from the last checkpoint with the hope that it doesn’t happen again. Speaking of which, any game designer who thinks it’s a good idea to put checkpoints before unskippable cut-scenes (and achingly dull ones at that) is clearly in need of a severe reminder that games are supposed to be a form of entertainment.

The player will find that the game continues on in this appalling vein for the very short time that it lasts. That is, if they can be bothered getting past the fourth level. By this point they will have seen almost everything the game has to offer. Enemies won’t become any more varied, almost all the weapons have been handed to the player, the puzzles just start to repeat themselves over and over and the plot will have become so wafer thin that you’ll be praying it descends into comedy in order to give it some sort of justification. Sadly it doesn’t, and so the only thing left is to marvel at the countless design flaws; like being locked into several close-quarters situations where the designer's idea of a `challenge` was to throw over-powered enemies at you as an endurance test of how long it would take before you attempt to mash the joypad through your skull.

The designers have gone to the bother of putting in a multi-player mode where players compete to see which team can fill Animus containers the fastest by dispatching enemies. We’d like to be able to tell you if this mode is any good. Sadly, the `community` is already more lifeless than the Moon, no doubt due to its limited number of maps and the fact that the single-player campaign is so limp. The indications are that it wasn’t so much a beacon of shining hope, more an express train barrelling down the tunnel towards you.

If there is one tiny, pin head-sized positive, it’s that the music is quite nice. At times it has a very subdued quality, reminiscent of the better parts of the 28 Days Later soundtrack and God Speed You Black Emperor. But that’s hardly any compensation for the overall state of the game.

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. This will certainly be another damning blow to Atari, who were involved with publishing it, especially given that their other title, Alone in the Dark, wasn’t exactly an exemplary title either. The only thing that will go down in history about Legendary is that, unlike Pandora’s Box, this one doesn’t even have any hope sitting at the bottom.