Legendary

Even with its technical glitches, you wonder why Legendary was met with such venom by the gaming community. Okay, it doesn't reinvent the wheel in terms of a first-person shooter (or survival horror, which it partly is) but Legendary does have a grand, apocalyptic feel to it, with plenty of dark areas where hungry monsters lurk.

The story revolves around Charles Deckard, a corporate art thief hired by shady organisation The Black Order (via its manager, Ormond Lefey) to locate and open Pandora's box. The Pandora myth, it turns out, was based on truth and by opening her box, Deckard unwittingly sets loose mythological creatures that quickly turn New York into Dante's Inferno. Opening the box also burns the 'Signet' tattoo into Deckard's hand, allowing him to absorb demon energy to replenish his health or send out shockwaves.

The player is thrown in at the deep end at the moment Deckard opens Pandora's box. You must navigate a way through the crumbling museum to meet up with Lefey's contact, Vivian Kane, who keeps in touch via your PDA (this also houses background info on each character, creature details and random messages intercepted from civilians concerning the 'outbreak').

Once Vivian has directed you out of the museum, you use your tracker to worm your way through the streets of New York and then down into the subways and sewers where Fire Drakes - sort of like Critters that spit lava - are crawling out of fiery pits in the earth. These monsters can be shot with your 9mm, shotgun, machine gun, or hacked to pieces with your axe at close range but to really finish them off try dousing them with water from a fire hydrant.

Werewolves hunt you in the Werehouse (where else?) and are fast little buggers that can only be killed by decapitation - if you shoot them without removing the head then they'll soon come back to life. After pushing switches to open doors, crawling through air ducts John McClane stylee and killing the Special Forces team that Lefey sent to finish you off, you still have to avoid creepy Pan's Labyrinth ghost fairies in the sewers (their disembodied giggles are quite unnerving in the dark underground - almost as much as their sharp claws).