At E3, we sat down with the guys behind Legendary, a new FPS coming to a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC near you this September. While we didn’t get any actual hands-on with the game, we were shown the beginning introduction to the story as well as snippets throughout the game, highlighting various features and showcasing various strengths (and weaknesses). Hit the jump for more.

One of my first impressions of Legendary was that the concept was interesting, if somewhat cliche. Demons, hell on earth, mysterious groups of people doing mysterious things. Been there, done that. Though I suppose this recipe has been proven successful for games, thus the over-use. But anyway, back to Legendary.

Let’s talk about the story. As an international art thief, you’re hired to steal something from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Of course things go horribly wrong and it turns out that what you were sent in to steal is, in fact, Pandora’s Box. After unwittingly releasing a massive army of demons and other hellish beings on earth, you’re set loose in New York City trying to not get killed by various demony creatures. Soon you’re in the thick of a struggle between the mysterious “Dark Order” and the people resisting them.

The game has an interesting concept and on paper it sounds like a great idea, but I can’t get over how crappy the game looks visually. I don’t expect every game to have the near-photo-realism of Metal Gear Solid 4 or the amazingly beautiful and engrossing art direction of BioShock, but I was left rather underwhelmed by the graphics. Some of the game looks like it belongs a generation back, and some of it looks like it belongs on the PS3 and 360. The enemies, for example, look pretty cool and move realistically (or at least how I imagine gryphons and werewolves would look if the hellmouth suddenly opened beneath my feet), but the environments are blocky and in desperate need of some polish. I think what upsets me the most is that it’s obvious that they can make a great-looking game, but instead they made some great-looking elements in an otherwise mediocre-looking world. It’s not that I mind bad graphics, but such jarring differences in graphical quality tended to take me out of the game because they were so glaring.

Other than the graphics, the game looked to be pretty fun and entertaining. I just hope they turn the graphics up a notch where they need to, because otherwise this is more of a renter than a buyer when it’s released in a couple months.

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