Review Summary: Rock out and kill shit
Legendary is not a well known game. Developed by Spark Unlimited and released in 2008, the game retained a small following among First-Person aficionados but was largely ignored by the mainstream gaming sphere. Yet those of us who had the pleasure of playing this game on release were able to experience a fun, but flawed, game. Yet, despite the games middle-market flare, one aspect of the game stands the test of time, its soundtrack by Jack Grillo and Ricardo Hernandez. Utilizing a simple style and framework, the soundtrack to Legendary features an incredible array of guitar-laden tracks filled to the brim with the sort of Hard Rock edge that defined gaming in 2008.
The album is mostly composed of slow droning tunes and heavy percussion based tracks. Songs like
All Alone and
Enemy of My Enemy have low volume output with a heavy focus on post-Rock droning and looped instrumentation. Though there are harder tracks like
Minotaur! and
Flashpoint which begin slow and small but eventually evolve into genuine Hard Rock territory with electric guitar distortion and heavy drum pounding. There are even songs inspired by Heavy Metal; with
The Tower featuring a Doom Metal tempo and creepy guitar pricking which works very well as the song to the final area in the game.
Without a doubt the best track on the record goes to
It's Just Business, without a doubt the fastest track on the album and one of the soundtrack's earliest.
It's Just Business goes ham on guitar and drums at 120 bpm which really helps the player feel like a genuine badass and bullets whir around you. One benefit to this soundtrack is that dialogue from scenes in the game are put inside the tracks, this allows those who haven't played the game to get a general idea of the story, which benefits the records aesthetic greatly.
There is nothing inherently special about this album; it is pure, unfiltered, Hard Rock. Yet it is genuinely good at what it does. The soundtrack was never designed to be symbolic or diverse in it's instrumentation. It was never meant to immerse the player in the games world or be the recipient of prestigious awards by fart-sniffing art critics. This soundtracks job was to give you great music that you could listen to while you rock out and kill shit.
