The shooter is a broad church. BioShock and Half-Life 2 may have wowed with literary smarts and engaging characters, but there will always be games to remind us that the cost of admission is just the possession of a gun and something to point it at. But, as Legendary warns, if the very pinnacle of your ambition is to make a game in which you shoot griffons in the face, you had better ensure that this basic action is soundly implemented.

Legendary gets some of it right: the mythical beasties themselves, released into modern-day New York by the accidental opening of Pandora’s Box, are tightly designed and animated. Unfortunately, shooting them just isn’t particularly exciting. Part of the problem lies with pacing, as the game chooses to leave you dismally underpowered for the first few hours, but the larger issues are that control is lumpen and your arsenal feeble. In the 360 version, simply the act of turning is defective, periodically sticking and vastly impairing your ability to react. Though you can’t jump more than six inches from the ground, running and jumping propels you huge distances horizontally – a combination that doesn’t recommend the game’s platforming sections.

The game picks up after the first two chapters, however, when it eases the grip of scripting that constricts the player during the opening. The dev team has an eye for spectacle – a towering golem comprised of cars and other metallic detritus is a visual highlight – but these moments mostly serve to illustrate how dull your actual actions are by contrast. Nonetheless, the artists’ competence shines through: the environments can be surprisingly beautiful when the game dares to venture out of subways and sewers. It’s just a pity that these glimpses of ingenuity are in a game that otherwise attempts to do the very bare minimum in terms of interaction, and sometimes doesn’t even manage that.

4/10