Legend: Hand of God Preview
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It's this aspect of Legend where some innovation starts to shine through. The first is the mouse pointer. Usually a mouse pointer is exactly that, but in Legend: Hand of God, the developers have instead made the pointer into a character, a light elf. This little Tinkerbelle-like character acts as a light source and new player guide rolled into one.
The second innovation is really the only thing that sets Legend apart from ancient 16-bit games: the visual presentation. We say visual presentation rather than graphics because the graphics themselves, despite being pretty, are nothing amazing. For example, the various inventory and skill selection screens are nothing we haven't seen before. What makes Legend a step up from the norm however, is the quality of animation. Traditionally, if you meet a monster five time your height, you hack its shins and bite its ankles. You hack them hard. And that's pretty much all you do. From Age of Conan back to Neverwinter Nights the gaming world is positively littered with the corpses of giants and dragons that have died due to vicious lower-leg wounds. Legend bucks this trend because the combat animations change depending on your opponent, which means that combat looks much more immersive. Not only do you see a good array of combat animations but you also get suitably gruesome finishing moves, which we never get bored of seeing. Legend also throws in some fairly advanced physics to add to the fun. For example when you find a severed head lying around you can kick it down the road like a football.
