We can only assume that the DCU has a version of Gumtree just for superheroes. In fact, there’s probably a listing on there right now that reads:
“Team wanted to occupy discrete mountain hideout. Furnished with trophy room and sparring area. Available now, cheap rent with some bills included. No pets, and no smokers are allowed in Mount Justice (sorry Constantine).”
You see, after Warner Bros unceremoniously cancelled the rather wonderful Young Justice animated series we feared their hideaway would stay empty forever. Now we wish it had, as tie-in game Young Justice: Legacy puts the final boot into the series while it’s face down on the ground. Honestly, we had almost forgotten that licensed tat like this even existed anymore.
Maybe we should praise developer Little Orbit. The studio found a way to surgically remove every entertaining characteristic of the Cartoon Network series and replace it with a trawl through bland, uninspired corridors. Forcing you to desperately mash buttons in blind hope that you might stumble across some semblance of entertainment. That’s something, right?
Should you have been fortunate enough to play through the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, you’ll be familiar with the melee centric combat on offer here, but Legacy fails to form any sort of satisfying feedback loop through the sluggish implementation of a simple melee combo system.
What’s worse, is that Legacy looks like a game from another era entirely. It’s ugly, and would certainly be in better company on the original Xbox than any of the other superhero-themed videogames to come out on Xbox 360 in the last decade.
At times Legacy threatens to be original – a squeeze of the left trigger will turn your face buttons into manifestations of your selected hero’s power. Not that you’ll ever really be able to enjoy the pleasures of digital superheroics, the animation is so out of sync with everything around it that you’ll likely to be frustrated to tears before reaching the end.
Young Justice: Legacy is impossible to recommend to anyone other than sadists. You see, Legacy supports co-operative play between three ‘friends’ – though let us tell you right now, controllers will be thrown in your direction at a speed that would make Kid Flash proud.
Legacy is a stark reminder of a couple of things: that the Young Justice name will be forever dragged through the dirt from now on, and, secondly, if you buy your kid this game they will probably hate DC forever. So unless you’re a Marvel fan with an agenda, you’ve been warned.
