Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom [PS3]

Check out this dream we had after spending a long play session with Untold Legends on the PS3. After committing some grievous sin, we were sentenced to count all the grains of sand on a beach. Being gamers, we asked for an alternate: how about we count every press of the square button in an Untold Legends campaign? The judge balked -- 'how cruel do you think I am?'

The long and short of it is that, while Untold Legends may be a duly-hyped PlayStation 3 launch title, the actual gameplay is much the same thing we've experienced from other Sony Online games. (Champions of Norrath on the PS2 and two unrelated Untold Legends PSP releases). Pick a character, run towards the enemy, hit the attack button many many times, repeat.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. The genre in general is like following a breadcrumb trail you know leads nowhere in particular, but hopefully passes by some interesting sights while the very action of following passes the time. So, as in so many other hack/slash/collect games, there are loads of treasures to find, a broad array of enemies to face, and a due amount of eye candy to string us along from one cookie-cutter quest to the next.

Abandoning the tales stretched thin in the PSP games, Dark Kingdom instead features a wholly new storyline. What's amazing is that SOE has injected so little life into these characters and story. Superficially, this could be a Final Fantasy plot: heroes seek to overthrow a king overtaken by dark power. A litany of extra touches are missing, however, notably character growth, individual interaction and scripting that at least nods towards the notion that we're meant to believe someone, somewhere, would intone these lines.

If those old-gen limitations don't put you off, there's plenty of time-killing on tap. At the outset you'll pick from a version of the classic Gauntlet character lineup: warrior, mage, scout. The warrior is burly and powerful, the mage weak and good at a distance, the scout a balance between the two. While there are obvious distinctions between each, they're mostly superficial, as the play style ultimately comes down to the same button-mashing action.

As per most fantasy action games, killing generates experience, which over time upgrades character stats and powers up the nine spells available to each character. Even the warrior has magic at hand, further blurring the line between the three archetypes. Rather than a liberal distribution of new weapons, however, your character's primary weapon will remain constant, but upgraded by spending essence collected in battle.

If nothing else, Dark Kingdom is extremely good about visually reflecting changes made to your armor and weapons; ultimately that's the only action you can take that will personalize the game at all. Otherwise, many elements make the game appear as if it was originally conceived for the PS2, then upgraded: the draw distance isn't very deep, most of the environment is static, and interactions between characters and objects can be sticky. Dark Kingdom looks a lot better now than it did when we first saw it, but the look and feel of the final product still isn't up to the level of Genji or Resistance.

For the hack and slash-inclined, there is a 4-player online option that improves the game by adding a cooperative spirit. In a surprising bout of flexibility, you're allowed to take any save game online, and to save online progress so that it's reflected in your offline game. Granted, the play isn't much deeper when online, as the basic combat is unchanged, but it's at least more social and has the potential for team interaction.

Playing through Untold Legends on a next-gen system leads to an obvious question: where can this genre really go from here? Graphics bump aside, little has changed since we clicked the mouse one million times in Diablo. We might not be asking that question if this adventure wasn't so obviously linked to Sony's last console. Perhaps the inevitable sequel will manage to truly bring the gameplay into the future.