New Legends offers gamers a blend of traditional action styles as well as new styles. This games background is set in a China that is filled with antique architectures, ancient weaponry and Chinese traditions. However this is where the game starts to veer, it is also set in a science fiction filled future. This future contains “hand cannon” guns, a flying dragon that is tethered by laser looking ropes and flying vehicles. Even the way the game is setup and played is a mix of 2D hack and slash fighting within a 3D world that unfolds in a storyline that can only be called "movie-like".

The background story of New Legends seemed to follow a traditional good versus evil struggle. For over 100 years China had been under an attack that has torn apart China between warring clans and politicians who are rather enjoying the benefits the war has provided them. From this chaos a man named Roa Khan emerged to unite the middle kingdom and claim China’s throne as new Emperor to bring peace to the war ravaged China.

Of course good could not prevail that long and Xao Gon emerged, a man who was still bitter that China allowed its enemies to continue to grow. Xao Gon formed an alliance with a demon from the other world and became the leader of a new revolution. Xao Gon shattered all dreams of a peaceful China when he executed Roa Khan and began his attack on the clan territories. It is up to your character, Sun Soo, to save the day and China’s future.

Chi, for your information, is built up along the way and is used in Soo’s super attack mode. New Legends also includes a damage indicator on Soo’s enemies that turns from green to red as the enemy is damaged. I must warn you more about relying on the compass. The compass is rather useless in any multiple height area, and I have witnessed the compass spin around so fast in this situation that you can only hope to find the next objective on your own.

New Legends is a single player game with only one difficulty setting. Unless you are a master on picking up combination moves immediately, be prepared to replay the first part of the games so that the limited number of lives you have are not wasted.

This game also allows you to save as you play; however, I must again warn you that the save only saves the mission you are on rather than the spot in the mission you are at. So if you are close to the end of an objective and die you WILL start at the beginning again, thus erasing all the time you had spent on that level. I certainly hope you have a great memory so you can get back to the spot where you died quickly.

The camera views in New Legends must also be discussed. The camera, at times, reminded me of Linda Blair in the Exorcist as it kept spinning the screen round and round. An example of this was when I was trying to move Soo away from an object and as the camera angle got "possessed" I ended up falling down a hill and dying. Also of note is that if you are engaged in combat in a tight indoor area the camera angle may flip as the program is “trying” to find the best angle. Maybe that is why I died so much playing in these areas.

Most areas of game play are a combination of pathways, bridges, obstacles, and buildings. I did enjoy the level that had Soo and Boo running down a hill to avoid the avalanche of rocks trying to crush them.

Another graphical complaint that I need to discuss is the choppiness. This game is filled with audio that is loaded off the disc when you trigger it via game play. This streaming audio caused the game to slow down so much that it almost froze my Xbox. I tested this game on another Xbox and it also caused the game’s video to almost freeze.

It seemed that these freezes in graphics and gameplay occurred as the game progressed. My Xbox had an extremely hard time recovering, and Soo died multiple times from the graphical slowdown since your character can’t inflict damage while the enemy could during these glitches. When there is no dialogue being played the graphics run smoothly, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to last long enough.