I wouldn't say the reboot sucks. It's only one episode in and I did like some things about it. However, I will say I found the first episode to be underwhelming. I'll start with the negatives.
-As TMH said, I'm not a fan of those contestant interjections. They felt like pace breakers more than anything else. While it's nice to learn more about the contestants, Legends in the past worked really well without the interjections similar to what a lot of reality shows have. These interjections result in episodes being an hour long. I honestly preferred it when Legends was half an hour. It made the episodes more digestible if you get what I mean.
-Each episode will only have four teams of two competing. This first episode saw the exclusion of the Orange Iguanas and the Silver Snakes. However, judging by the second episode promo at the end of this episode, it looks like the Silver Snakes will appear. I wish it stayed at six teams, but that's just my personal preference. This really wasn't too big of a con in my opinion.
-New host Cristela Alonzo's first performance was underwhelming. Echoing what TMH said, she didn't seem that invested, which isn't good at all. I know Kirk took a while to get things going and obviously Cristela could get it going at some point too, but her first episode wasn't all that impressive.
-The way the show told the story with the cartoony looking images looked.....cheesy? I think that's the right word to describe it? I wasn't too big on that. I thought it looked silly. Maybe that's a better word to describe it. I wasn't a fan of that.
-Another thing I didn't like is the fact that temple runs can no longer end via temple guard capture. Yep, another thing that TMH mentioned as being a negative. It was fun watching teams go through the temple and wondering if they would make it to the artifact or get caught by the third temple guard if the team had one or one and a half pendant of life. Now teams are guaranteed to enter the temple with two pendants due to how the temple games work (two games, one pendant earned for each one and if the teams split the games, a tiebreaker determines the winner and it nets them a second pendant). Obviously it would suck if a run ends in capture super early like in Elizabeth I's Golden Ship, but early ends were rare anyway and usually it was the team's fault for letting it happen (*cough* Harriet Tubman run *cough*). I feel like doing it this way with team's being guaranteed two pendants for the temple run kind of ruins the tension, especially when it looks like there's only one set path the team can take to get to the item.
-Did we really need the Chime sponsorship? We already get plenty of those ads on YouTube, so seeing them again here left me feeling annoyed.
Now the positives. I'll just sum it up with this sentence: even though things look different, it's still Legends of the Hidden Temple.
+The Moat was a little different, but it still felt like the moat if you catch my drift. It involved doing multiple things before ringing the gong. The first three teams to succeed move on, the last team is eliminated.
+The Steps of Knowledge are pretty much unchanged and that's fine. No complaints here other than the aforementioned silly looking imagery used to tell the story.
+The Temple Games were fun to watch. It's only two games this time around, but I still found it to be entertaining. Each game was team based and they both had multiple objectives that had to be completed before hitting the button on the gong pedestal. The second game had one team play the game while the other team stood back and watched to see how fast they could complete it. If the second team isn't able to beat the first team's time, then a pendant is awarded to the first team. I thought the temple games were good. I like it.
+The temple has been revamped with some new rooms and I think they're good. Rooms like The Dark Forest, Spider's Lair, and the ever popular Shrine of the Silver Monkey are back, but the new rooms work rather well. I forgot the names already, but one room had the temple runner reach through three skeleton bodies to find a beating heart which must be inserted into a slot to open the door. Another room requires the runner to pull sticks out of a cylinder which drops objects onto the ground. One of them is a jade token and the player must find it and insert it into a slot to advance. Another room has the player finding articles of clothes to put onto a queen mannequin and once all of them are on, the next room opens. I like that the show is trying new things with the rooms and I thought they were good.
+Dee Bradley Baker back as the voice of Olmec! Of course this is a positive.
There are a couple of things I'm indifferent about. One is the lack of Kirk Fogg. I would've loved to see him make an appearance, even if it meant him being a cameo. However, I'm not gonna lose sleep over this. Also, temple runs are now 4 minutes instead of the previous three. I don't know how to feel about that yet, so I'll hold off on judgment here for now.
All in all, not bad. However, it wasn't that impressive. I feel like the cons outweigh the pros, which is a shame. Still, it is the first episode, so things could always improve. At least I hope.
Topic: Legends is coming back! (Read 12412 times)
