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> Results: Avatar: The Last Airbender
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Cartoon Violence: your favorite cartoon characters battle familiar enemies in ways that look like they are part of the cartoon series. The new Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender is crazy popular with the elementary school boys in its target audience, so it is only natural that it gets a video game release for just about every platform possible (including one coming soon for the Wii!) The game is surprising for a few reasons: first, because it felt immediately like an action-RPG! Your view is top-down isometric, and you move with the D-pad and steer the camera with the L and R shoulder buttons. Your party engages enemies in battles using offensive and defensive moves and outside of combat there are towns to explore and a variety of mini-games. The combat balance is terrible and will prevent many fans from making significant progress. The rest of the game is pretty good ﾖ there is some voiced dialogue which is well done, and the sounds and graphics make you feel like part of the cartoon. Your companions are not very smart and are likely to charge right into trouble, occasionally making simple battles troublesome. Add in the lack of multiplayer and you have a decent game laden with enough troubles that it is definitely not recommended to the show's target audience, and not likely to appeal to those able to complete the campaign.  
Everything about the series is very positive in terms of the messages the heroes send to kids ﾖ maintain balance, respect nature and work together. The characters are played exactly as in the show ﾖ even using the same voice actors. Brother and sister Sokka and Katara constantly snipe at each other because of their differing beliefs, but it is all very casual stuff not anything offensive or demeaning.
The major thing that bothers me about this game is the difficulty. I assumed that the opening section was just a tutorial and that I would be all replenished with health and inventory items before entering the ﾑreal' game. But then I hit my first boss battle fifteen minutes or so into the game. I assumed that it was one of those set battles you are meant to lose or that you will be losing until your master joins the battle or something. Well, that wasn't right ﾖ I died and got a ﾑgame over' screen. So I tried again ... and again ... and again. Over an hour later, I was still going at this same boss, and I realized ﾖ 90% of the target audience will NEVER get past this battle. At that point I considered stopping and utterly trashing the game for failing to meet a fundamental requirement. I was in a bit of a conundrum ﾖ here is a game that I barely passed the first boss battle and neither of my kids were able to defeat that first boss (my older son would have managed it but after about twenty minutes he wanted to get back to Pokemon Ranger and didn't care if he ever saw this game again). I mean, how can it possibly be a kid's game when the first major battle is enough to stop most kids in their tracks? I persevered in the hopes that there would be a payoff that would allow me to make a ﾑyour hard work is aptly rewarded' point ... but that never comes. The rest of the game is just average stuff ... until you hit the next boss battle. Which version to buy? DS: Reviewed above. GBA: simplified experience is worse in every way, like a poor Zelda-clone PS2, XBOX & GameCube: Best versions ﾖ decent action-RPG based around the characters without the frustration PC: Same as console versions but with the same graphics and awful controls. PSP: looks great, but is terrible in every other way ﾖ this is the worst version of the game. Wii: unknown quantity as of this writing. Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Avatar: The Last Airbender |
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