Reviews// The Legend of Korra

On paper The Legend of Korra should make an amazing video game. You take the show's writers, the voice cast and art direction, you then mix that with Platinum's pedigree for action heavy gameplay from franchises like Bayonetta and DMC...

So, what went wrong? I could be lazy, even though it is entirely accurate, and say 'everything'.

Let us rewind for a minute or two and get the assumption that if you're reading this you already know about the Avatar franchise (no, not Jim Cameron's lanky blue cat people film) out of the way.

The world of Avatar is built upon balance, elements and conflict. There are four nations, one each for the element of water, earth, fire and air. Each nation has within it a group of people who can control their nation's element. The people who can master an element are called Benders and the method for controlling an element is martial arts. As with most countries that maintain a highly trained standing army, conflict is never too far away.

To maintain the balance between nations there is a single child born in to each generation who can learn to control all four elements. This is an Avatar meant to represent all people, to help keep balance and prevent any one nation gaining the upper hand and destroying the rest, something the Fire Nation tried to do when the Avatar before Korra disappeared and left a lack of balance in the world.

Korra is set after that balance has been restored and the four nations live in relative peace. The game assumes you know all of this and have seen the first two 'Books' of Korra's journey. Without prior knowledge going in to this game would be confusing.

Now on to the actual game and why I had to re-write this review several times.

What does the game get right? Character animation during combat is beautiful - the rich, flowing movements from the show translate well in to a three-dimensional space, each element has its own unique flavour of martial arts preserved and rendered accurately, the accompanying particle effects also help lend a solidness to fighting that I have found lacking in some past Platinum games.

In-game character models are wonderful and almost entirely accurate, even if Korra is a bit slimmer than she is in the show. Korra is an intensely trained martial artist and her body reflects this with solid broad shoulders, a thicker torso without any fat so she retains a feminine form without being 'girly'. Korra at her prime is an image of peak fitness. In the game she looks like she's lost about 15% of that muscle mass and it can feel a bit jarring.

The music has been taken straight from the show and so is exceptional. Anyone who has seen the show will recognise and love that it hasn't been meddled with.

Now, on to the bad.

Korra's combat maybe beautiful and solid, but the enemies you go against have almost zero variety. You will fight the same faceless opponents over and over again and you will die a lot, because this game's idea of a difficulty curve is to add more of them and have them constantly stun-lock you with moves that cannot be countered. There is a counter system that throws you in to thumb stick juggling quick-time events.

All of the voice work feels wrong, which is bizarre in itself because these actors are the same people who work on the show. I can only assume that they weren't recorded together and so couldn't play off of each other like we are used to hearing. This ends up making everything sound cut off and the conversations don't flow as they should. The script that they are reading from also sounds second-rate, which is surprising considering the usual deftness with which these characters are handled.

The music is excellent, except that it is used in all the wrong ways and feels like it is being forced to fit a game segment that it clearly doesn't go with.

Every so often the cut scenes jump to two-dimensional clips that play at a lower resolution and different frame-rate to the main game. Normally I don't care about what FPS a game runs at, but the difference between these traditional animated scenes and the game assets moving at a high frame rate is enough to give anyone a headache.

There is a store for character upgrades and consumables. This shop is run by Uncle Iroh, one of the most beloved of characters across both Aang (the previous Avatar who vanished leading to the Fire Nation's attack) and Korra's adventures. He's been relegated to a simple, desperate attempt to cram in as much from the show as possible. Iroh deserves better.

We, the fans, deserve better.

Now for this game's greatest crime - Naga, Korra's Polar Bear-dog who you ride in what amounts to an 'endless' runner mini-game that thankfully does end. It's controls are terrible, the gem gathering mechanic is archaic and forced and the paths you can charge along are often bugged or so badly placed you end up getting stuck and have to reload a previous checkpoint.

If you are a fan of the show I implore you to avoid playing this game, it will only break your heart, and not in an Uncle Iroh singing to his long-dead son's grave kind of way, but in a wasted £15 that could have gone on something better kind of way.

If you really HAVE to play it, the game is mercifully short.

Pros:
+ Art style is lovely
+ Korra's combat animations are spot-on

Cons:
- Combat is overwhelming even on normal difficulty
- Enemies lack variety
- Story, script and voices do the show an injustice
- Naga, and Endless Runners in general
- Everything else

SPOnG Score 2/10