AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER - THE BURNING EARTH (2007) REVIEW

PS2 version reviewed.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Burning Earth is an action advenutre game published and developed by THQ for the Playstation 2, Xbox 360, Wii, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS.

GAMEPLAY
My biggest issue with this game is that none of the elements feel different. Every characters has the same moves, just with different names really. Like the previous game, Aang is easily the best character as you'll be able to do all the elemental requirement parts. To put into perspective how silly this really is, Momo is as strong as all the other characters, throwing tomatoes does as much damage as bending fire, earth and water. There is no depth at all to any combat, and no real reason to do so, when you can actually just run past many encounters.

The game never really changes throughout, you'll use the same moves, fight mostly the same enemies and that's it really.

The boss battles are hilariously terrible once Aang's ranged attack gets powerful enough, as you can just stand there and blast the boss in question until the end of the fight. No strategy, tactics or anything, just standing and blasting with one button. The only boss battle that wasn't a fight had you running away from the boss, but ended up being annoying as you could get stuck on invisible walls that meant you'd have to redo the segment when you weren't at fault.

The camera can be a bit annoying too, you can't even move it either. Talking of camera work how about the cutscenes? None of the characters mouths move to their words and the game insists on zooming in when they talk, making it look really stupid. Before cutscenes starts characters are also often stuck in the combat pose when the scene was initiated making them look bizarre.

STORY
I wasn't expecting the game to be the longest but it ended so abruptly, somewhere about two thirds of the way through the second season of the TV show. It's pretty crazy and means not much really makes sense.

GRAPHICS

Looks alright I guess.

SOUND
It's actually from the show and appears more consistently than the first game, so in that regard this one wins.

VALUE FOR MONEY

The game is about 4 hours long and maybe pushing five for all the collectables and bonus content. That's certainly pretty poor for any price.

OVERALL
This game was on the right track but on the wrong train. They went in with that action adventure style where this franchise has so much potential, but that's where the similarities end really. It feels like so many other licensed games and the only reason it's really worth playing is if you're a big fan of the TV show.