Avatar: The Last Airbender

Reviewed by John Burrell Jr
February 20, 2007

Developer: THQ Studio Australia Publisher: THQ Platform(s): Wii, GameCube, DS/GBA, PS2, PSP, XBOX, PC Numbers of Players: 1 ESRB Rating: Everyone (10+) Website: Click Here

Screenshot from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Courtesy of THQ. Click image to enlarge.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a popular anime series on the Nickelodeon Network. This success has spawned a dungeon crawler video game to capitalize on the aforementioned prosperity. The Fire Nation has begun attacking the other three of the Four Nations. You play as Aang and his friends to foil their sinister plot.

Let me start this off by saying that this game is for children. Now, with that being said it’s a simple game. It is simple in design, simple in control scheme, and simple on the thrills for experienced hack ‘n slash gamers. The fact that you are limited to one player is a major drawback. Since they allow for use of multiple characters at the same time, then multiple players should be able to play together. Wii-mote functionality is an unnecessary addition as it adds little to no fun to gameplay. The cell shading is bad to look at especially if you’ve seen the show, due to the fact that it makes the game look nothing like the beautifully drawn series. The game tries some things that were good to see in a TV show game. The exploration of an area netted you powerful armor and weapons which was required for the ridiculously difficult fights with regular baddies (which is bad if it’s for younger children) was a big plus. All the character voices were there along with all your favorite characters from the show, and the story itself was an original one and not just retread from past episodes.

I’m giving this game a below average 6.5 rating and a Low Evo Factor. Avatar will go down as another novelty game because it can’t crossover to the older gamer due to its lack of true depth and the fact that even on the Wii the controls are better left to good old controllers. This wasn’t what it could have been but at least you can tell that they tried to pull something together from this license. Guess you can’t win them all.

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