PlatinumGames has stepped up with an interesting move recently. The Legend of Korra – which is basically Nickelodeon’s flagship animated series nowadays – is the sequel of Avatar: The Last Airbender, running on TV since 2012, going towards its final season. So what’s surprising about it? Well… how about the fact that the king of third person action/beat’em up games has developed its videogame adaptation!

Bayonetta. Maybe she needs no surprise; in early 2010, the creation of Hideki Kamiya (who has also made Devil May Cry’s first episode, then moving onto Viewtiful Joe and Okami) has improved the genre created by DMC drastically.

PlatinumGames has also made several other games like Madworld, Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and The Wonderful 101 – the last one being another of Kamiya’s games. None of them can be considered as a low budget title, giving much more of a shock factor for them making the Korra game!

The art of bending

The Legend of Korra does show how the developers love this genre, despite the fact that we’re talking about a 15 dollar title. You didn’t read it wrong, a fifteen dollar price. But because of this, we can’t really expect a perfected gameplay – while it’s obviously cut back, it still has its good points.

Korra can change between the four elements at any time (in the beginning at least – you’ll lose them later on, slowly regaining all four), and these elements change the gameplay style. Earthbending is for the tanking players: slow movement and powerful attacks. Airbending is speed oriented, firebending is focusing on close range and waterbending is for longer ranged attacks.

The developers clearly admitted that the game can be done with a single element, if the player feels like it. While it might not raise the replayability (the complete lack of multiplayer definitely won’t – it’s the price for a cheap game!), combining attacks can do that. You can check a few YouTube videos out, some people has made amazing combo videos – they ended up catching the attention of the producer, Atsushi Kurooka. It’s worth taking a look what he posts on Twitter, sometimes giving out hints and secrets about the game.

Budget-clues

It’s literally impossible to create a marvelous game if it’s based on a license (movie-to-game and series-to-game adaptations are mostly bound to fail most of the time), especially because of quarter of the price compared to AAA titles on the Store. Yes, on the Store: on both the PS3 and PS4, the game is digital-only, you can’t find a boxed version.

But despite the low price, the cartoon’s style is remarkably ported over to the game! Both PlayStation versions run on 60 frames per second in its cel-shaded graphics, which is barely different from the cartoon’s looks. If you’re a fan, you could spot how the enemies are mostly based on the first two seasons’, while the last, 4th one is running in the telly. And since we’re at comparisons, the music also does its job as it is on Nickelodeon, although the voice acting is different from that.

Let’s not avoid pointing out something; the game is short. There’re eight missions, you can finish them off in about 5-6 hours total, then you can move onto New Game+ (or how about the Extreme difficulty?), but you’ll spot something before you get to the credits: the enemies are very similar to each other, while the combat system is reminiscent to the duo of Bayonetta/MGR’s, it’s still toned down, yet basic and easily learnable.

…or you can move on to play the Pro-Bending League, which is basically an equivalent of a tournament. It seems like it’s a dodgeball game with sumo elements thrown in. I find it an interesting idea.

Only for fans

…and I do not clearly mean the fans of the show. If you’re interested about PG’s works, then getting this game won’t drain your wallet that much; sure, the camera isn’t always perfect and the game itself isn’t going to be remembered years after the release, it’s still visually okay, has a good pace and interesting in general. For this price, you can’t expect much, but what you can is found in TLoK. One final thing; the story was not really followable for me, because I haven’t really seen the series in TV. Anyway, it’s still an okay game in my opinion.

-V-

Editor: Activision

Developer: PlatinumGames

Genres: TPS, action, Open world

Publication: 2014 November