Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Burning Earth

Rating Everyone Genre role-playing Publisher THQ External Links Official THQ Website

In 2006 Nickelodeon’s hit show Avatar: The Last Airbender made its first appearance on the video game scene. THQ took all your favorite characters from the show and brought them to multiple systems in a top selling title. Now they plan to continue the story of Aang, Katara, Sokka, and for the first time, Toph, and Jet as they battle against the evil Fire Nation continues in Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Burning Earth.

The Avatar's adventures continue. Having mastered the elemental arts of both Air and Waterbending through the events of the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Nickelodeon, the young hero Aang has now set his sights on the Earth Kingdom. There, he hopes to find a new teacher, one who'll instruct him in the stone-shaping and mountain-moving ways of Earthbending – and bring him one step closer to becoming the true reincarnation of the Avatar of legend, the only warrior who ever mastered all four elements. Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Burning Earth focuses on this new quest to find an Earthbending master and the events of the cartoon show's second season, and does so by putting players into fights. Lots and lots of fights.

Each action stage in The Burning Earth features two simultaneously active heroes, working together. You'll get the original trio of main characters: Aang, the Avatar-in-training who's most adept at manipulating the wind; Katara, his trusted friend who excels at Waterbending; and Sokka, the goofy-but-lovable guy with a love for throwing boomerangs. But new characters also join up along the way, including Toph, the blind fighting Earthbender and Jet, the gang's sometimes-foe, sometimes-friend who dual-wields a couple of hook swords. You even get to surf around on Appa, the flying bison, on occasion. That's an interesting event, especially for established fans of the show, who'll love being able to simultaneously command such a variety of different heroes this time around.

In single player mode, you can swap back and forth between the two current characters at any time by pressing the L button. The character not being directly controlled will follow along through A.I., fighting, moving and jumping across gaps automatically. In two player mode, both characters will, of course, be controlled by human players,which is preferable, because the auto A.I. kind of stinks. A negative leveled against last year's Avatar title was its strict focus on single player brawling, and lack of an option for two players to work together. But now, with that option in place, it's almost a necessity, because your partner character will often just get in the way or do nothing at all if you're playing by yourself. The A.I. handles moving and jumping well enough. But once those lots and lots of fights start happening, they'll quickly become useless.

This rings especially true in boss battles, where the rather casual difficulty of the rest of the game is elevated into an actual challenge. Surviving these encounters with lords of the Fire Nation, giant swamp monsters and the like often means having quick timing to dodge deadly attacks, or getting into specific position to deal back damage yourself. You'll be on your own here if you’re single-player, but the good thing is that your partner takes no damage, at least none of what I’ve seen.

So two player co-op is the way to go, and the game's puzzle designs support that focus. In-between those many battles, you'll come across basic challenges that task you to interact with the environment and your partner in some simple way. Having Aang blast a gust of air into a pipe while Sokka simultaneously pulls a lever, having Katara focus her Waterbending skill into creating a bridge of ice, et cetera. Each character has his or her own unique abilities, which are also upgradeable over time, and that's a good thing.

While the simplicity of design is beneficial to the games' puzzles, it's detrimental to the game's fighting engine. The brawling is too straightforward and repetitive in The Burning Earth. The earnable upgrades to each character's signature abilities give the design just a bit more depth, as you earn points over time that can be allotted to either enhancing your melee, distance, or special attacks. But these enhancements do not provide much of a contrast. Aang's big blast of air becomes a slightly bigger blast of air, or Sokka gets one more spinning kick thrown into his standard melee combo.

The game is a crude mix of Prince of Persia and Diablo, I would say. It’s essentially a lot of moving and fighting. But all together, they have created a solid game. I would love to see what the game looks like on a next gen console, especially the Wii. I would assume the other versions might even have some minor voice acting, which is always a delight.