Platform: Nintendo DS
Release Date:
NA: October 16, 2007
AU: October 25, 2007
EU: October 26, 2007
Publisher: THQ Inc.
Developer: Tose Co., Ltd.
Genre: Action Adventure
Saves: 3 save slots
I enjoyed the TV series of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The games always looked a bit too childish to me however. But when I found this game for super cheap, and realised Tose worked on it (who also worked on some of my favourite Dragonball games), I decided to give this one a shot. I realise the game also came out on GBA, PS2, Wii and XB360, but will specifically talk about the DS version here (there are differences between the GBA, DS and console versions!)
Gameplay
Avatar: The Legend of Aang – The Burning Earth is an action adventure video game tie-in with the TV series of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It follows the second chapter / season of the TV series, and is the sequel of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It follows the plot of the TV series well and breaks up the gameplay in 7 chapters.
The action occurs on the top screen of the Nintendo DS, while the menu’s are at the bottom. Here the character can be selected, what special attack they use, show the map, use items and save the game.
The Player can control either Aang, Katara, Sokka and later Toph, although only 2 characters can be controlled / in the party at any given time, and the characters are determined by the story.
The characters are 2D pixel sprites that move in a 3D environment. Enemies can be seen on screen, whom appear randomly, and upon touch, the game progresses to a battle, much like in RPGs. Throughout the story several minigames are present that must be completed to progress on, and these make use of the touch screen capabilities of the Nintendo DS.
The game starts at the Earth Kingdom base, where General Fong tries to trigger Aang’s Avatar State (S02E01). Next the party leaves for Omashu, only to find it occupied and save the people using Pentapox (S02E03). The party moves on and gets stuck in the Swamp, where Aang receives the vision of his future Earth Bending teacher (S02E04).
The party eventually reaches Gaoling, where they find Toph as the Blind Bandit and convince her to come along (S02E06).
The party then finds themselves in the desert where they meet Professor Zei and go look for the Library of Wan Shi Tong. While there, they find out about the upcoming eclipse that will weaken the Fire Nation, but also loose Appa to some Sandbenders (S02E10).
The party makes it to Ba Sing Se, where they attempt to speak to the Earth King, find Appa and eventually defeat the Dai Li (S02E14, S02E17, S02E18). With the Earth King on their side and the Dai Li finished, the party warns the Earth King of an upcoming drill of the Fire Nation, and set off to stop it (S02E13). The game ends on a cliffhanger with Azula swearing vengeance.
The game does a good job of hitting all the highlights of the show, although the end of the game has some story beats out of order (as evident by the episode numbers I added above). This is most likely done to end the game on a victory after a boss battle with Azula, whereas in the TV series Aang nearly dies and the party is forced to flee from Ba Sing Se, not exactly a satisfying end to a game.
Packaging
I have the UK version of Avatar: The Legend of Aang – The Burning Earth.
The game, box and manual all have the code NTR-YAVP-UKV. The box’s spine as well as the manual’s corner is green.
The manual is quite thin with only English, and is printed in black and white apart from the cover. It only explains the screen display, controls and special moves really.
It didn’t come with any advertisements, but I bought the game for cheap secondhand, so perhaps these were lost in time.
Interestingly it says on the box that you can fire bend or fly as Appa, but these are only minigames or cutscenes. The only new hero is Toph.
The cover art for the game was drawn by Hye-Jung Kim, a South-Korean artist who worked on a lot of episodes of the TV Series Avatar: The Last Airbender in various roles like background painter, colour supervisor and color stylist. She was also a colorist on various Avatar comics.
Accessibility
- Visual
There is a lot of English dialogue in the game that is mostly black text on white speech bubble. During cutscenes at the end of a Chapter there is white text on a black background. Text moves upon a button press so can be read at leisure, except for the cutscenes as these have voice over and work more as subtitles.
- Fine-Motor
The general game consists mostly of walking through the area and finding things. However, the battles require walking quickly around enemies and using attacks, which requires a bit more input and reflexes.
The minigames require very fast reflexes on the touch screen, for example quickly tapping attacking wasps that come at you, or bouncing a rock back by tapping it that keeps going faster and faster. Even I struggled with some of these.
- Auditory
The game is text-heavy and only has voice acting during the cutscenes at the end of a Chapter. There are no sound puzzles that require you to listen to certain sounds. You can not hear when you walk against a wall. - Cognitive
It would benefit having seen the TV show as the game uses established IP knowledge.
Power Up
I enjoyed watching Avatar: The Last Airbender a lot. Especially the last season. The show got better as it went on and it had better character arcs than anything else on tv at the time.
Despite that, I never played the video games that came out of it. I clearly wasn’t the target audience, and the video games seemed childish and dumbed down. Nothing more but an easy cash grab. But when I saw this game for like £1 I couldn’t really say no. The pixel art looked cool and it had the same people on it that worked on the Dragonball games? So I checked it out.
Avatar: The Legend of Aang – The Burning Earth is the second game in the trilogy, and I never really play games out of order. But because I didn’t think I was going to get the other ones, I might as well try this one. From what I’ve read, the first one didn’t really follow the TV series but had it’s own interpretation of the story, and that’s not really what I’m after from a tie-in anyway. The console versions also seem to be fully 3D, and the GBA version doesn’t look as sleek as the DS one in terms of their pixel characters, so I think I went with the one I would enjoy the most.
I played this game in 20 minutes bursts during lunch at work and it only took me a little under 4 hours to finish the whole game. It’s very easy to play, the enemies are fairly weak and I rarely had to heal myself and never had to buy anything. There are plenty of pickups throughout to keep you replenished. The story goes through all the highlights of the second season, which was amusing to go through again. It tells you where to head to and I never really got stuck.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t find some frustrating points! Combat wise some attacks need to line up perfectly, which can be hard to see within the 3D space environment. Also, attacks seem to cancel out if both you and the enemy attack each other at the same time. In worst cases, the enemy hurts you while yours does no damage at all.
And in some areas it’s hard to tell where you can go or jump on as the 3D environment is a bit jarring with 2D pixel characters. For example, I spend some times in the sewers before I realised I could jump onto the small ledges on the side!
That said, the game is enjoyable enough. Nothing amazing mind, but a good game to kill a few hours if you like Avatar. I found the pixel characters the best of the game. They are a decent size and very animated, and look exactly like their tv counterparts. The voice acting at the end of the chapters was also a nice surprise.
There is also the famous cabbage guy (a running gag in the tv show) who will reward you if you can find all his cabbages that are hidden in the game. At the end you can use Appa to revisit locations as well in case you missed them, and some mini games are replayable again. That was some nice replay value however I didn’t feel compelled to go look for them and the rewards where hardly worth it in my opinion.
Recommendation
If you like the tv show Avatar, you can find some joy in this game. It’s nothing amazing, but not all that bad either. The pixel characters are amazingly done and look their part, and the animations are great and feel just like the show.
If you don’t like the tv show, or have never seen it, I don’t think this game is anything special or worth to go look for. You might even be confused at what is going on if you never saw the show, as it uses established knowledge (for example at one point you meet Jet again and you’re suppose to know who that is).
I think the game is nice for fans of the show, younger teens and children as it’s not that difficult. It’s nice to kill some hours, but nothing more than that.
Did you watch Avatar on tv? Did you play this game? Or perhaps on another console? Found any differences? Are you thinking of playing this? Is there any information you’re missing? Let me know in the comments below!