Avatar The Last Airbender: Quest For Balance PS4 [REVIEW] | Sokoban Benders

Cards on the table: i’ve never seen the Avatar animated series, always heard it pretty good, i know it had/has a big following, enough for a reviled live action film to exist, but i simply didn’t care too much because i didn’t grow up watching that, and i never felt like i needed to later, i mean, i spent my teens watching anime, why bother with a western cartoon (that wasn’t Samurai Jack) tackling asian inspired stories and themes, when i can read Naruto directly?

Can’t really say i learned much about the series through osmosis, as i’ve seen people discuss about it, and since i guess it didn’t grab much European markets, some of the games based off it did reach the PAL territories, but not when the series was wildly popular and discussed about, i feel, back then we also got the shitty Legend Of Korra game Platinum Games made, which i did play and review on PS3 but has long been delisted and never received a physical release.

So i’ve figured i’d grab this last one, as it was actually released in 2023 by Gamemill, got in a bundle with the infamous Rise Of Kong, because why not? Might as well stick my entire head into the garbo bin, to see what foul creatures are lying in wait below the surface.

And to my understanding, the games based around this beloved Nickelodeon show (and the spin-offs) are mostly crap or disappointing at best, and this i feel ain’t gonna be the exception.

This is to say i don’t know the story in any detail, but i know the gist… and i feel the people that developed the game did know less than me, and just skimmed some summaries online in order to write the story and dialogues..

Also, even if it’s made for fans, it’s still bad to not at least provide some context, you know, this might be someone’s first experience with the series, stat.

What this game does instead it just hurling stuff at the player, and not knowing the actual show, i’m completely lost, with the narrator going on about people the story didn’t actually yet introduce, with what one would guess to be important stuff that would bemade into playable levels…..crammed into either slideshow cutscenes, if not simply via text dumps.

I love how one stage starts with you collecting frozen frogs (not the Osamu Saito kind)… why i do not, i tried progressing and Aang told me i had stuff still to do, as in, finding all the frozen frogs.

WHY though, i guess i’ll never know.

I’m surprised in this mess that they still managed to get across a story, even though i understand and feel it’s incredibly butchered here, often to make space for the Temple Run/Subway Surfers sections that get rehashed a significant number of times, that’s way more proper for a game about anime boys using mystical power to control elements and fight villains and monsters.

So if you had no idea about how the actual plot and events of the serie were like… you’ll still know very little and won’t be encouraged to care by the skimpy narration and awful presentation that might as well hit you with a book containing some very brief summaries of the various arcs and subplots, but that might led you to do what i did, as in simply do some quick googling to find out exactly the incredible amount of shit this game’s story skips at random.

Which – according to other people that do have seen the series – it’s a LOT.

Plenty of characters will be namedropped and never introduced, so unless you’ve seen the series before, you’re constantly gonna get blindsided by another name that might or might not ever show up in the game narrative or the gameplay sections, since you have no idea of knowing beforehand if any new named character is gonna matter or show up. Or simply be introduced, at all.

After i while, i simply didn’t even bother to try and make sense of whatever was going on, i just let it happen so i could get done with it. Like sure, whatever, keep doing whatever you’re doing because it’s not like it’s gonna matter, most conflicts will be resolved off-screen or in cutscene in a flip, done, we gotta go through this shit as fast as we can, we’ll try to explain some of the many questions by dumping it all into text to the point you might as well provide a link to the wiki.

Again, this is typical “anime game bullshit”, but even most anime games now have some internal encyclopedia or have the courtesy to offer a digest on the characters or story so far to avoid the player being completely lost since he might not be too familiar with this specific story.

Heck, the fact is framed as some old guys from the series (sages, i assume) retelling the story to a woman for a historical theathre play doesn’t help, actually makes it feel like they’re not just senile, but senile AND skimming through fanmade digests of the story events and moving on even if they don’t quite match with what they remember.

At this point i will try to give the gist of the series because it will simply be better than whatever this game is gonna convey.

Once the four nations lived in harmony. Then, the Fire Nation attacked, led by Lord Ozai, bent on world conquest. In this asian inspired world, some people can manipulate (“bending”) one of the four elements for combat and military purpose, and when the balance is shaken, it’s up to the Avatar, the only being able to control/bend all elements, to restore peace to the four nations, and its up to Aang, a young 12 yo boy that’s also the last surviving member of his nation, the Air Nomads, alongside friends he meets along the way (Katara, Sakka, Toph), to harness all the power of the Avatar residing within himself in order to stop Ozai’s machination and restore the balance.

Regardless, the presentation is immediatly horrible and ubercheap, as most of the cutscenes are the animator barely making the storyboards move a bit, the animated cutscenes are barely animated, that does really says it all. I will say that at least the cutscenes using the in-game engine are the best one, they’re actually ok looking, decent even, but presentation still is cheap as hell, unfocused, a mess and low budget tier production… it just shows there’s not much money spent on looks here.

not that the game is above using a PNG of a ghostly yogi figure (i guess he’s called Pathik, he’s never introduced or anything) and make it wave a bit for every of the many “Path challenges”.

But by playing this you’ll be led to think the Avatar is actually most proficient in the art of “Box Bending”, since the game has some Sokoban fetish going on, as either the “puzzles” and battles feature box and pressure plates usage to a degree you’ll think the show was sponsored by a box factory or some shit. XD

i mean, even an early boss fight IS a sliding box puzzle, just straight up, as you damage them with the boxes clumsily flying at odd angles and damaging the boxes, like it’s Crash Bandicoot 1 1 (the Koala Kong boss fight, specifically) level of jank.

Seriously, it’s a lot of box sliding and-or using the power to… move boxes about and creating pathways using the elemental powers in order to carry a torch, which can only be done if a character stands still, he/she can’t jump otherwise it loses the torch, so much that you get the sneaking suspicion this wasn’t quite meant to be an Avatar The Last Airbender game since the start, i can’t really rule that out given the publisher in question.

And there’s there shit where the levels are accurate despite making no sense from a level design standpoint. For example, i learned that in the show they have at a point a gate that requires fire from 5 Firebenders to open, they try cheese it with firecrackers, but it doesn’t work.

The temple level that depicts this part of the story ALSO has you do lots of bullshit to collect the material for the firecrackers, you collect them, use them… and the game just says “It didn’t work”.

Which it’s accurate, but beyond stupid, why wasn’t that a cutscene instead?

Then again, this is a game that instead of showing stuff that sounds exciting to see… just forces you to read it via drab text dumps and then go doing chores for villagers or capture frogs or some shit before the inevitable next helping of mindless fights and boring, tiresome and ancient sliding boxes puzzles and the cheap variations on the basic formula they come up with, stuff that would have flied with some troubles in the mid PS2 era, to be frank.

Also, for a game that’s so obsessed with these ancient tropes of boxes shuffling over pressure plates and the likes, often you get confused by how non descript and somehow too much ornated the puzzles area are, in the fire temple i honestly did not register the thing in a room was supposed to be a furnace you can lit, i mean, those glass cases with what look like keys are in the way to reach some of the mission objectives, they must open something? NO. In that room too there’s a spot to create an ice pillar… just to confuse the player in trying to search for what its supposed to help you with or do, since it doesn’t serve ANY purpose.

This is not a good thing when i expected to eventually encounter a glitch that forced me to reload a save…. well, exit and hope i don’t have too much to do over, because there’s not even autosave, it has a manual saving system at designed statues, again, pretty PS1/PS2 era stuff.

…. or there is? I wasn’t sure there were even checkpoints, though it’s not really clear since this is the kind of game where you ain’t sure if a glitch happened softlocking your ass from completing a necessary puzzle, or if you “forgot” to press a switch, again, in the fire temple i was sure i pressed all the switches, but somehow the one at the very beginning, which o was 99 % sure i already pressed… wasn’t, or was but the game didn’t consider it, so i had to activate it again.

You’d wonder if the game forget to keep the switches activated a reload of the save, all made more confusing since restarting from checkpoints does not reset your progress in quests, subquests or collectible hunting objectives, and YES, there are autosaves… the game just doesn’t tell you.

Then, what do i expect from this “puzzle” heavy game that has a function to make the controlled character lock up in place, yes, to activate pressure plates and for puzzles, sure, but also because the IA in many occasions will just ignore obvious hazardz in its way and repeatedly eat a fire trap or something, because its set to follow the player controlled character and stay close.

Regardless, don’t expect much variety, even if the game tries having open hubs to explore with some side quests to fulfill if you want for extra cash and items, even the town quests (jncluding a lot of talking to NPC for ages fluff) will begin to be recycled over and over again.

Speaking of which, the side quests also highlight how ancient the design is, to the point the items required for some of the side quests might be in plain sight, but unless you first discover and accept the sidequest that they attain to… the “interact” prompt just won’t show, like for the glass cases with keys i was led to believe were just part of the enviroment in a mission before.

Gameplay, aside the continuous “boxes shuffling” and platforming, is combat.

To no one’s surprise, it’s about as repetitive as the rest of the game, which i mean A LOT, but i will say its not horrible. It’s not as bad as Rise Of Kong’s, where the hit never felt like they connected.

It mostly works, autoaiming can be iffy, but it gets all the basics right, the systems (mostly) work as intended, limited as they feel and more akin to something out of the PS2 era, especially with the so n so skill trees mostly for small offense, health and defense upgrades, and it’s honestly piss easy.

Sure, it’s a game based on a Nickelodeon property aimed at kids, but that’s no excuse, and you, they could had difficulty settings for more experienced action game buffs… if there were such things as selectable difficulties to begin with.

Don’t expect much in terms of depth, there are some combos, but it’s just a couple per Bending style, and this applies to Aang only, you can buy extra elemental scrolls but they just upgrade the combos and still, story progression dictactes when Aang can use the various elemental bending styles and these combos, which is fine but it’s a tease when you see the IA controlled characters like Katara or Toph use them fine……because those combos are part of their moveset by default.

There’s a “focus” system made to promote aggressive play, as the focus bar fills your blows become faster, do more damage and have more range, until you’re not hit, enemies aren’t complete idiots, even if most of the damage they do is via cheap AOE spams or by jumping you, or attacking mid-animation when you turn back on your feet after being pushed down (there’s no ukemi or recovery attack to distance them when downed, for example), and often the strange way invisible walls are placed conspire to make the arenas actually be smaller than they look.

… or because the autotargeting IS iffy, the enemies hitboxes wonky and innacurate AND the lock on target function often simply doesn’t work, though in some instances (as in boss fights) i’m almost sure the game just doesn’t let you target them, despite needing it due to the just mentioned clunky autoaiming system, even if only because the bosses often will have phases during which they become unable to be damaged and summon goons to jump you.

Still, it’s funny how often you can get mirked by some mid tier goons (mostly because of the pushback, hence why the Sokka upgrade that lets him ignore being pushed down by attacks makes him OP) more than the bosses, which oddly become easier for the most part as you progress, even as the game keeps recycling the same bosses over and over with progressively cheaper tricks.

Btw the final boss is the easiest one in the entire game, it’s clear they just gave up by then, it’s one of those that are mostly made easy as a sort of pity gift, so you can be done with it and move on from the game, it’s a pushover, for real, just a “get done with it” type of boss, most of its boss fight its contextual prompt to hurl boulder, or reflect his energy, and little else. Again, piss easy.

On the upside, there are many playable characters and you can use whichever you like from the unlocked ones for replaying the levels in free mode, and they try to differenciate them with different weapons and skills, plus during combat the allies IA is actually quite decent, they do help, cure you, keep enemies busy, but there’s no balance to them.

It’s a janky, shallow, mindless mash, do not expect there to be synergy between the elements, the enemy or ally character to be weak to an element used by an opposing enemy, there’s just nothing of that here, and yes, i’ve played worse combat, but still, this might have been ok for a 2002 release on PS2, not so much for a 2023 brand new videogame.

Unsurprising, this is yet another broken game Gamemill released, as in, it’s clearly another rushed, unfinished, buggy mess of a release, but it’s definitely NOT as unfinished as Rise Of Kong.

It has shit like NPC villagers sweeping without brooms or shoveling withou anything in their hands, or how can accidentally have one of the playable characters in the arena… clip out of the arena and thus making yourself unable to switch back to a character that IS in the designated arena. XD

I saw videos of the original release version where clipping was simply out of control and could even lead to quasi-softlocks of sorts, but the patch seems to have at the very least fixed almost everything regarding that, i say ALMOST because i did randomly just fell through the floor once, i witnessed and recorded a NPC getting stuck in a walking animation against some invisible walls, even with the patch some boss fights have boxes that should be destroyed by enemy attacks STILL impervious to fuckin flames and explosions. Once i also had the focus bar on the HUD just not appearing when entering combat, nothing that dying and reloading the checkpoint didn’t fix, but you know, the devil is in the details, and there are plenty of “details” to point out in this game.

You can skip some battles, but it’s not recommended, as it will make enemies exist in places they shouldn’t be and …. what else, have anything clip through them, because they were meant to be defeated in battle and hence NOT be in that area XD

I could go on with the examples, but i will just point out that i got the achievement for playing with a friend… despite doing the entire thing in single player. Yep, even the trophies are glitched.

Doesn’t really help that often the way the puzzles in the Pathik challenges (which also just interrupt any kind of flow to the level design, FIY) are solved in a super scuffed way that feel like exploits, or how abrutply sections of the levels often end, just stop, sometimes even when you’d think you’d failed an objective, and once i saw for a split second the game base assets unrendered before the loading screen and then cutscene kicked in.

At least the game never crashed, maybe thanks to the patch, who knows.

ALSO, they didn’t fix the fact the main healing item actually sells for MORE than it costs at the store, so one could easily completely fuck the money system, but then again why? For what? The healing and boost items are barely needed given the game is easy, and the extra scrolls aren’t quite needed either, since the game has the aforementioned Focus system that basically gives the boost for free if you manage to not be hit a lot. Or just use Sokka, as said before.

As the final cherry on top, in the latter parts you can really tell the developers gave up trying to do their best with their box obssession, as these get confusingly simpler, they just stuff the chapters with recycled ad nauseam battle arenas with waves of enemies, AND the performance takes a nosedive. In the last 2 chapters it can drops into single digits for no reason, just horrendous framerate that i expected the thing to straight up crash, made even worse as later on even the hit detection for activating a switch (or anything else, really ) can and will fail, despite you whacking/pressing them as usual, to a degree that you’d think the game is trolling you on purpose.

Lovely especially in the final chapter, that also has a timed sequence where all these thing can and will happen, exactly when you don’t need to waste time, actually one of the few istances you have a timed objective at all. Almost poetic.

I’m not really surprised that at least on PS consoles, below 9 % of those who played got the trophy for finishing the game, these people rightfully got bored and gave up well before.

While it doesn’t feature the original VAs from the show, the dub is… fine, at least from an outsider prospective it’s decent, could be far worse given the non-budget GameMill gives these poor studios, and, at the very least the developer saddled with cranking this out, Bamtang, managed to make more of a complete package, since aside from the welcome and easy to use co-op (online and offline), there’s the free mode (with a decent number of playable characters and level often planned to be revisited in order to be 100 % completed), and a series of challenges that unlock more and more as you progress through the story, which is sizeable enough, taking 9/10 hours to beat.

Still, the game is still a VERY subpar action.adventure game and even if they made it longer than 4 hours that wouldn’t have mattered (you just took a longer shit), since it outstays its welcome well before the middle part, but again, Game Mill produce, so at least they tried to make it feel more like a proper game release with a MSRP above 30 bucks.

It’s a shame, because the idea and the show look like they would make for a good videogame, but apparently this just ain’t meant to be, as this is yet another crap game based on Aang & friends.

I’d like to say that this is out of line for the developer, Bamtang, a Peru based studio, but most of their portfolio does consist of licensed products, like Marvel web browser games, all the Nickelodeon Kart Racers games (and the Dreamworks/Shrek one) and stuff like that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle game that was also badly received and is now delisted.

Not recommended, if you needed to hear it, somehow.