The Legend of Korra review: elementary

Though it's created by lauded developer Platinum Games, The Legend of Korra lacks the depth of this team's best projects. It doesn't have the intense, combo-heavy combat of games like Bayonetta or Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. But it also doesn't have the style apparent in the studio's simpler brawling efforts, like 2009's MadWorld.

Whatever your preconceived notions of a Platinum Games game, The Legend of Korra is not likely to live up to them. The studio's talent and track record aside, I found it adhering more to my expectations for a licensed title based on a cartoon. It's a shallow, short experience full of segments that feel poorly designed and ill-considered — albeit one with just enough fan service to tide over those pulled in by a world and characters they love.

That world would be the one of The Legend of Korra, a Nickelodeon cartoon sequel to the popular Avatar: The Last Airbender series. In the universe of the show, talented people learn the art of "bending," or manipulating one of the elements. One special person, known as the Avatar, is able to master all four elements, bending earth, fire, water and air at will.

The titular Korra is said Avatar, and her extensive powers should be fertile ground for a great game.

Unfortunately, Korra's gifts are hamstrung from the beginning. Set between the second and third seasons of the show, The Legend of Korra sees the protagonist going up against a mysterious baddie named Hundun who has the ability to drain away her bending powers. In true video game fashion, Korra starts the first level with all of her powers intact, allowing players to briefly feel like a badass before those abilities are stripped away.

While The Legend of Korra improved once I had unlocked all four elements, that isn't to say it actually became a good game. Though swapping between the powers is fun, I was very rarely pushed to do so in interesting ways. Aside from the final boss, who can create shields that can only be broken by a certain element, enemies don't show any obvious weakness to specific elements; choosing a powerset became more a matter of preference than something I needed to master.

One big reason I didn't feel stretched to use different powers is that The Legend of Korra's pool of enemy types is disappointingly tiny. I fought the same handful of three or four nameless enemy goon variations from the beginning to the end. In the final chapters, a few more imaginative monsters were added to the mix, but it wasn't enough to kill the monotony of each battle.

It doesn't help that The Legend of Korra obsessively repeats its few more unique fights in increasingly frustrating scenarios. That mini-boss encounter against a giant monster that you survived by the skin of your teeth? You can rest assured that before the level is done, you'll be fighting two or three of those dudes at once, probably in a smaller arena filled with environmental hazards or endlessly respawning waves of smaller enemies.

So the combat is shallow, repetitive and bad at using the one mechanic that could have added some depth. What about the non-combat stuff?

The Naga segments are frustrating and feel out of place — more like something that belongs in a bad mobile game cash-in. Even worse, they culminate in one of the most annoying standalone parts of a game I've played all year. The final Naga section is actually a boss fight, where you need to focus on both attacking and dodging against three different opponents who require way too many paw swipes to take down.