If anything, The Legend of Korra does an admirable job of translating the look and feel of the world of the show. Color schemes are accurate and the animation work is up to Platinum’s standard. But where it fails is in the level design. Regardless of where Korra finds herself at any point over the game’s eight-mission campaign, she’ll always been in a wide open area that doesn’t contain much of anything. It’s one thing to be linear, but if you don’t give the player anything to look at, all of the downtime that exists between combat encounters feels like nothing more than filler. And in a game as short as The Legend of Korra, that’s a huge problem. But again, the bending techniques and animation work look good, and the look of the show is replicated well enough, especially in the cutscenes, which look like they’ve been lifted right out of the show (and may very well have been, for all I know). Enemies are palette-swapped clones, and in some cases, literally identical to one another. This is hard to overlook.
For a licensed game, The Legend of Korra sounds decent. It neither ranks up with the best of its kind nor sinks to the abyss populated by many of its contemporaries. None of the performances feel particularly phoned-in, but none of them are all that impressive, either. The soundtrack feels appropriately Eastern enough to pass for the themes of the show as well as its parent program. There’s a lot of energy to the proceedings, but when you look at the big picture, it’s difficult to get very excited about it.
