The Legend Of Korra is a blotch on Platinum's reputation

When it tries to make the leap to the big screen, M Night Shyamalan farts out an experience so bad that it gets nominated for nine Golden Raspberry Awards, an accolade reserved for the absolute worst movies.
In the video game world the first Avatar game is remembered for being the quickest and easiest way to boost Gamerscore, offering up a cool 1000 points for just two minutes of franticly mashing on the attack button.
Why can't anyone get it right? We just want others to see the brilliance in it; the gripping powder keg political landscape where some nations battle against extinction, while others scheme for domination; the profound exploration of the struggle to find your identity and your place in the world; the awe-inspiring martial arts choreography and the stunning animation. Get Unlimited FREE Gold, ISO-8 and other resources with Marvel Champions Hack tool. Trusted and Proven 100% Working For Android and iOS Device.

Imagine, then, the hope fans were given when it was announced that a game based on The Legend of Korra was to be developed by Platinum Games, masters of the third-person action genre and a studio with a near impeccable track record. As far as dream pairings go, it doesn't get better than matching Avatar with the team behind Bayonetta, Vanquish and Metal Gear Rising. It could not be in safer hands.

The expectation that Platinum would do it justice makes the sting of disappointment all the more pronounced. Unfortunately, The Legend of Korra is exactly what you've come to expect from a tie-in game: a short, poorly designed, frustrating experience that squanders the potential of its source material.
It's a game that feels like it was developed under strict time constraints, and we imagine this was the case given that the TV series is in its final season and the window to capitalise on its popularity closing. The game's core mechanics are functional but either underdeveloped or unrefined.

Like in the series, players are able to channel the elements through Korra's body, whipping streams of water across the screen, summoning pillars of earth from the ground, kicking up whirlwind gusts and erupting flames from her fists.

Once all four elements are unlocked, players can cycle through them during battle, but the transition between them never feels rewarding and, likewise, their physical impact on enemies is never satisfying.
Although enemies usually have one specific elemental alignment, the game doesn't capitalise on this by encouraging the use of Korra's multiple styles to exploit weaknesses. There's no real advantage to employing fire against water or air against earth. In fact, sticking to water and using long range attacks is the most effective way of playing the game since it controls crowds, interrupts enemies with trapping attacks and also deals decent damage.

The game also features a counter mechanic where enemies flash red briefly before they attack. Pressing the counter button leads into a short quick-time event where the player must push the analogue sticks in a certain direction or mash buttons to do a special attack.

The problem here is that a successful counter usually launches the enemy out of the arena, or sweeps up a group of enemies and kills them. As a result, there's not much point in putting in the time and effort to slowly chip away at health when instead you can wait for the right moment and deliver a one-hit kill.

Additionally, the window of time given to hit the counter button is very brief, which can be a problem when dealing with enemies launching attacks from outside the area where the camera is focused.

Structurally, The Legend of Korra is very similar to Bayonetta, with players running in between combat arenas while doing some light platforming. In Bayonetta, these luls are a welcome change of pace after the intensity of its combat and players wander through environments that are rich in colour and interesting in design.

In Korra however, every area is painfully bland and simple, to the point where some look unfinished. Given that the world laid out in The Legend of Korra's animated series includes a dense futuristic steampunk city and a lush, trippy spirit world - to name just two - this is baffling. There's so much material that has just been wasted. For updated daily visit the website http://marvelchampionshack.com to Get Unlimited Gold, ISO-8 and other resources FOR FREE. 100% Working For Android and iOS Device.

During these platforming segments, enemies will occasionally spring up to impede Korra's progress, but the player can choose to ignore them completely and carry on pushing ahead to the next proper combat arena without taking any damage.

Another pillar of its gameplay is sections where players ride Naga, Korra's pet polar bear dog. These play just like the numerous Temple Run inspired games running rampant on iOS and Android. Again, functional but hardly fun or unique.

Controlling Naga feels like what we'd imagine riding an actual giant polar bear running on ice would be like, you never feel quite in control. Every now and then structures will obfuscate upcoming obstacles and Korra will get a face full of wall or tree and have to start over.

Players can buy items and techniques from Uncle Iroh, a wise old sage character from the series that is loved for his warm wit and charm, reduced in the game to a disembodied voice muttering the same tired few lines over and over. Buying items from him costs currency earned through beating enemies, finding treasure and destroying the odd box. However, potions used and money spent do not carry over if Korra dies, which makes an already difficult game even more frustrating.

The game is filled with annoying enemies that constantly run away from you, massive mobs put together purely to overwhelm the player instead of to challenge proficiency with the game's combat mechanics, mech bosses that have too much health and deal too much damage and numerous instant fail state scenarios. From top to bottom, there's very little to like about The Legend of Korra.

For fans, the worst of it will be how little regard is given for what makes the series special. The majority of the supporting cast from the series don't make an appearance, and the characters that do are sans their personality. Korra spends most of the game spouting inane smack talk during combat or shouting out what she needs to do. There's a story chaining together the eight chapters, but it's so vague and uninteresting that you'll forget it as it's happening.

The one thing The Legend of Korra does have going for it is that most of the attack animations are well done and look cool(ish). That's about it.

The world of Avatar is so rich and interesting, which makes the thought that somewhere out there someone may try this game as an entry point into the series actually distressing. If you're reading this we just want you to know that this game does not represent what Avatar is, watch the first series of The Last Airbender, for the love of Aang. And to the rest of you: do not buy or play this.

Assassin's Creed Unity parades the series' most profound playground

It's a series about dangerous men caught in the ebbs of history, meeting famous figures and recontextualising their place in our collective memory. It seems important, then, that Unity, while continuing that proud, silly tradition, makes its most important actor the city of Paris itself.

To look at it simply, Ubisoft's first definitively new-gen stab at its biggest series is essentially in the Assassin's Creed II mould. While it might not share the Italian setting or increasingly wizened main character as the saga of Ezio, what it does retain is a single, massive urban environment, peppered with instanced missions, a main character who treads an uneasy line between rakish fop or terrifying sociopath, and the gentle air of a game that does what it wants to do (ie offer you numerous ways to kill people while on the sneak) and very little else.

Climbing's been improved a tad, with the ability to direct yourself up and down as well as simply forward, and combat is a little heftier and more difficult, but the format is intensely familiar. The story centres around Arno Victor Dorian, a posh, quip-spouting boy - if Black Flag's Edward Kenway was a volatile Heath Ledger, here we have a smirking Jake Gyllenhaal - who after the death of not one, but two father figures, becomes a far more serious (boring?) man with a penchant for really gaudy coats.

After what plays out like an 18th century John Hughes film set in Versailles and a quick escape from the Bastille as the French Revolution begins, you're thrust into an increasingly convoluted conspiracy story, where Templars and Assassins swap allegiances seemingly at random, never quite deciding if they want to help the Revolution along or stop it, or if they actually like one another this time.

Two different factions of guards on the street are meant to display the different sides, but even they seem to be confused for one another halfway through - maybe everyone swapped uniforms? The intention is to muddy the waters of good and bad a little, but it comes across as a mess - if you're not meant to trust characters it should be because they're well-written, not because they act like mad idiots with the keys to every world government.

That's accompanied by yet another take on AC's perennial modern day sections. It seems even Ubisoft has started to dislike them by now, streamlining so much that they're now almost entirely represented by overdubbed narration - the game posits that Abstergo's games division has now turned the Animus into a hackable games console, Helix, which you're playing.

To be fair, there are occasional cutscenes, a very neat opening device that Ubisoft say we're not allowed to talk about (although you'll see it literally 60 seconds after you start the game) and some brilliantly conceived, but maddeningly underused, sections in Rifts - glitchy jumps in time to other periods of Paris's history. We won't give details away here, but the fact that some put-upon designer slaved to make these beautiful slices of period geography that have been reduced to Time Trial race challenges should be some kind of crime.

But it's that commitment to world-making that saves the game from being simply a murder-obsessed mess. Unity's Paris is a maze-like wonder; an architectural marvel of churches, palaces, slum and shopping districts, public gardens and, above all, crowds. The attention to detail is there - Notre Dame cathedral apparently took 3,000 hours to model, proven by the fact that you'll feel pretty bad as you scamper across saintly statues' heads to get to the top.

Also, the power of new-gen tech means that we often climbed the city's tallest points to get a handle on where to go next (draw distance is, frankly, astounding from even the furthest removed points) or just to look out across the whole breadth of Paris at sunset, in a rainstorm, or as torches were lit for the night.

Indoors, too - and there's a lot of indoors, with invitingly open windows everywhere, and whole major buildings ready to explore - the game looks incredible, with exquisite, context sensitive lighting (we've never gasped in pleasure at being blinded by a sunbeam before) and a particular focus on the finery of pre-Revolution French aristocracy. You get the sense that Ubisoft simply couldn't have made this game before - at least not with an entirely separate proprietary engine made just to render fancy velvet upholstery.

But there's something more human about this place than Ubisoft's brick-and-mortar work has offered before. Primarily it's in those crowds: this is the busiest city we've yet seen in any game. Palace gates are picketed by hundreds of flag waving, heads-on-stick carrying Third Estate protestors, the Champs-lyses bustles and hums with bumbling shoppers, and impromptu street parties force you to slow your parkour march to the next objective just to watch a dance, before you accidentally interrupt the two young lovers canoodling en privy behind the stage.

They're not simple street furniture, either. Crowds are invaluable when you're being chased, if anything because the addition of firearms and realistically tall buildings mean simply hoisting yourself over a roof to get away from guards isn't always viable anymore. But they're also a total nuisance when you're the one chasing, often waddling into your path and slowing you down.

Fire your gun in a crowd and every person in it will react individually, spinning to look at you, bolting or drawing their own swords to join the fracas. They're limited in scope - anyone who isn't a guard is bafflinglyunable to sound the alarm upon seeing you slit someone's throat - but they lend the world a believability the series has never had before.

Playing itself is more than reminiscent of games past, however. Unity's biggest innovation is in turning the series' famously limited main missions into something a tad more open to interpretation. Drawing on Hitman, you're now placed in a single environment, told to kill a single target, and left to approach that how you please.

Secret entrances, unlockable doors and even unique extra objectives (such as releasing nearby prisoners to cause a distraction, or finding out your target will be heading to a confessional booth, where you can hand down your own brand of less-than-holy penance) lend these missions a better sense of what being a genius assassin should feel like - but they're never quite as satisfying as the games they draw on.

Every extra element is marked on the map - sometimes accompanied by giant beacons in the sky, just so you don't miss them - and those sub-objectives are as easy to unlock as they are unnecessary, like extra toppings rather than entirely separate dishes. They're the best story missions Assassin's Creed has seen, but there's still room for improvement.

Side-missions are less worthwhile - Paris Stories manage to squeeze in mini-histories of famous Parisians, but do so mainly in the form of clumsily narrated fetch quests. Nostradamus Enigmas set you tortuous riddles for little more reward than a useless outfit and a chance to sightsee.

Murder Mysteries should be the best of the lot, asking you to travel between crime scenes, detecting clues and interrogating witnesses, but are basically extended 'use Eagle Vision to win' sequences. There are boring, floating, hidden items stuck up trees to collect, of course - and the less said about the few ambient events Ubisoft chucked in to try and keep walking down the street exciting the better.

The much-vaunted co-op mode - which offers two- and four-player missions that occur separately to the storyline - should be the saviour here. It almost is. With a bumped up difficulty, and a little more license taken with how you're using your borderline superpowers (one mission has four of you competing to win a French army tournament to get close to a Templar general), it can be amazing fun - not least when you're saved by a friend jumping in unexpectedly to stab your enemies through the neck.

Sadly, any amount of lag kills the experience, and having one player who doesn't quite match up in skill level can make sections drag as they're repeatedly killed or get lost among the crowds. But then again, the Paris sprawl is more or less what this game is all about.

Ubisoft's true new-gen innovation has been to make a real place for one of their templated games to play out in. That game might be entirely (and occasionally dully) familiar, but the scenery is like little else we've encountered before. Ubisoft's been Forrest Gump-ing history for years in an attempt to get us to engage with it, but we've never felt more like we were a part of the old world than in just walking those streets.

LittleBigPlanet 3 is undoubtedly the best entry in the series

The most obvious changes are the three new characters: Toggle, OddSock and Swoop, each with a specific ability - size changing, speed, and flight, respectively. They're clearly there to give the whole package a facelift, but we're not completely sold. They work, but are definitely the 'not Media Molecule' bit.

However, what the new cast do, along with several other additions, is enable the creative side of the game for more (slightly) casual players. If you have a character pre-built for speed then it's easier to make races, for example. That idea carries through to gadgets and tools - things such as teleporters, ziplines and jet boots now possess far more 'straight out of the box' creative potential than ever before.

Where previous LBPs relied more on taking raw components - the pistons, motors, switches and sensors - and crafting tools from them, this provides a far wider range of pre-built options. If, when asked, you decline to activate Advance Create Mode then the simplified selection makes building less daunting. Many mechanisms can largely be used as is, encouraging a more 'drag and drop' feel to making stuff.

There's a more immediate range to the space you can build into now as well. The old three-layer system has been expanded to 16, creating more literal depth to the previously 2D construction. So, even without going near cameras, character tweaks or any more involved mechanics, you can make more interesting levels straight off the bat.

The sense of accessibility is also aided through some excellent tutorials. Where previous games rattled through quick video descriptions and left you to work out the rest, this uses a mix of puzzles and gameplay to practically apply the knowledge you'll need. You'll be tweaking settings and properties to bridge gaps or reach prizes, and learning far more effectively through doing than watching.

If you've never created before, or always been a little daunted by the prospect, this is probably the easiest 'in' you're going to get. It's not as instant as Project Spark's pre built toy box, as some assembly is still required, but you'll be able to do more with not a great deal of extra effort.

The only downside is those tutorials only cover the basics, which is a lot like swimming lessons that only cover walking through the shallow end of an Olympic pool. Activate that Advance mode and the deep end looms with all the promise and threat of a bottomless abyss. There's no guidance for some extremely complex concepts, and Sumo's attitude to any education past a quick paddle seems to be to throw you in and watch as you splash about.

Simply navigating menus is a skill in its own right due to the wealth and complexity of the content. The potential is huge but overwhelming, and the lack of guidance seems a little cold.

There are some things here we only know how to use because we've played all the previous games. Gadgets such as the microchip or Controlinator, along with other things introduced in LBP 2, are simply sitting in the menu, unexplained.

If this is your first time in LittleBigPlanet, good luck making sense of any of that. Similarly, there are new tools - such as the ability to create bespoke power-ups - that we only know about because we've had them shown to us at press events.

How the average gamer is going to piece this stuff together unaided is a bit of a mystery. There's a new set of Dynamic Thermometer tools, for example. In LBP the Thermometer traditionally measures the size of your level, filling up depending on the quantity and complexity of what you build.

Now you can create larger levels using a Loading Linker, Preloader and Permanency Tweaker. Powerful tools, but mastering them without introduction is largely a process of trial and error, and occasionally howling to whatever gods are listening.

Obviously, the more complicated stuff is always going to require commitment, but presumably the assumption is that once you pass a certain level of complexity, you're in it for the long haul - investigating and learning, or going on forums. But it's still a surprise to see just how much you're left to fend for yourself.

The reach and options make this feel like an actual game engine. A highly stylised one, admittedly, but just as powerful. Yet it'll come at a cost if it's your first experience of the series. There are powerful tools and gadgets here with no more than a ten-word sentence to summarize, at times, almost limitless potential.

Even the syntax of how to connect some things will basically be guesswork if you've not wired together a circuit before. The thing is, people will. If past games have proved anything, it's that the LBP community will think nothing of rinsing every potential opportunity and possibility from the systems at play here. However, it's an odd combination of accessible components, carefully explained, mixed with terrifyingly complex and utterly unelaborated parts.

The incredibly brief story (bar a few side-missions) also puts the emphasis more than ever on individual creation and community content. It's worth noting the new tools and ideas make for some of the most enjoyable stuff to date, but the seamless integration of all the old content is also impressive, creating a huge amount of available things. It was also nice to see all our old LBP 1 and 2 levels imported.

This is undoubtedly the best entry in the series, giving an unparalleled creative experience on console. But it's also the most confusing. More accessible, terrifying, approachable and incomprehensible than ever. There's plenty of creative fun to be had, but if you're going to take it really seriously then it's going require a lot of blood, sweat and stitches.

Binary Domain review - A brave attempt to innovate in a tired genre

Binary Domain is a third-person shooter from the team behind the Yakuza series. Its big gimmick is that you can use a headset to issue commands or talk to characters. This would be cool, if only the AI wasn't so disastrously thick, and the speech recognition so hit and miss.

Either they hear your commands and refuse to follow them, or they think you've said something completely different. Whenever we shout "Regroup!" in our loudest, clearest voice, Big Bo thinks we're saying his name. "Wassup, man?" he replies as enemies overwhelm and kill him.

Honestly, it's easier to use the controller. Then the game actually becomes fun, because you don't have to worry about your dimwitted companions ignoring or mishearing you. You just press a button and choose from a selection of pre-set commands, and they respond instantly. When you choose to play without a headset connected, the game protests that you won't have as much tactical control, which is a lie. Ignore it, don't bother with the voice control at all, and just enjoy the game for what it is: a dumb, enjoyable, super-simplistic cover shooter.

LOVE AND HATE

You play as Dan Marshall, a member of an elite group of soldiers whose job is to hunt Hollow Children: machines that look and act like humans, but who don't actually know they're robots.
As you might expect from the writers behind the Yakuza series, the story is compelling and well told - even though the dialogue of the main characters is made up entirely of terrible action movie one-liners. It's never a masterpiece of narrative, but it's better than most shooters.

What's really clever is how interactive it is. Occasionally characters will stop and ask you a question. Depending on how you respond - which you can do by either pressing a button or speaking into your headset - their opinion of you will change. The more they like you, the more receptive to your orders they'll be. If you've pissed them off, they'll ignore you. It makes you feel like you're actually taking part in the story, rather than just watching it play out in cut-scenes.

In an early level, Dan and Big Bo team up with Faye, a beautiful Chinese agent. As you move through the level, Bo comments on her 'great ass', and asks you what you think. If you join in with the blokey cat-calling, his opinion of you will rise, but Faye's will drop - and vice versa. Later, a fifteen year-old girl flirts with Dan and asks him if he'll be her boyfriend. If you say yes, you'll get negative points from your entire squad. The game has a keen sense of humour.

It isn't just dialogue that affects your squad; your actions do too. During combat, your performance is monitored by your team mates. If it takes you longer than it should to get through a group of enemies, they'll shout at you and you'll get negative points from them. "That was terrible!" they'll shout - though if you kick ass, they'll love you: "You really are the best!"

You'll also lose points if you screw something up. In one level, you have to sever a power cable and time it so that it swings into a giant robot and fries it. Mess it up, and your squad will be furious. It's an interesting, dynamic way of incorporating choice and consequence into the game, although none of your mistakes, or victories, feel like they have any far-reaching effects; they're confined to the situation you're in at that precise moment.

Still, you can't fault the developers for trying something new in a stale genre. Even though Binary Domain is a clear attempt to appeal to Western audiences, it's still distinctly a Japanese game. The setting, a futuristic vision of Tokyo, is lovingly detailed and faithful to the real location - just as the streets of Tokyo are in the Yakuza games. The enemy designs - especially the giant, screen-filling boss mechs - are pure anime, and are more than a little reminiscent of Sega's Vanquish. This is no coincidence, as both games share the same producer, Jun Yoshino.

SHOT IN THE DARK

But let's talk about the game at a more basic level. As a shooter, it's perfectly good - not great, not excellent, just good. The weapons have a satisfying kick, the cover system is responsive, and enemies are brutally tactical, flanking you at every opportunity. It just doesn't have anything that makes it stand out from the crowd, and it lacks the technical prowess and polish of something like Gears of War. But you have to give Nagoshi and co credit: they've never made a game like this before, and they've done a better job than some established Western developers.

Well, in most cases. There are some set-pieces that drove us to pad-hurling frustration because of the dense companion AI. About halfway through the game you find yourself fighting a huge, flying mech. You have to destroy its engines with a homing missile launcher, but every time you lock on, it sends out dozens of tiny drones that block your shot. You might think that your two AI team mates would shoot them away for you. But they don't. They just stand there.

Innovation in third-person shooters is a rarity, which is why we can't help but admire Binary Domain despite its flaws. The voice control gimmick is largely terrible, but the interactive story and real-time consequences give the otherwise unremarkable combat a unique edge. Ultimately, the game's problem isn't ambition or ideas, it's idiotic AI and inconsistent, predictable level design.