Avatar Legends: Low Budget, Great Writing

Platform:  Xbox360
From Barkers Crest Studio
Xbox Live Marketplace, 240c

Overall: 6/10
A great choice for classic gamers (think NES, SNES, Atari, Commodore 64 type gamers) who like a little snark in their throwbacks.

Play: 6/10
It is what it is, and it's nothing fancy, but it is easy to navigate for any level of gamer.  Difficulty can be changed to suit gaming experience.

Plot: 4/10
There is a typical, three-act structure hero's journey plot with multiple areas and levels to navigate through.  While the plot isn't captivating, the play on older games should keep classic gamers interested for a while.

Characterization:  7/10
We are the "hero" of the typical hero's journey, so there isn't a lot of characterization for our hero.  Many of the NPCs, however, have cool little stories that require charisma unlocks for some dialogue choices.

Customization: 5/10
In such a simple game, the only customizations are what our avatar looks like and what weapons and magic we use.  It's adequate for this kind of game.

Released on May 26, 2011, Avatar Legends has been out for a while as far as console games go, but I still found it imperative that I write some kind of review on it.  It's got the button mashing game style of old, mixed with a meta-game viewpoint writing style, and the added coolness of getting to play an RPG with your XBox360 dashboard avatar.

You start out in 'Tutorial Area' where you learn that the game is so low tech that you can't open doors and so linear that your first chest is directly in front of you. . . on the road.  After chatting with another avatar who thinks you're The One because you opened a magical chest, we step into the hero's special world as we pass out of Tutorial Area and into Hub Town.

Sure, it tickles me that they're using traditional, Joseph Campbell myth structure in their writing, but the great meta one liners put it over the top for me.  Instead of caving into this fantasy world around them, the avatars treat the world as a gamer would normally treat an RPG.

One of my favorite one liners comes from an NPC near Hub Town and completely sold me on the game the first time I played.  In this quest, your avatar has to locate a shipment of weapons for the guy at the weapons store.  He said that the shipment was supposed to be here already and he thinks that his friend got lost.  After a few snarky comments to the weapons guy, you're off on a short quest for Weapons Dealer Friend, which is actually his avatar's name.  When we find him, he's not too far outside of Hub Town.  His gear has been stolen and he needs you to fight trolls to get it back.

If you choose to whine about being sent on another quest, which I did of course, your character will say:  "Why can't things ever be easy?"

In response, Weapon Dealer Friend will say, "Because then you'd get less loot."

Understandably, my explanation probably won't elicit as many chuckles as actually playing through the game, but that interaction is a good example of the semi-meta POV you're getting here.  It runs throughout, or at least as far as I've been able to play.

Battles are third person, from above and there's none of that camera staying over the shoulder stuff.  Choose your difficulty based on how well you play from that point of view.  I didn't and I was slaughtered the first time I played this.

This game has a large world.  After Hub Town, you go to another map area with three distinct sections, each with their own quests.  You have to complete at least two of those worlds in order to enter the main quest town and once you get through that town you go to another area with three distinct sections, etc.  I made it to the third world and had gotten through two of my sections before I lost my save the same week the Xbox cloud saves came out.  It was an unfortunate coincidence.

But that is beside the point.  Keep in mind that simple play plus large world makes for a lot of fetch quests that involve a lot of walking and button mashing and none of the entertaining gore that we have all become accustomed to.  If you're the type of person that takes the Bloody Mess perk in Fallout because even those head shots aren't entertaining enough for you, this is not your kind of game.

However, if you're an RPG fan, like myself, who can put up with some button mashing, you should at least try it out to experience the wonderful dialogue and see your dashboard avatar in action.  Classic gamers may appreciate this too.  It's fairly straightforward as far as quests and gameplay go and the 3rd person battle style is very similar to those old NES role playing games.

Avatar Legends is a great little geek guilty pleasure game and it totally worth the mere 240 credits needed to purchase it.  Get it on the Xbox Live Marketplace or download the trial for free!  (And then let me know so we can try out that multiplayer!)