Avatar was an unoriginal, boring mess.
I will admit, I am not that familiar with the IP. I never watched the shows, and the only real experience I have with Avatar is the previous Wii game. I actually enjoyed the last Wii game. It was a basic Dark Alliance clone, and what it did, it did right. It wasn't fantastic but it wasn't insulting.
However, this Avatar game is insulting. This time, instead of ripping of Dark Alliance, they are ripping off God of War. Just about everything in this game is taken out of God of War, someway or another.
Do they have annoying QTE? YES. Linear dungeon structures and platforming? Yes. Generic Block puzzles? totally. Boring beat'em up combat? Yep. God of War was a good game, however this was not.
One thing they didn't take from God of War was the flight sections, which seem to be straight out of Star Fox. The controls are freaking awful too. You tilt the Nunchuck, and it rarely responds right, while you shoot at things.
Oh, and there are also stealth missions! FUN! WAIT NO!
Anyways. The graphics are awful, the story makes no sense to non-fans. It's not quite as bad as Dragonball Z Sagas but it's close. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
----------Battle System----------
Avatar: The Bur4ning Earth is a beat'em up, almost God of War clone. There's plenty of platforming elements, there are block puzzles, you beat things up. Yep, at it's basic core, this is a God of War clone, but now kids can play it! BLAH!
The difference is, God of War had interesting combat, and fun puzzles, and challenging platforming. Avatar is the complete opposite of what made God of War fun.
Anyways. Just like God of War, when you defeat an enemy you will get orbs. You can even find orbs in treasure chests (just like God of War, hey!). When you build up enough Orbs, you will gain a new combo move, and you will gain a Combat Point. The Combat point is automatically placed in one of your three skill sets, but you can change them up anyway you want them.
You can also boost your Max Health by collecting little clover looking things. If you get 6 of them, then your Max Hp grows.
The combat is basically 2 buttons, the A button and Z button, but why bother using Z button when you can beat everything with just the A button? AMIRIGHT?
You can find special cards within the dungeons that give you a special power, each character has a unique one. All you need to do is to press the + button and bam.
Using the - button, you can switch between characters. This would be fine if I didn't get the + and - buttons confused, and would accidently use up one of my special moves, which can be rare to find.
The Wii-mote gestures don't work have the time. There are about 4 or 5 uses to the Wii-Mote. The main one is to stop, build up power, and until a projectile move. You pull this move off by holding up your Wii mote, then pointing it to the TV. THIS NEVER WORKS RIGHT! The most frustrating moments are the platforming sections that require you to do this in seconds. There was 2 parts to this game that took me WAY longer than I needed to because of the lame platforming and terrible Wii-mote gestures.
----------Characters / Story----------
I honestly don't know. You don't just play as the Avatar, but you play as a group of people. This reminds me of Dragonball Z Sagas ALOT. You and a 2nd character, just go through random dungeons beating up random things, then you're presented with a cutscene that makes no sense to me. At the end of the game, I had no idea what happened.
Maybe this makes sense to fans of the show, but I atleast understood what was happening in the first game somewhat. The storyline in this game felt so poorly paced and rushed. It also had many perspectives, and for a non-fan, this was difficult to grasp.
----------Graphics----------
Oh god. The graphics look AWFUL. I don't know what this looks like compared to the PS2 game, but I think they did a crappy port of this game. The textures, especially on faces of characters or anything involving shadows, just looks plain terrible. The character models are pixelated into oblivion. Seriously, I have no idea what went wrong because the first Avatar game had nice animations and crisp graphics.
The biggest set back for me are the animations. I LOVED the animations of the first game. They moved so fluently, it almost looked like they took them straight out of the TV show. In this game, they move like robots, and sometimes the characters don't even move while they talk!
The game is a buggy mess too. There was many times where my AI controlled character would jump off of a ledge, or get stuck in a wall. One time I jumped a split second before a cutscene and my character just stood there in a mid-jumping pose during the entire dialog scene.
The game froze up on me a couple times too.
----------Sound----------
The music does it's job. The voice acting seems worse than the last game.
----------World Map----------
Avatar is a straight, linear path beat'em up. While the level designs remind me a bit of God of War, atleast God of War gave you the illusion of non-linearity at times. This game just flows a straight path beginning to end.
It's so bad at times, that if you forgot to grab a chest or secret note and advance to far, then you'll never get a chance to go back and get them, which is frustrating.
----------Time to Complete Game---------
6-7 Hours at the most.
They don't record your time, but the game is thankfully short. After you beat the game you get the option to replay through all the chapters, plus there are other game modes unlocked.