RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER - TWIGS AND NIGGLES

I kinda thought of making a full review of the game which goes into full detail but it's just useless, it'll be too long and everyone will fall asleep quicker than the audience of my drama back in 5th grade, hell, I doubt this thing will even be checked out.

Anyway.....

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a direct sequel to the reboot Tomb Raider which made the well-known dual pistol wielding badass archaeologist Lara Croft into a baby-faced archeologist Lara Croft with a bow and arrow... who suffers from asthma and always forgets to bring her inhaler anywhere. The new Lara is cuter and all, but she's rather boring. They try to make the new Lara more relatable by showing origin story from "help me, a leaf flew across my face" into "eat your heart out, Nathan Drake". Which was covered in the cleverly titled "Tomb Raider" back in 2013. So, that game was the birth and this is only the rise? I guess they're going to stretch the franchise more than Lara's sports bra.

Lara Croft, an archaeologist with asthma fetish and daddy issues has stumbled upon her dad's research and found a tangible decisive evidence to show that her late dad's work was all true and he wasn't just scribbling notes of the voices in his head and smearing his own shit on the whiteboard to form a complicatedly made-up clues, but the game never really bother explaining what this tangible evidence is. In fact, it was never really clear what lara is searching for here, it's always been explained as probably God's crystallized booger that can do magic and bring people back from the dead, we always need that point so Lara can later on fight ancient demonic soldiers.

Everyone is so hung up on the treasure that we never really get any closure from any of the characters, we only know we're Lara Croft so we love and hate what she also does, I never really get any real reason to root for Lara, she's a blow-up doll that emits the sound of an old dusty vacuum cleaner, she has no real sense of purpose, she wanna finish her dad's research, but her dad's characterization from any of the flashbacks never really make him likable. I might as well root for the main antagonist, at least he has a clearer purpose.

by the middle of the game, you've pretty much got all the equipment you need to solve 80% of your problems which is the skull of your enemies, no weapon feels any special, it's just my instinct to switch to shotgun if the enemy gets too close and stabby, other than that I find myself thinking which weapon I haven't used in a while so the enemies get their balanced diet of 5 arrows eye-drops, 10 pistol clips, 4 shotgun barrels and 22 doses of rifle enema every day. This game should give us the feeling of being stuck in the wild looking for materials and supplies to survive, looking out for wild beasts that wanna turn your face into glory-holed hamburger, but I never get any rush of risk them, when I do get jumped by a bear it's always quick-time events and scripted sequence that really make me tell the game "yay, finally a bit of threat, better wait for a button prompt"

The upgrade system in here is really needless, oh I can hoard more ammo from enemy corpses? Well I can see ammo boxes every 34 steps, crafting materials every 20 and I can craft my own ammo and heal on the fly, why can't I craft my own inhaler yet? Lara's asthma is just getting worse. An upgrade that shows you're aiming at the enemy's head? No, I think it's just an apple attached between his shoulders, you know what they say, an apple a day keeps the Croft away! I literally purchased most of the upgrades because I feel bad for the game giving me a platter full of the thing and to make it quit nagging me about weapons and skills upgrade.

The end of the game tries to play the execute or leave the final boss taunting you about how much of a manwhore your dad was, well too bad, I never got any closure about the father to like him enough either, I just pick the choice that supposedly gives me a secret ending or something, besides, he gets bombed and dies immediately if you choose to spare him anyway. In the end Lara does get the treasure, but she does the cliche realization about how mankind isn't ready for such a powerful crystallized booger and smashes it, Could we at least get a free 3-days trial first?

So, Rise of the Tomb Raider, came to see the pretty environment, wasn't disappointed, expected a scene of Lara getting tortured, well she gets tortured by nature throughout the game, I guess that's a check. Anything else? Maybe stop taunting us with all the heaving and moaning sounds, I kinda expected Lara to get raped by a panther at one point.

Video Game Storytelling

Feels really nice when the game actually lets you change how everything flows, almost like you're in control even more whether it's just a decision to choose soup or salad for dinner or whether you wanna let your best friend suffer while saving her dad's life or let her dad die so your friend will live normally but gets into tons of bad crowds... Dammit, Chloe! (Life is Strange).

I'm never a fan of complex story, when the story is too serious, I can't be arsed to keep so much stuff in mind. When the story is shallow and all jokes, I might still get a few chuckles out of it but it'll certainly put me to sleep, this is why gameplay and story of a game kinda becomes the deciding factor of whether I wanna play the game and invest my valuable life which I could spend on socializing with new people and studying new things or leave the game and bitch about stuff on the internet.

Video game developers have always been trying to achieve absolute immersion for the players or just wanna get some money, a man's gotta eat, but I digress. Some games actually let you actively choose what you wanna do, but everything always comes down a linear outcome, I know making a video game isn't easy, you need to choose between quantity or quality... or balanced. You want to make the gameplay varied but you can only make the game so long or you can make the game super long but consists of the same gameplay. You either get bored for being dragged out or have a unique experience but unsatisfied...

Gotta make sure I'm not starting to describe my love life... that is if I've ever had one

Anyway, the balanced way is the best, you stay entertained with unique stuff and it doesn't drag out for too long.

Some games like Infamous or Spider-Man Web of Shadows clearly shows which path is for heroes and which is for douchebags, but games like Heavy Rain, Mass Effect, Life is Strange and plenty of Telltale's titles really dwell around the grey area a little too long like a windowless white van around a kiddy playground. Games like Bioshock Infinite doesn't show much choices actually toys with the mentality of choices and actually makes us learn the hard way that you're not supposed to fuck with fate, no matter how much control you think you have, it's just what you think.

Since I've been playing Life is Strange, I'm currently most familiar with it, but I still remember my first ever choice in a game, to give Emerl to Shadow or not early in Sonic Battle. If I say no, Shadow will fight Sonic, but if I choose yes, Sonic would say "There's no way I'd just say yes!" and starts to fight anyway. At the time it felt awesome because it was a first for me, to change the dialogue even by a little bit. Now, it's just a bullshit choice because there's no point of putting one there, or maybe there is, I never finished the game, but I do know Emerl goes berserk at the end, maybe that's when Emerl starts to look back whether Sonic handed him over easily or protected him, but Sonic has never really been famous for story.

When I play a story-based game, I tend to not replay it because usually I'll get bored, I already know the story, I know how it'll play out, maybe if the gameplay is fun I get some extra kicks out of replaying but when the gameplay is pretty meh, I always let cutscenes and story moments play out while I search for some wank materials which really takes away the immersion. But for games with branchy storylines, I always play at least twice, the first one being what I wanna do, the second play is the opposite, I might do another for goofing off and looking for other changes but by then I my attention would've gone to the screaming cat noises outside my window.

Same goes for survival horror games like Resident Evil, RE4 is a great game, I get why some people get some kick out of replaying, but it just doesn't interest me anymore. DmC: Devil May Cry, the reboot which gets shit all over for making a new take on the franchise has quite a meh story, but to this day I still get a kick out of replaying it from time to time. I've never played Metal Gear Solid, I've played the spin off, Metal Gear Rising, the story pales in comparison to MGS for how deep and complicated it is, but again, the gameplay is the strong point. While I do acknowledge that MGS's story is indeed amazing, that still goes under the too complicated list in my book, I prefer it to be a movie rather than a game.

When I play a game, I want to be the guy on the screen, I wanna feel what the protagonist feels, that's why games like MGS is just too much for me to give a shit, because I don't find it relatable. Telltale's Walking Dead also falls into the category, Tales from the Borderlands though still gets my attention, it's not really relatable, but seriously, what part of falling into a death rally is relatable, but the funny quips and lighthearted tone of the game just works. Life is Strange, the game I've been gushing about above is one of those complicated, yet relatable kinda story, no other games have ever put me to tears and the drama just works for me.

Viva la Video Games

I'm quite tired of seeing game of the year posts, top 5 games and all the shit along those lines.
I've only made a top 3 games back in 2013:
1. DmC
2. Bioshock Infinite
3. Metal Gear Rising

After that I just can't be arsed, games just started to get more and more meh since then. I feel like I'm starting to lose interest in trying out new games, I play the first 10 minutes or so of the game, shut it off and let it rot and gather dust for a few months before I being deleted, and while they're rotting, I return to playing some old games like DmC. Maybe it's because I love the game so much that I can't let it go for other games, "is it what true love feels like?" I ask myself as I delete Fallout 4 after spending 20 minutes making my characters. I'm doing Assassin's Creed Syndicate at the moment along with AC Brotherhood which I've put off for a few months now. Christmas/New Year break is ending soon, going back to school and it's gonna be busy. Let's hope I can somehow slip in my gaming life in the cracks within the concrete wall of exams, or I can put off that life until after graduation.
Cheery 2016!

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V

It’s time to review the most controversial game ever. You know, that game with tons of graphic examples for kids how to be next generation Hitler, Jack the Ripper and Vlad the Impaler mixed together into a casserole with evil cheese sauce dressing. With the success of GTA IV along with the 2 additional episodes with different characters, Rockstar thought of making the next GTA a whole package with Michael, Franklin and Trevor.

GAMEPLAY

It’s a sandbox crime game, like every previous GTA with a bunch of side activities. This time you can switch characters on the fly, it feels like each character is a living human with their own lives going in the background besides incinerating sidewalkers. The main campaign is great with all the plannable heists, if only there were more of those. Side activities also don’t have much depth, just some base jumping, sport events, assassination for Franklin, rampage for Trevor and some other side activities,  like back in Ballad of Gay Tony, Luis can gather his buddies Armando and Henrique to go on drug wars, why can’t we gather the 3 guys for side heists or something. I know that wouldn’t go well with the ending, but they’re just side activities with no story relation, why not? It’s also quite tricky to gather the trio in free roam,  why can’t we just have a conference to gather somewhere and start chaos, instead when we come across a character, we’re discouraged to approach them by making the automated character shooing the playable and if you keep following him, he’ll punch you in the face instantly killing you in a short cutscene. Just when I thought I could actually fistfight or gun down a friendly.

So free roam gets boring quite easily. The story missions however, are mostly fun. I expected a lot more shootout, but I guess with more of those in it, there wouldn’t be much variety like stealth bits, hacking, torture, and the torturous yoga. I failed missions from dying a bit, sometimes it’s for messing around and going too far from the objective and the most is fucking yoga. I also love how every character has a special ability with Franklin’s driving precision ability, Michael’s bullet time that looks like Max Payne’s and instead of getting another heightened precision slow-mo ability, trevor gets a rage mode, ya know, the usual less damage taken, more damage dealt while the screen covered in rage-inducing vignette.

STORY

I must say this is the GTA with the best story so far, all 3 characters have a connected plot, but behind it, each also has their own side of unique story. Franklin’s plot is about him getting out of his small-time gangster life with Lamar and the OG Grove St. gang, going up the food chain and raising his Gs while not entirely abandoning the OG. Michael is about a zombie... No seriously, Mike faked his death, moved to Los Santos to lay low, but he eventually gets bored and his family also doesn’t like him going into retirement and feeling like shit, so he rises back up from his “grave” to score some hard cash, he kinda has 2 plots about family issues and going back into his game. Trevor though, his plot is about fucking shit up, and some trust issues with Michael. They’re all interesting and sometimes I get my head tangled in the plot trying to connect them all.

In this game, we see tons of colorful characters, all GTAs have always been like this, I remember when I was a kid playing San Andreas always losing track of all the characters, it’s a good thing I’ve grown to distinctively know them better and the characters in GTA V are also quite colorful personality-wise, mostly are stereotypes though, and I was sure I hated every single character until I met Trevor, he’s just a blast to see in cutscenes with his rambling and drastic actions. From all 3 protagonists, I must say that the TRULY main character is Franklin, he kinda has the traits of basic game protagonist type-0, shut up and follow orders, he does make some character development by the end, but most of the time, he’s the pawn and always told to do stuff.

GRAPHICS

I play the PC version, do you need to ask?  This game’s already gorgeous on last gen consoles, Rockstar’s really made all that delay worth it. I still encounter graphical glitches like models going all over the place, lighting flickery but they barely happen.

The major problems with visual though, is the HUD, the default simple aiming reticle so tiny, I had to set it to complex and this game is like an annoying girlfriend who keeps saying she's fine while clearly she's pissed, that tiny health bar under the minimap is just so excruciatingly unnoticeable, when playing a game with lots of shooting, I wanna know clearly when I get shot and where it came from, especially when I’m a poke away from death. 

Everything is so well-animated in this game, every single thing like even the movement of hair and clothes blown by the wind is noticed. I know we all can live without it, you’re not gonna lose sleep over it, you won’t feel a disturbance in the force, but it’s nice to have those little details.

MUSIC

The first thing I notice in this game is actual BGM in certain points in a mission, in every previous GTAs, I have to rely on radio stations just to make sure the silence doesn’t put me to sleep. Like in a chase mission, you don’t think about finding a suitable music, you just go, in other GTAs I often find myself having a driving shootout while having classical or smooth jazz blasting from the radio and foot chase feels so tedious, GTA V actually has the decency of shutting the radio off immediately to kick the music in for the moment, after that, you can always switch it back, but I personally prefer the game’s BGM.

CONCLUSION

This game is like a warm chocolate milk, it’s so sweet and awesome while it lasts, but a while after you finish that mug, you just wanna fall asleep. Playing through the story is so good, it’s immersive, I seriously didn’t want it to end so quickly, it lasted pretty long, but not long enough and replaying missions just doesn’t feel as fun anymore. Basically, this game needs more offline contents because most of the truly sweet stuff is planned for GTA online and I’m one of those people who doesn’t wanna be tied down by internet connection just to play a game (my internet connection sucks, SHUT UP!) or maybe I just need a friend to play with. Overall, it’s an awesome game, but it’s still lacking in side activities, I’m a fucking forever alone bastard and FUCK YOGA! This game gets 9/10

Ori & The Blind Forest Review

Ori & The Blind Forest

Anyone who’s still dedicated to my blog for gaming insight pretty much can cry tears of joy that I’m back and I’m bringing Ori & The Blind Forest review to revive the blog. For anyone who has played the game can pretty much understand the hidden meaning of that sentence or you can just read the story summary below. I wasn’t actually aware of the game’s existence at first, and then I stumbled upon a guy on Twitch streaming Ori and my interest was piqued.

STORY (SPOILER ALERT!)

Summary

This game starts off with the forest of Nibel stormed by a... massive storm that doesn’t show any noticeable damage other than blowing away a single shiny leaf from a massive tree in the center of the forest called the Spirit Tree, the leaf that turns out to be Ori lands in the forest and found by a luckily gentle and herbivorous fat forest inhabitant, Naru and decides to immediately adopt him. The story skips to possibly a few days after the storm with Ori living with Naru like parent and child, collecting fruit from trees around their cave and building a bridge montage. One night when they’re enjoying fruit in the forest, the Spirit Tree shines its light to call Ori, the light of the forest to come home, Naru thinking that it’s a forest fire or something immediately takes Ori back into the cave. A long time has passed and the forest has dried up, when Naru is hungry and Ori was asleep, they’ve run out of fruit, so Naru goes out hoping to find a tree still alive and bearing fruit, Naru found it but the fruit are way too high up and Naru is just too heavy to climb it up, Naru found a single fruit left in the cave and gave it to Ori, the thoughtful Ori offers to share but Naru refuses and falls asleep because drama. So Ori goes out to that tree and shakes off the high fruity tree branch that Naru failed to climb, Ori picks up all the fruit he can carry and rushes back seeing flashback of them having fun along the way (cue the feels) Ori comes back and tries to wake Naru up and let him eat but to no avail. Ori being all weak and sad, limps into the forest and dies, the flowers suddenly flowers bloom and that’s that... THE END or at least what I assumed being the first 5-10 minutes of the game.

The Spirit Tree revives Ori to embark on a journey to revive the blinded forest and restore the water, the wind and the warmth of the forest which has been taken down by the evil giant owl Kuro. Why Kuro did all that? Well, halfway through the game we find out that Kuro’s children was killed by the light from the tree because they’re owls and they dwell in the dark, Kuro devastated by the death of her children sees that she still has one egg soon to hatch, and she just wants to create a nice and dark environment for the last surviving child to survive. And that means drying up the whole forest, freezing winds and blasting the volcano and killing thousands of the forest’s inhabitants is the ultimate side effects.

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The story of this game seems sad at first, I get the feels, but the drama just feels too forced, especially in the beginning, it’s sad story 101, an innocent kid goes on an adventure driven by the death of a parent figure. And with the exposition of why Kuro destroyed the forest actually seems reasonable to me and makes me feel sorry for her, I like it when the antagonist isn’t just mindlessly evil who wanna destroy the world or rule it, but when their cause is like Kuro’s cause, then now I actually feel like Ori is the evil one here, I know Kuro destroying the forest results in killing the inhabitants, but Kuro doesn’t mean it, she just wants her child to survive. I seriously didn’t expect that exposition, I thought being the simple platformer that it is, the story would be about the spirit of light being the Spirit Tree and Kuro being the spirit of darkness destined to duke it out for eternity.

GAMEPLAY

2D metroidvania-styled platformer, what else is there to say? There’s plenty, actually. At first you’re only given a basic jump, run and Sein, a fairy that can shoot fireballs, from there, you keep going and find more upgrades like wall jump, double jump, wall climb and others for traversal and a few combat upgrades like the ground pound and my favorite bash, giving Ori the ability to use special special objects, enemies and projectiles to basically zoom into the direction you want and bash them the opposite direction, it makes great traversal move and a cool parry, it’s quite clunky at first, but easy to get into. In the first few hours of the game, you might feel like you’re so vulnerable, but exploration really rewards you with health upgrades, XP points and soul energy, after a while, you’re gonna be brimming with health , but the difficulty ramps up along with you so you never feel really overpowered. You have a soul energy, you can use it to charge an explosion which destroys specific objects and save your progress almost anywhere, it’s like a savestate, at first you might conserve it like how you conserve the ink ribbon in Resident Evil, but it doesn’t take long to raise your soul energy quarter the size of the screen. Ori has quite a long, yet straightforward skill tree, there’s combat upgrades which gives you pretty much more range, firing rate and damage, soul upgrades which allows you to use soul energy more efficiently for bombs and soul links and traversal upgrades like showing collectibles on the map, breathing underwater, triple jump, the quadriple jump with whipped cream. On the challenge department, it certainly serves pretty well, I died over 200 times on my first playthrough for trying too much stuff. It’s not something that really puts your platforming skills to the test, and it also doesn’t hold your hand like an over-protective boyfriend, it’s fair. You just need to remember to create soul link often so in case you die, you don’t need to travel all the way back to your last checkpoint. Learnt that the hard way. I gotta say the most challenging part of the game is in the platforming after restoring an element, like after restoring the water, water immediately floods the place and you need to climb up all the way to the top and remember to be quick about it, it has a bit of trial and error parts sometimes, but mostly you just need to think fast and do whatever it takes to escape.

The combat of Ori is quite simple, it’s mostly about getting in range to shoot fireballs, occasionally you need stomp to destroy armor and bash to redirect projectiles or parry. There’s no boss battle either, there are parts when you’re locked in an arena with one of the regular enemies you encounter but with bigger health bar and slightly more aggressive. I can’t consider those as boss battles, they’re just some cage fight sections. Enemies don’t have much variety either, I think the devs embraced the principle of “when in doubt, make glowing blobs” you have unique-shaped guys like the frog-monkeys, bomb armadillos, rock rhinos, other than that, spiky glowing blobs, exploding glowing blobs, large slow spiky glowing blobs that can break apart into smaller faster glowing blobs, walking glowing blobs that can fire more glowing blobs, even Sein is a glowing blob. They’re just colored differently, Sein is light blue, while enemies are more purple, violet and orange. I feel bad for all the colorblind players out there or some retro guy who still uses black n’ white TV, they’re gonna have a hard time differentiating enemies and Ori’s turd.

GRAPHICS

Ori & The Blind Forest is a cartoon, perhaps more anime, reminds me of stuff like Totoro simplified with glow on most of the model color. Besides that, the game world looks quite simple, the forest, tree, valley, volcano is pretty cool though. The forest looks pretty dark at first, but after restoring each of the elements, it gets brighter and lush, I gotta say the best part is the pure water lake, you can just swim around enjoying the scenery accompanied by the beautiful music. Cutscenes also have the artistic feel that really hits my soft spot

MUSIC

Most of the tracks in the game are feels-inducing, because you know, you can’t let an innocent little kid like Ori roam around a big scary forest with just a flying glowing blob that can shoot fireballs, you need some sad-sounding soundtrack. But when the game’s atmosphere switches, the music goes along with it, especially the running away from a restored element part, that’s a masterpiece.

CONCLUSION

Ori serves as an introduction to a new IP, I actually can’t see how you can make a sequel from this without bringing someone else to threaten Nibel, and the ending is just sickening, I was expecting Ori to move on and embrace his destiny, but they just had to undo that one thing that drives the whole game make the ending so sickeningly happy. Gameplay could seriously be better with the combat being boring after a while, exploration is nice, it really rewards you, just remember to save often so you don’t have to recollect an upgrade in case you die after grabbing it. It’s also quite annoying how you can’t access your save file after completing the story, so you can’t collect all the collectibles you missed, there’s no point anyway, all the collectibles are health, XP and soul energy upgrades which are used to make going through the story with more safety net, all the basic skills given throughout the story is enough to just finish the game. But I’m just speaking on behalf of all those OCD completionists. One playthrough of this game is enough for me, this game just passes, the story is passable, and the gameplay is quite simple that it’s not like something that needs a lot of grinding to master. Graphically, this game nails it pretty well

I give this game a 6/10

The Legend of Korra

I remember playing all 3 of The Last Airbender games back in my PS2 days, I find the first game pretty "meh" now, Burning Earth is utter garbage, I don't know why it actually used to be my favorite among the 3, and I haven't actually played much of Into the Inferno at the time of making this review, but I can say it's a fail because of the bending gameplay more focused for the Wii and they just slapped a port for the PS2 as it is. The Legend of Korra game released recently is considered the diamond among the mud pile being Burning Earth and Into the Inferno and the hunk of rock being the first game because I still consider it an okay game.

If only it had been developed by some other people other than PlatinumGames, I would've been more skeptical about it, because from my experience, no movie or cartoon tie-in games have ever been good, mainly because they're mostly used as easy cash grab and the developers halfass during development, except for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, that game rocks, I digress..., in the hands of PG, I'm certain that even such games can turn out at least good. This game is also a budget title, so I can understand if plenty of people think it's gonna be short and simple and since cartoon-based games are known to be bad, they might not even wanna take any chances at all, it's cheap, it's short, it's simple, it doesn't have sexy graphics quality or anything, it's a cartoon, but Platinum doesn't halfass when it comes to gameplay

GAMEPLAY

Since PG is mostly known for the challenging and complex combat system in their games, some people might think Korra won't be aimed towards kids despite being a cartoon tie-in or they're going to simplify the combat system so kids can get into it easily without having their virginity taken off in the first 3 minutes of gameplay. They took the middle option, they make easy a baby mode, and normal mode goes up to half of the usual PG style normal and I haven't tried extreme mode since I'm a pussy. I started the game on normal, I gotta say, I thought the game was tough because I was stripped off my bending powers and had to rely on fists until I restore them, but it's actually more than that. Yes, you can replay missions and squish all the enemies like a lime, but when you start to strive for them shiny platinum medals, prepare to have lime juice sprayed into your eyes. The gameplay is what holds this game together, you have to fight smart, charge your chi for damage bonus, dodge and parry your enemies at the perfect moments for crazy counterattack opportunities and be quick about it all. You'll eventually get the hang of it as you spend more time with it, but prepare to have your hair pulled, cheeks poked, and pits tickled because the journey could get pretty annoying. Especially in the later part when you're fighting 2 titans at once, their size really gets in your vision and you end up fighting the camera more than you're fighting them.

I've been talking about the combat so much because that's what you spend most of your play time with, run a few meters, and slap! Barriers appear, you're locked in an area with enemies to defeat before you can progress, some areas have enemies with long ranged attacks and smart placements so you actually need to think of plenty of smart tactics to dodge, parry, and end it with a massive counterattack for maximum points and moving around mid combat is where you find the true platforming challenges since the game environment itself doesn't have much of those and variety, you pretty much play in the places Korra's been to seen in the show, Republic City and all. You find some platforming bits here and there to find treasure chests with vanity items inside which give you bonus spirit energy to raise your overall score and to spend it on stuff.
Spirit energy is your money in this game, you use it to buy consumables, equipments, and skills. You're gonna need consumables like healing items because you're gonna die a lot, and equipments like talismans can be equipped for some stats boost but with some side effects like one that doubles damage but halves health, but this one talisman, although it's quite expensive actually gives you regenerating health constantly and without any side effects on Korra, it kinda ruins the challenge of the game for me and throws all the points of using healing items out the window, so I guess that counts as a side effect, I don't recommend it, unless you're a pussy like me, it was the first talisman I bought. You really wanna spend it on skills, though. To actually give some sauce on the already rich and juicy combat, you need to buy new combos and plenty of mobility moves which also makes gathering spirit energy so important, these things don't come cheap!
The game isn't all about fighting dudes, though, you get to ride Naga in like 3 autorunning levels throughout the game, you basically navigate Naga to turn left and right, jump over and slide under obstacles, and since Korra is on Naga, you get to use your bending to spice up the game a bit, I'm not exactly too fond of the Naga levels, they're there for the sake of variety.
I can say this game is a bit softer compared to other beat em' ups and hack n' slashes by Platinum, usually after even playing a chapter in Bayonetta or Metal Gear Rising is enough to get me exhausted, but I can play this continuously during my first run when I just wanna learn and get the feel of the game, but if you're like me, replay the whole game to try to earn all the Platinum medals, this game will make you work!

STORY

The story takes place between season 2 and 3 and it is very simple, it doesn't even feel like a solid episode, it feels more like a simple tale of Korra like that one episode of The Last Airbender named Tales of Ba Sing Se and it basically tells us about one interesting day of each characters for solace's sake, but more serious.
In the main story, you only see Mako and Bolin in the first part for a solid 5 seconds before literally getting tossed of the field and never appear again, Jenora appears only in spirit form just to be the tutorial voice, so the only major characters here are Korra and the main antagonist who actually only appears in the first part for introduction and the start of complication and in the final battle, oh yes, Naga appears giving the game more variety as well.
Korra gets captured by the main antagonist who has hired chi blockers (from season 1) and some bender mercenaries to capture Korra, he easily took her down in the first chapter and blocked all her bending off, now Korra has to go on a quest to reclaim her bending powers and defeat the mysterious old man who can't possibly turn into a conjoined twin spirit monster thing, Platinum have done this surprise final boss thing in Metal Gear Rising by suddenly showing Armstrong is actually fucking Hulk Hogan with "Nanomachines, son" and mops the floor with Raiden. I'm sure they won't do the same surprise twice.

GRAPHICS
Like any other cartoon-based games, Legend of Korra's graphics quality is cartoony, in fact, if they'd made this game realistic, I might've had mixed feelings about it. the cutscenes actually use the anime style like the TV show, I kinda feel like they should've made the gameplay  like that as well, like Guilty Gear, Blazblue and the like, guess it's not actually that easy when you're dealing with a fully 3D oriented game. I find the graphics quality in gameplay quite awkward sometimes, but the motion capture is sexy and detailed and runs at a solid 60FPS! Korra moves so smoothly during combat and traversal, even the simplest change of fighting stance whenever you switch bending looks great.

SOUNDTRACK
The whole soundtrack of this game is also based on the TV show, I don't really find the tunes to be that catchy and they're not something I'd wanna have on my playlist, they suit the game's atmosphere, though. I guess that's enough, I call this soundtrack passable for being in harmony with the game, but I praise a game's soundtrack when I find it catchy and actually wanna have it on my playlist.

CONCLUSION

Legend of Korra is a good game, nothing special about it. This is not the game I find fun to replay for so long, I might go for the all platinum medals run on normal mode, but on extreme mode, just ain't gonna happen, I'm just gonna breeze through extreme mode without worrying much about the medals. Since I'm quite a perfectionist, I might actually set minimum limit for medals, probably I must get at least silver.