Review Detail

One of the things I think I do well as a reviewer is step back and look at a game in a different light if it's not working out for me. Like if you go to The Fifth Element expecting a sci-fi flick or Princess Bride looking for a fantasy when really you're walking into romantic comedies. Unfortunately, with Avalon_Legend, no matter how many different ways I looked at the game, I just couldn't leave with a great impression.

Avalon_Legend from Exyle Studios is a twin-stick shooter and probably one of the most complex and difficult ones I've ever played. You control Arthur as he defends himself from evil...um...things in a post-apocalyptic world, using four different robotic guards (Kay, Lancelot, Guinevere, and Merlin) and your sword as your means of staying alive. Your left stick controls Arthur and your right stick controls your guard in either its offensive/detached mode or its defensive/attached mode, and each guard has its own properties and methods of attack and defense (don't worry, there's a lengthy tutorial). The bad guys? Anger, Loneliness, Despair, and other words from your goth sister's diary.

One of the more interesting things about Avalon_Legend is its presentation. Instead of the neon wireframe that 90% of twin-stickers use, your character is an actual person with a sword and the baddies are all things like bats, slimy things, and evil robots. It definitely gives it a different look and feel than all the others on the market, and though admittedly it still looks somewhat bland it's still more polished than a lot of what you'll see on XBLIG. Also, the one song that plays throughout the action is pretty energetic and keeps you wanting to move around, while the menu music is dark and moody to match the depressing post-apocalyptic theme. Sound effects are a little limited, but with a game like this with constant action that can sometimes be for the better.

As I said before, you'll be controlling two things at once a lot of times while doing other things like attacking and switching weapons. Because of this, the controls of this game are pretty complex and have a decently high learning curve. Your face buttons switch between your different Arthurian guards, your bumpers switch their modes, LT swings Arthur's sword upon release, RT does an attack based on your active guard and what mode it's in (but only if it has enough meter to do so), and each guard does something different and usually requires getting used to it. I still have little to no idea how to use the Merlin guard effectively, for example, and I find myself not being able to keep track of both Arthur and his guard when they're apart so I feel like I'm completely unable to take advantage of what the game gives me to use. In short, it's the most complex twin-stick control system I've ever seen, and this can hurt a game as much as or even more than it can help.

Even with such difficult controls, the game could still be something recommended if it wasn't for the fact that there isn't much other than the game's one mode of surviving as long as you can and getting a high score while doing so. There are achievements of sorts that unlock concept art and Arthur's journal entries, but with many of them being incredibly lofty goals and you starting from scratch each time you start another game they become something you don't care much about. As a personal preference, the diary entries felt a little too emo and pretentious for my taste, and I used to keep a LiveJournal. I did appreciate the attempt at creating a world for Arthur but with such out of the way or ridiculous goals I didn't care enough to keep trying. Really, if the game had some sort of mission-based gameplay that let us see a little further into the strange world Arthur found himself in I would actually have wanted to keep playing for that next unlock.

The moral of the story is this: if you come in looking for a normal twin-stick survival shooter like I did, you'll probably be disappointed. But even if you step back and try to see the game in any other light, such as a game driven by its story, the game's lack of modes kill that attempt pretty quickly. Which made me a little sad as I really wanted to enjoy Avalon_Legend. As it stands, I can only recommend the most die-hard twin-stick masochists even try the demo for this game to see if they can get a grip on the controls, and even then you'll have nothing more than the normal "kill things until you die" gameplay you can find with other games.