Games That Make Me Feel Like Avatar Korra
Power unlimited!
Avatar: The Last Airbender recently experienced a resurgence on Twitter with a host of memes, threads, and fancams all saying the same thing: it is the greatest animated show ever. And it really is, especially considering that it’s a cartoon for kids that came out in 2005. It has memorable characters with believable arcs. It’s very funny. The stakes are very clear and very high. The lore is topnotch.
And the bending, oh my god. It’s part of the central conceit of the series that had me hooked from the start. Four elemental fighting styles whose movements are based on real-life forms of martial arts. This alone makes every fight scene in the show so satisfying to watch.
I’m currently on the third season of my Avatar: The Legend of Korra rewatch. Fan discussion on the sequel is pretty contentious, but watching it again has only made several things clear: Mako is trash, Tenzin’s arc as a mentor figure crippled by his father’s legacy is so endearing to watch, and Korra’s problems are far more complex than Aang’s, so will you please give her a break? That, and the fight scenes are as good as ever.
Seeing Korra bend her way through each season made me think of the video games I’ve played that came close to giving me the Avatar fantasy I’ve always wanted in an interactive medium. Here are a few.
InFamous: Second Son
The InFamous series is a game from Sucker Punch, the makers of the recently released Ghost of Tsushima. It's an open world title where elementally-enhanced people known as Conduits are treated by the government as terrorists that must be contained. The series is also known for its Karma system, where the good or evil actions you make affect your powers and the story.
The twist in the game, particularly in InFamous: Second Son, is that your powers are drawn not from traditional elements like in the Avatar series, but from more modern sources like smoke and neon. As protagonist Delsin Rowe, you drain the energy needed to use these elements from nearby objects: a burning car, a neon billboard, or a shopping window full of TV’s.
With these equipped, the in-game version of Seattle is essentially your playground. As you get more powerful, you can use these powers to transport yourself to building tops via air vents as a cloud of smoke or blind enemies as a neon blur. Other elements become available to you as you progress, and the postgame power you unlock feels more or less like an urban form of earthbending.
InFamous: Second son is a Sony exclusive and is available on PS4.
Magicka 2
In Magicka 2, you are one of up to four wizards using limitless amounts of elemental magic to rid the land of evil. The catch: friendly fire is baked into the mechanics, resulting in crossed spells, exploded companions, and general hilarity in a co-op setting.
What makes this game so great is your arsenal of up to 10 elements, which include your Avatar staples of fire, water, and earth, as well as more esoteric powers like life, shield, and arcane. Each element is bound to a button or key that you can combine in all sorts of ways.
Five stacks of water will unleash a liquid barrage that knocks back foes. Steam and lightning will create an electrocuting cloud that hangs in the air. Combining shield and earth will conjure a protective rock wall between you and your enemy. With friendly fire turned on, you can even cross complementing (or volatile) spells with another player to create chaos on the battlefield.
Magicka 2 is playable on PC and PS4, but personally, the frantic key combinations used to fuse spells are a better fit on a keyboard.
Bonus! Nine Parchments is a game with clear inspirations from Magicka. You also play as a clumsy wizard with access to specific elements, depending on which character you play as. It's not as robust as Magicka, but it is available on Nintendo Switch as a more accessible option.
Wizard of Legend
For a time, I was very attracted to the premise of rougelikes, but I’ve since learned I’ll never be good at playing them. I never get far and being set back to zero power every time I restart is a draining experience. It’s essentially a skill-based genre that demands memory and repetition, all of which I have no time for given the absurd backlog of games I’m trying to power through.
Nevertheless, I gave Wizard of Legend a try for what it offered: a reflex-heavy gauntlet across themed dungeons where each boss is an elemental wizard of great power and renown. You, on the other hand, are a wizard with a loadout of highly specialized spells and modifiers you can select at the start of each run. The combat is precise and driven by how swiftly you can unload your barrage of spells per area.
What’s great about Wizard of Legend is the amount of customization you can apply to your character. Depending on your choice of wizard robe, trinkets, and spells, you can run the dungeons as a high crit, close-range mage, an evasive caster who zips around using lightning spells, or an AOE specialist with crowd control powers.
There are four dungeons per run, but I’ve only gone as far as the early stages of the third dungeon. I still play it from time to time even if I’m bad at it, if only for the surge of relentless elemental control that it gives me each time.
Wizard of Legend is available to play on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch.
From Dust
This is a bit of an odd entry, because your are no element-wielding superhero or wizard in From Dust. It’s a title released in 2011 that falls under the once-thriving god game genre.
In From Dust, you are a deity that manifests in the game world as a divine mouse cursor—uh, a divine force known as the Breath. You guide a group of hapless tribespeople across a series of natural environments, using your ability to manipulate the elements to shield them from the constant threat of nature.
The game begins with small navigational challenges that require you to manipulate the terrain, which eventually escalates into a chaotic, time-sensitive escape from the mighty pissed forces of nature. It’s an incredible physics-based sandbox that puts you in thrall of nature’s fury as much as it also empowers you to control it. It’s one of my favorite games and probably relates to my love of The Last Airbender’s lore.
From Dust is a game from the previous generation of consoles. You can play it on PS3, Xbox 360, or PC via Steam.
You could argue that any game that lets you wield the elements could go on this list. If that’s the case, games like Skyrim, Diablo, and BioShock would find their way here. However, my definition of games that make you feel like the Avatar are ones that utilize raw elemental power like a plaything that you had unlimited access to.
If you have other games that fit this description, I’d love to hear about it.