Avatar and the Deadly Tomb

From the studio that brought you the Oozi games comes an utterly generic, avatar-based punisher with bad level design.  Can’t get enough of those.  This is also one of those annoying auto-scrollers.  Hate those in general.  Especially hate them when they’re done vertically.  I probably should have researched my game selection better, because there was almost no way I would have enjoyed Deadly Tomb from the get-go.  Yea, it was a bit of a dick move for me to pick it.  And if you’re expecting some Planet of the Apes style “it was a good game all along!” twist, think again.  I played Avatar and the Deadly Tomb on the easy difficulty, because I’m shamefully bad at punishers and blunt in my admission of this.  Even then, I found it to be beyond frustrating.

So boring I can’t even muster the humor to make a funny caption.

But, I think I must stress the difference between a fair challenge and an unfair challenge.  I feel a fair challenge means you have a realistic (if far-fetched) shot at getting past an obstacle on your first attempt, using nothing but your reflexes and gaming acumen.  When a player of any skill level has no remote shot of clearing some spots on their first try, that’s when a game crosses the line for me.  It’s the difference between “smart-difficult” and “asshole-difficult.”  Auto-scrolling punishers almost always fall into the asshole-difficult category, and Tomb is no exception.  Things like timed-trap platforms combined with vertical auto-scrolling are just cruel, since your vertical field of vision isn’t as large as your horizontal vision.  Not only that, but some sections of the game require you to clear timed sections, then drop down to a lower platform before climbing up.  This is while a column of fire continuously rises.  Unless you are 90% flawless in your run (which you probably won’t be), you have no reasonable chance of clearing these sections on your first attempt.  By time you drop to those lower levels, the fire is probably already there and you’re doing your best impression of Frollo.

I’ve had this review sit unfinished for nearly a week now.  I’ve made several attempts to finish it, but as of yet have been unsuccessful.  Part of that has to do with the utterly generic theme.  Whether or not I thought the Oozi games were ambitious, at least they aspired to look good.  Avatar and the Deadly Tomb features a bland theme and boring graphics.  It doesn’t exactly control that well either.  The biggest problem is the wall-jump is handled the same way as the ledge-cling.  Sometimes for those timed puzzles you’ll need to cling from a ledge.  But most of the time you’ll just want to do wall jumps, but the clinging will get in the way of that.  Screw it.  I give up.  There’s no way to describe my experience with Avatar and the Deadly Tomb in a stimulating way.  The game was dull as a book on cooking with tofu, although I would recommend reading that over playing Deadly Tomb.  At least you’ll get something to eat out of it.

Avatar and the Deadly Tomb was developed by Awesome Games Studio

80 Microsoft Points noted their avatar would never actually have the guts to explore a deadly tomb so the game made no sense from a story perspective either in the making of this review.  Then again, my avatar wouldn’t snowboard, do parkour, or run across the top of a moving train either.  It’s kind of a coward.