Written by: Ian

 

 

 

James Cameron's "Avatar" just became the fastest film in history to gross 1 billion dollars at the box office- despite the recession. Is the game that good? As I’ve said, time and time again, games based on films are normally pretty poor, so let see if this game can buck the trend, especially as the source material is well suited to a game!

 

 

The story takes place before the main events of the film. So you get to see Sigourney Weaver pick up her paycheck in the intro, but Sam Worthington and the other cast members are nowhere to be seen.

 

You still get to see plenty of the same themes- like the greed of the humans, and the destruction they wreak on the beautiful moon of Pandora, but it all feels very detached from the film, whether you play as a Na’vi or a human trooper. This will be a recurring theme- but I wish more work had gone into a more coherent and tightly focused story that just featured a single plot line.

 

Whilst you do get to see a decent amount of Pandora, much of it is different to the film, and it’s a shame than more of the key locations weren’t used to better effect.

 

 

There’s two games inside Avatar, but both are pretty similar to be honest, and both have their own particular flaws. In the first level, there’s a pretty hackneyed choice you get to make- whether you fight for the RDA marines, or for the indigenous people, the Na’vi. If you play as the former, the game is a straight up 3rd- person, over the shoulder shooter. If you go for the latter, then you get an action game, with a mix of combat and lite platforming.

 

 

Neither, are however, that brilliant. This is partly down to the mission structure that the both share, and partly down to the individual gameplay mechanics.

 

The shared mission structure could be really cool. You get large maps, and several quests to accept on each map. Unfortunately, unlike most RPGs (particularly Divinity 2, which has a similar structure), they are given out in a pretty linear fashion. You can do side missions, and a conquest mode, which plays a little like Risk, and there are also challenges to complete on each map, but anything offers a paltry amount of XP apart from the main story missions.

 

Even gaining XP is pretty pointless- it unlocks new weapons and equipment, but you never have to make a choice- you just get some stuff, and it is automatically equipped. Many of the quests are also dull fetch quests, or just get you to go to a place on the map- which is less than interesting. It’s honestly one of the worst implementations of an RPG-style system in a different genre that I’ve ever seen.

 

As a Na’vi, you are hampered by the jerky controls and camera, making the platforming unwieldy, whilst the best bits of the experience- riding on some of Pandora’s huge beasts, comes infrequently, and again, there are control issues. If you play as an RDA marine, then you get an incredibly generic 3rd person shooter with any of the fun sapped out by the crushingly dull mission structure.

 

It’s not all bad though. The world of Pandora is genuinely interesting, and the level design at least evokes and builds upon the great visual style of the film. And with the roving patrols, Ubisoft has done a decent job of adding a life to the world as well- you do get a sense of the wider conflict that you’re participating in.

 

 

On top of that, if you were to play through both campaigns, and play a decent amount of conquest, you could find yourself sinking 20 hours or more into the game. AI is fine too- and to be honest, the better designed missions can be really fun- it’s just a shame that there aren’t more of them. A single, shorter, tighter, more polished campaign would have been the better bet by far.