Avatar pc game review

The reason for all of the commotion? Pandora is the only known place to harvest unobtanium, a mineral worth whatever it takes to get it. Unfortunately, Pandora has a toxic atmosphere and is the home to some hostile locals, including giant carnivorous plants and the Na'vi, an alien race that stands roughly 10 feet tall.

And so the war begins in earnest. Very little of this is actually explained directly to the player. Instead, you're thrust into the role of Abel Ryder, a new RDA recruit with an Avatar to control — never you mind what an Avatar is or why they exist.

Soon after, you're forced to choose to fight either for the Na'vi as a full-time Avatar or for the RDA. The game wastes no time getting right down to brass tacks, but in doing so glosses over what should have been its chance to lay down the groundwork for any motivation it might have offered the player. Instead, it sets up a series of generic quests and little bits of story about the search for some special rocks that you'll have just about no investment in.

If you decide to fight for the RDA, Avatar: The Game plays as a third-person shooter, offering plenty of guns and war machines to take down the flora and fauna. Fight for the Na'vi and you'll instead wield primitive though effective clubs, staffs and knives.

Limited ranged combat is in store for the Na'vi fighter as well through a machine gun and a bow and arrows, but the majority of the action is up close and personal. Though both sides have similar special powers to call upon, this setup makes for two drastically different experiences. Both branches of the game last between four and six hours — more if you take on all of the side tasks — but each tell their own story and deliver their own style of gaming.

Will you play a straight action game with limited platforming as you fight for the natives? Or will you tackle a third-person shooter and lay waste to everything in sight using guns and flamethrowers? Or will you wind up playing both sides to double your game time?

It's a nice concept and the two sides of the Avatar: The Game coin are different enough to make each feel distinct. Neither, however, plays well enough to make it a standout.

There's nothing disastrous here, and the RDA shooter side of things performs well enough to be occasionally enjoyable. The quest design, including both the main and side tasks, is about as generic as they come. Go here, collect this, plant these bombs, or kill this and then return to me. It's mindless, you shoot stuff and it explodes.

It works, though it could handle a lot better and the enemy AI isn't up to snuff. During one big boss battle at the end, my foe jumped off of a cliff and then ran across a field and hid in a corner. Some viperwolves can go invisible. Just as nature intended. In spite of these special skills, Avatar soon becomes tragically predictable: shoot a group of enemies, travel toward the next hotbed of activity, and shoot some more.

The pace rarely varies, so while its goodly length should seem like an asset, Avatar instead feels like it drones on for far too long. There's never a sense that the action is ramping up, and the few boss fights sprinkled about are too tepid to make things more interesting. For example, you take on a huge beast in a large clearing, which is easy to avoid in spite of the poor collision detection that allows it to knock you over even if it misses you by a few feet.

When it dies, the creature falls to the ground with little fanfare and dissipates seconds later. Talk about an anticlimax. The by-the-numbers missions don't help matters and serve only to artificially extend Avatar's length. Go here, collect these herbs, and report back. Go to these locations, shoot down some towers, and check back in. Go there, collect these different herbs, and bring them back. This tedium is particularly evident when playing on the Na'vi side, so it's hard not to feel like a big blue personal assistant.

Luckily, you can cut down on your travel time by using Avatar's vehicles and mounts, and in this case, the Na'vi get the better deal. You can ride a few different creatures, and there's a bit of a thrill in flying through the air on a colorful banshee. However, it takes time to get used to the unusual controls, which make ascending and descending unnecessarily complex. If you want to stick to good old Pandora firma, direhorses will be your standard choice.

These horselike creatures get the job done, though weak animations and sound effects make riding one seem more like floating about in a hovercar with legs than riding atop a great beast of burden. But direhorses are preferable to the RDA options, in particular the buggies. When you get behind the wheel of a buggy, the camera swoops and sways with every bump and bounce. The effect is so nauseating, it's better to stay on foot and keep your lunch than to take a rover and lose it.

Luckily there are a few other options, though not all of them fare better. Gunships, for example, are as awkward to pilot as banshees. Avatar's most intriguing idea is its implementation of a turn-based strategy minigame called Conquest, which you can access from the game's fast-travel stations. Avatar lasts several hours if you decide to explore it front to back sadly, there is no way to replay stages for things you may have missed -- this needs to be fixed for a game with an upgrade system.

However, not everything on Pandora is awe-inspiring. I dropped behind a ledge only to have the camera stay focused on me from the other side of the ledge. Judging distance between gaps or whether a ledge can be grabbed leads to some frustrating deaths. If Avatar did not have so many checkpoints, I would have dinged the game much more for these little snafus. Combat is also rather one-note, especially compared to the series of sights and challenges you receive elsewhere such as on the Banshee or at the Na'vi village.

Gameloft added a combat combo system I mentioned earlier to give it some semblance of variety, but you really do not need to use any of the combo moves. You can just hold down the attack button until your target is dead. Why put in a combo system if there is no impetus to use it? Avatar was reviewed with version 1. Verdict Avatar is easily one of the best movie tie-in games on the App Store, but more than that it is a very good action game that I recommend to any gamer, whether they're looking forward to the movie or not.

For the record, I already have my midnight showing ticket in-hand. Was this article informative? YES NO. In This Article. Mixed or average reviews - based on 16 Critic Reviews What's this? Mixed or average reviews - based on Ratings. See all 16 Critic Reviews. See all 29 User Reviews. User Score. Your Score. Rate this:. James Cameron's Avatar: The Game. Share this? Summary: Based on James Cameron's film, the game takes you deep into the heart of Pandora, an alien planet that is beyond imagination.

Gamers encounter the Na'vi, Pandora's indigenous people and discover creatures and other wildlife the likes of which have never been seen in the world of video games Based on James Cameron's film, the game takes you deep into the heart of Pandora, an alien planet that is beyond imagination.

Gamers encounter the Na'vi, Pandora's indigenous people and discover creatures and other wildlife the likes of which have never been seen in the world of video games before.

When conflict erupts between the RDA Corporation, a space-faring consortium in search of valuable resources, and the Na'vi, players find themselves thrust into a fight for the heart of a planet and the fate of a civilization.

Buy on. Critic Reviews. Score distribution:. Positive: 3 out of Mixed: 9 out of Negative: 4 out of Visit Pandora and be a part of the battle between Humans and the Na'vi. All this publication's reviews Read full review. There are downsides, but the game triumphs over its obvious drawbacks with a good mixture of genres in its gameplay.