James Cameron's Avatar: The Game Review

Touted as the next blockbuster film to hit theatres, the run up to James Cameron's Avatar has created quite high expectations among movie goers and the media alike. Outside of the big screen, James Cameron's Avatar has also been adapted into a video game by Ubisoft Montreal, aptly named James Cameron's Avatar: The Game. With a premise of humans fighting for an alien planet's resources, surely some sort of quality game could be carved out, yet the stereotype of movie-based video games being of poor quality strikes again, this time with Avatar.

After travelling for five years through space from Earth to the alien planet of Pandora, players are dropped into the shoes of an RDA soldier, or rather a "grunt" or "jarhead" as belittling RDA generals like to call the player-character. RDA is short for the Resource Development Alliance, and as the name entails, the RDA are on the planet of Pandora to harvest resources. There is a problem however, Pandora is inhabited by an intelligent native species known as the Na'vi. The Na'vi are extremely tall and blue humanoid creatures that coexist alongside Pandora's assortment of wild creatures, and for good reason want to protect their lush and beautiful planet. This simple conflict of interests boils over towards the very beginning of the game, leading to war between the two factions.

The game itself is of the third-person shooter variety, at least at first. The player-character is part of the RDA's Avatar program, which involves soldiers being placed in stasis and having their minds projected into a dormant Na'vi body, referred to as an "Avatar". Once in this state, the soldier-controlled Na'vi body acts just as if it were their own body, even mirroring the sound of their voice. Thus playing as a soldier the game is a third-person shooter, while playing as a Na'vi Avatar the game is a third-person action adventure game, as the Na'vi mostly use physical weapons, like large knives and staffs. Within the first hour of the game, after seeing what the RDA is doing to the planet, players are given the choice to fight as a Na'vi to help protect Pandora, or to fight with their comrades to secure the RDA's interests. Choosing the RDA results in playing the rest of the game as a human soldier for the RDA, and choosing the Na'vi results in playing the rest of the game as a Na'vi warrior.