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.

While the premise may seem like it sets the ground work for an intricate, thought-out plot to some, it literally falls off the very cliff the turning-point in the story takes place on. Without spoiling the rest, which honestly isn't much, the premise only seems to serve the purpose of placing players in the game's main turning-point. Beyond that, the story in both campaigns is seemingly an afterthought, and the extremely repetitive and disjointed missions almost do nothing to develop the characters or overall plot. To note, the story of the game and story of the movie are different, but considering the brand-association is one of the key selling point of Avatar: The Game, one would figure story would be one of its strong points. Nonetheless, Avatar: The Game wouldn't be all that different if players didn't read anything characters said and played the game with dialogue muted.

Gameplay isn't much of an improvement over Avatar's poor story. The game consists of a dozen or so different maps in each campaign (RDA and Na'vi), with the ability to travel between them freely. Missions are doled out by a variety of different characters, whom players simply approach in-game for a brief conversation detailing their mission. Using an Experience Points (XP) system, players unlock and upgrade weapons, armor, and abilities as they accumulate XP by taking out enemies and completing missions. However, the system is quite redundant as the only time players level up is when they get a huge amount of XP from completing missions. Playing for the RDA, players only use only guns, and while this is consistent with hundreds of other games, having not a single method to perform physical combat is largely frustrating. Almost all the enemies players encounter as a member RDA use physical attacks, so players are constantly, throughout almost the entire RDA campaign, running backwards while firing at enemies that are running towards them, and it's never fun. Being able simply swing the butt end of a rifle at an enemy would have alleviated this almost entirely.

On the flip side, as the Na'vi, all the RDA enemies use guns, shooting from a distance. The issue this creates is when trying to take-out a group of enemy RDA soldiers as a Na'vi, players are forced to run into a flurry of gun fire, and hack and slash apart enemies, hopefully before the player is killed. There's no means of defense in the game and no form of cover. This isn't simply a different "type" of game, it's poor game design. Even trying to use the bow is suicide against a group of soldiers as they seem to shoot farther, and shooting them involves standing out in the open. The only time enemies can be dispatched effectively as a Na'vi is when they're low in numbers, or when they're being distracted by Na'vi teammates. The invisibility ability also stops the second players attack, and is really only good for running away. On top of all this, there's a low variety of enemies, and boss battles are just seemingly elongated versions of typical conflicts.

The issues with gameplay add up throughout Avatar. To name only a few: switching weapons and abilities with the d-pad is awkward; controls for aerial vehicles and animals are amusingly bad; players have to keep their eyes glued on their radar to get from one place to another due to repetitive environments; a plant that explodes with a single bullet can flip a player's vehicle if crashed into; and once players have seen the first few levels, they've basically seen them all. Avatar more or less takes average third-person shooter and action adventure gameplay, and drops a number of annoying issues on top of them.

The game is also supposed to be a pioneer of stereoscopic 3D video games, yet not once during the game are players encouraged to play in 3D, and the feature is surprisingly not mentioned on its own box. On top of this, if players were to stumble upon the option to enable 3D gameplay in the game's display settings, they required a particular kind of HDTV, and 3D glasses. To note, we were not able to play the game in 3D despite having a few different pairs of 3D glasses laying around and three different HDTVs. Why the development team worked so hard to develop the 3D aspect of the game is confusing as it's been put to waste for the most part, and that's a great shame as we have seen the game played in 3D months ago, and it was incredible.

There is certainly a ton of content in Avatar. Two somewhat lengthy single player campaigns, online multiplayer, and a sub-game called Conquest. Online multiplayer reflects the effort put into the rest of the game, with modes like Death Match and other online staples. Conquest is accessed via teleport stations in the game, and plays much like a dumbed-down version of risk - a world domination board game. Conquering territory in Conquest gives a few in-game bonuses to players, like +5% health for example, but players can complete the entire game and not miss a step by skipping Conquest. For all the content, players that do stick with it certainly will have a lot to sink their teeth into.

4

Poor

What does Avatar do well? In particular the game features some of the best music around. It's quite surprising to listen to the great music while experiencing the sub-par gameplay, as usually it's the other way around for video games. No less, Avatar really tries to be a great game, as all the hallmarks are there of a great game, they're just executed poorly. It has a big premise, which falls flat; it has large, expansive environments, which suffer from frame-rate drops, poor draw distance, graphical pop-in, and poor textures; and among other things, it has large-scale battles, which feel ripped out of some many other average games but with major annoyances added on top. Avatar tries to do so much content, but the game just fails to deliver on every single front but audio. This game can only be recommended for players already equipped to play in 3D, for everyone else, save your money for the movie theatres.