James Cameron's Avatar: The Game [360]

04 Dec 2009 at 12:54:11 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360)

Your initial reaction to Avatar will, if you pick it up, be positive. You'll be impressed. You'll see potential, and your prejudices against movie tie-in games will melt away. The opening is slightly dull, sure, but things pick up once you land on the tropical hell of Pandora.

Your introductory mission - “Go talk to the people inside this building” - gives you a chance to have a look at Hell's Gate, the bustling military camp in which you land. You'll probably notice that you can examine a number of the items and pieces of future-tech lying around, which updates your in-game Pandorapedia with far more detail than you could ever want on the equipment's place in the game and film universe.

“If this actually marries the open-world stuff with some good combat,” you will think to yourself, “this could be something special.”

The entire opening Hell's Gate chapter doesn't do much to drop these expectations, in fact. Early missions teach you the basics, introducing you to the key concepts – that everywhere outside of bases is filled with things that want to eat you, flora and fauna alike; that your skills, allowing you to, say, stun everything nearby, or heal yourself, or turn invisible, will keep you alive; that the indigenous Na'vi are ten-foot tall alien bipeds that look vaguely catlike and that Avatars are Na'vi wearing human clothes. You have to wonder where they shop. Avatars are actually human/Na'vi hybrids mind-controlled by humans, because humans can't breathe on the planet without apparatus, and can be mined for the extremely rare Unobtanium (no, seriously) it's worth the expense.

This is pretty much where it all goes downhill.

After the introductory missions, you're asked whether you want to side with the Na'vi against the human oppressors, or do some oppressing for yourself. This is an important choice: first, the two campaigns don't overlap much. Secondly, whichever side you choose, you're stuck with. If you prefer being in Avatar form, then you'll want to go with the Na'vi, because you can never, ever change between Avatar and human again. Considering the bodyswapping is a pretty interesting concept this feels like a misstep, but there's so much else wrong with this game that we'll not dwell on it.

So let's go over what's right first. Avatar: The Game possesses probably the most beautiful tropical environment I've ever seen, and truly raises the bar for jungles in games. Lighting effects in the darker areas are nothing short of magical, and the animation is, by and large, just as high quality. Whereas human running and dodging is deliberately efficient, the Na'vi movements – easily seen on the player character's Avatar – are fluid and graceful, with the dodge move almost a mid-air pirouette. The game is fairly long, with the campaigns each providing a good eight hours and not even visiting the same areas until the end. The Pandorapedia is great, if you want background detail. The combat is kinda fun, in a broken sort of way.

Right. That's everything good out of the way.

All promises of an interesting open-world are dashed after you've played through a few areas. There are possibly three times in the game in which you actually have a choice as to which mission to tackle next, and the rest of the time you're pretty much glued to whatever's demanded of you. There are optional bits and pieces in the form of sector challenges, asking you to do things like activate the quick-travel locations in each area. Disappointingly, if you're happy to take a very small detour on each mission, you'll likely manage the majority while doing the main quests. Calling the world “open” is also a bit of a misnomer as, despite mostly being a lush jungle environment, you're pretty much constrained to narrow corridors joined together by larger clearings. Again, you can take roundabout paths to your eventual objectives, but there's little incentive to do so.

This isn't improved much by the vehicles, either. Both sides have a variety – the Na'vi use animal mounts, ranging from the flying lizard-like Banshees to the huge armoured Thanator panthers, while humans have buggies, gunships, and armoured suits. The controls for each of these feel inexplicably off, as though the deadzone isn't quite right or the controller responds a little late to your actions. It doesn't help that large branches can be intangible objects while small stones are more than enough to get your vehicle permanently stuck, and don't expect flying to open things up, either – with a few exceptions, all of the flying vehicles are uselessly limited in height and can't top the canyons you travel through, meaning that they're generally stuck to the same paths as everything else. The few capable of shooting are, in one of the most utterly idiotic decisions I've seen in awhile, incapable of tilting up or down, meaning that you're stuck shooting whatever's at your current altitude. That's right: if you want to shoot things on the ground, you're going to have to land. On top of that, that there appears to be no standard control system for any of the vehicles – some might have you accelerate with the right trigger and shoot with the A button, while others have you accelerate with the analogue stick and shoot with the right trigger.

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