James Cameron's AVATAR: The Game review

James Cameron has never been know for ‘small’ and with massive films like Titanic, The Terminator and Alien under his belt, it is little wonder that his latest film, Avatar, also joins the party with a game to follow. Unfortunately though, the game doesn’t half live up to it’s theatrical brothers.

You play “Able” Ryder, an ex-servicemen working with the RDA who are mining-come-mercenaries company located on the Na’vi planet of Pandora. They also run a scientific research program, of which you are at first part of, which allows humans to control the body of an artificial Na’vi.

After about an hours play consisting of some mundane tutorials you realise that the RDA are brutally exterminating the local Na’vi in order to gain access to the wealth that lies beneath the ground and this leaves you with a choice. Do you help a human traitor escape thereby siding with the Na’vi or do you kill him and stick with the RDA?

Bearing in mind what you have seen so far the choice is simple but it does in fact alter the entire 7 hours or so of your first playthrough. You see, Avatar is in effect 2 different games. Opting to help the Na’vi will lead you down the path of an action-adventure game with some hack-and-slash elements thrown in while staying loyal to the RDA turns it into a more challenging 3rd person shooter.

Don’t be fooled though, the game remains relatively the same whichever path you chose (the game also automatically creates a new save before you make your choice, so coming back and playing the other storyline is easy). Both are largely based around collecting things for people or finding someone, both are third-person and both follow the same level pattern of of forcing you to walk down a certain “pathway” to get to your goal which is marked by a yellow circle.

Unfortunately though, both paths offer somewhat unmemorable characters with poor cutscene animations and flat voice acting. One thing that Avatar can offer with its dual story lines is character development through the eyes of opposing forces. While it’s a good idea on paper, again, it’s not executed terribly well and it further brings out cracks within the cutscenes and the cracked personalities of the characters.

The AI adds further to the stresses of the player as they aren’t terribly smart. They can often be seen attacking friendlies (although to no effect) and are usually blind to the fact that you are shooting arrows into them, or that their friend has just been killed next to them. They make it all to easy to simply run past them and they just become an annoyance if you like, making the game from a Na’vi perspective very easy.

The Banshees and Direhorse offer a faster way to reach objectives while the RDA have more recognizable vehicles like off road buggies, boats and futuristic helicopters. Some vehicles are pretty fun to fly for example I enjoyed a few minutes of swooping around on a Banshee but it the controls soon become annoying and flying into the landscape becomes common place.

Each faction has its own set of weapons too. The Na’vi carry mainly melee weapons with the exception of a bow which comes in very handy for attacking large groups of enemies from afar. The RDA use only guns but flamethrowers, grenade launchers and assault rifles are strangely just as satisfying as slicing the enemy with dual-swords or a staff. I can’t help but think that the weapon upgrades you receive for leveling up are somewhat useless, especially when playing as the Na’vi. Combat follows the simple pattern of picking off some from range with your bow and then running up with your sword and while this is something that upgrades might change in other games, it stays the same throughout in Avatar.

What would a game with giant blue characters and six-legged horses be without magical powers though? Which ever path you take you will have access to a slightly varied collection of magical abilities such as healing and increased defense for a brief period. Of course, you can’t go around healing yourself willy-nilly, and you’ll have to collect ‘cells’ that grow on plants scattered (albeit, frequently) around the various levels. These cells along with with other discovorable collectables are there to add re-playability but really collecting them becomes more of a chore to gain gamerscore than anything else.

Like your armour and weapons, magical powers upgrade as you level up from the experience you gain slaughtering your chosen life form which offers something to work for as well as rewarding you for hanging around to finish the skirmishes that litter your path, rather than easily running straight past them to save time.

The environment the game is set in is a strange thing. I’ll start by saying it certainly looks the part and it’s definitely well put together. Floating mountains and odd looking animals and plants further play with the thought that the RDA are in a totally foreign environment and plants that aid the Na’vi in combat again build to the feeling that Pandora was only meant for the Na’vi, however annoying they may be when playing as a hostile RDA.

Besides the main campaign, Avatar offer a small(ish) mini-game called Conquest - think of this as a basic version of Risk or an RTS. You use XP gained from the single player mode to amass troops on a certain are of the planet an then just click on the adjacent, enemy controlled land to simulate a battle for control. At first it’s enough to keep you entertained but really it’s too simple to be anything but a novelty. Avatar also features multiplayer modes; Team Deathmatch, Capture and Hold, CTF, Final Battle (a race to destroy the enemies base before they get yours) and King of the Hill. Each load out and faction is favoured to a certain game type and with up to 16 players, it can get pretty gripping. At the end of the day though multiplayer is there to add a bit life to the game and while it’s ok, I can’t see it stealing any players from the multiplayer giants like Call of Duty.

Overall then, I think Avatar is far too easy to complain about - as you may have noticed after reading the above. A strange thing happened to me though. Every night I would carry on playing when I should be asleep and every morning I would pick up Avatar and play, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Maybe it was the beautiful environment or maybe I wanted to find out what happened in the end - like I did in the movie. I guess I’ll never know.

A solid feel to it gains Avatar some points but it’s massively let down by repetitive gameplay and poor AI.

6/10