Review by Matthew Dykstra

Tis’ the season for movie-tie in games and James Cameron’s big budget Sci-Fi jungle romp is probably December’s most anticipated film. Years in the making, James Cameron has spent alot of time and money trying to make the perfect Sci-Fi movie. Sadly, I wish I can say the same about the production of Avatar: The Game. While lush jungle environments and a decent story help drive the player forward, everything else falls by the wayside; making Avatar a forgettable experiance.

-Gameplay-

Consists mostly of viperwolves. Go here. Kill Viperwolves. Look at neat creatures and plants. Kill more viperwolves. Reach objective. Kill viperwolves. This is the first two hours of gameplay. With little to no tutorial before enemies are hurled after you (and when I say “enemies”, I mean 1000 viperwolves darting around like their all on the cocaine train), the game expects you to teach yourself how to play and expects you to like it.

Avatar plays like a standard third person shoot’em up, complete with weapons, grenades and a ton of enemies, the bulk of the game is spent exploring the semi-open world jungle environment to reach your goal while collecting experiance and leveling up. From here, almost every gameplay mechanic is either far too generic or linear: the shooting, leveling up without options to choose your rewards, driving from one point to another. Or in some cases, entirely broken: collision physics, pop-in and more invisible walls than you can shake a stick at. Even when playing as your Na’vi Avatar, the gameplay is still essentially the same.

-Story-

The most heartbreaking thing about Avatar is you can tell it has a great story, falling in line with James Cameron’s on-screen adaptation, but the game doesn’t explain what’s happening, where you are and what is going on. It really relies of the idea that you will probably see Avatar on the big screen BEFORE deciding to play, which is a huge misstep. Here’s what I know about the story ONLY from playing the game.

You play as Ryder, a mercenary coming to planet _____ to kill viperwolves and infiltrate the Na’vi clan, in order to
_______________________________________________________________________________.

You can teach yourself what`s going on by scanning the environment and animals which compiles all relevent and irrelevant information into your own Avatar encyclopedia, but the option feels stale and generally useless.

-Graphics & Sound-

I`m lumping the two together into one catagory this time because there`s nothing really to say about the sounds of Avatar. The graphics however are where the game obviosly saw a bulk of it`s developement time. The jungles look beautiful and are filled with a plethora of unique and lovely plant and animal life. The environments really envoke a sense of a habitat or biology being compromised by the invasion of these mercenaries. The game looks up to par with this generation’s games.

-Final Thoughts-

Avatar is a wonderful game environment that is filled with a lack of interesting things to do and support for the things there are to do. In short: Don’t ask for this for Christmas.

Rating

C-