Avatar James Cameron's: The Game is the official video game based on the film, and it takes you deep into the heart of Pandora.Bigger doesn't mean better. Developer Ubisoft Montreal disregarded this mantra when creating James Cameron's Avatar, delivering a mediocre game loaded with unnecessary padding, rather than a tight and enjoyable package that could have gotten players excited about the upcoming film of the same name. In fact, if you're eagerly anticipating the upcoming Avatar movie, it's probably best that you avoid this bland and overlong third-person shooter altogether, because there's nothing fantastical or compelling about its story or characters. That isn't to say that Avatar is all bad. A branching story featuring two disparate factions makes this a two-games-in-one experience, so if you like wringing the last drop out of your $50, the single-player campaign might keep you busy for 15 hours or so. Unfortunately, while a few of those hours are entertaining, Avatar's action is too bland and tedious to justify the game's length, and a variety of bugs and bizarre design elements put a further damper on the fun.
Avatar takes place on the planet Pandora, which the human-controlled
Resources Development Administration (RDA) is stripping of its resources--much
to the dismay of Pandora's indigenous population, the blue-skinned Na'vi. Meanwhile,
the RDA has established a way of transferring a human's consciousness into an
artificially created human/Na'vi hybrid called an avatar. You play as Ryder, an
RDA operative who soon finds himself (or herself, if you choose a female
persona) in over his head as he discovers the consequences of the RDA's
destructive presence on Pandora. About an hour into the campaign, you'll be
faced with a choice: side with the RDA, or live as an avatar and take your
chances with the Na'vi. Yet no matter which path you meander down, you'll meet
a series of unmemorable characters, played by unexceptional voice actors who
deliver their poorly written lines without a trace of enthusiasm or urgency.
If you go the way of the RDA instead, you won't wield any
melee weapons and will instead shoot your way to victory. You've got a pair of
pistols to get you through if the better guns run out of ammo, but they're all
but useless; luckily, your shotgun, flamethrower, and other weapons seem
appropriately powerful, if not exactly satisfying to use. Enemies that melt
into the background and inconsistent hit detection make it feel like you're
spraying bullets around willy-nilly much of the time, and humanoid enemies are
too stupid to make shooting them exciting. Your foes often will ignore comrades
falling over dead right in front of them, engage harmless creatures and ignore
you as you pick them off, and walk directly into walls and continue to walk in place.
Not that AI characters are the only ones prone to technical weirdness. You
might get stuck in a crevasse while flying a banshee, fall into an inescapable
fissure, or dismount from a direhorse directly into the geometry of the plant
right next to it and be unable to get out.