The Avatar films are a bit of a pop culture anomaly. Well-made and financially successful, they certainly bear the impeccable pedigree of James Cameron and a topical warning about eco-disaster borne of unchecked assholery. Despite that, however, an x-factor deficiency prevents them from staying in the conversation long, like a Star War or a Marvel spandextravaganza might.
In this regard, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a canon gaming companion, is an acorn that falls next to the Hometree. In marketing bullet points, everything about this FPS is (mostly) in place for it to be a serious competitor.
And yet, as I write this mere days after credits roll, few bona fide high points can be recalled. It’s all just a swirling miasma of good-not-great game design that’s already fading from memory.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
Plot-wise, you’ll be slipping into the loincloth of a build-a-Na’vi raised in captivity by filthy human turbo-capitalists. Around the time when Jake Sully goes full Dances With Wolves and kicks off a revolution, you and a small pod of fellow orphans bust free. The action picks up years later, as you’re all trying to rediscover the unique purpose of your decimated clan, the Sarentu.
It was a sound decision to cast the player as a Na’vi who’s a “house cat-smurf” let outside for the first time. This way, the player and character must both experience this sprawling weirdness of Pandora as literal babes in the woods. And what an environment it is! As a semi-jaded veteran of many an open world, it’s such a rare joy to feel so visually and auditorily overwhelmed by a playspace again.
Without a doubt, the biggest feather in Frontier’s headdress is its phenomenal vegetation and wind tech. Almost every Pandoran biome in this huge land is a lush, ocular onslaught of motion, sounds, and neon colours. The latter is especially true when the sun sets and these bioluminescent forests go full ‘80s disco.
Though slight frame-rate chugs can manifest in its village environments, this game is proper gorgeous, be it viewed from the micro level as you squeeze through caves or from the commanding overhead macro of a joy flight.
We also have some rock-solid combat in place. The DNA of Far Cry runs strong here, so expect to do a lot of studious outpost perving and infiltrations that allow stealth/assault fluidity. Better yet, your unique cat-like genetics provide some 8-way, “margarine heels” evasiveness and kangaroo levels of upward mobility. And hey—being able to thunder-slap midget humans into next Tuesday never gets old, either.
For longer-range comeuppance, Frontier’s arsenal leans towards the primitive more than pulse rifles. You still get a wrecking ball of a shotgun, ‘nades, and a punchy assault rifle, though they’ll never seem to improve in looks, despite all the “better stats” loot swapping that goes on. But I digress, a lot of your time will be spent getting your Aloy on via hit-and-run Robin Hoodery anyway.
No fewer than three different bow types (plus their additional ammos) will need to be leveraged in specific combat situations. You have your sniping Heavy Bow that takes an age to draw full, a three-shot Short-ranger that’s perfect for up-close acupuncture, plus a Long Bow that tries to bridge these two extremes.
Predicting arrow drop, draw timing, and the constant need to craft ammo keeps bow play interesting. That being said, Ubi’s choices in selection UI leave a lot to be desired. For starters, you can only have four weapons equipped to your wheel at any one time. For me, that meant permanent residency of my two guns and short/sniper bows—more niche weaponry, like a mine layer and woomera-thrown spears, were a pain to ready up and got forgotten.
A similarly needless rigmarole exists for switching special ammos as well. Plus, there’s this super awkward L1+Square setup for throwing grenades. In moments of crisis, that can accidentally make you get your arts and crafts on instead.
Other issues begin to creep in concerning enemy AI. You can quickly gain battlefield omniscience by tagging every threat with your X-ray extra-sensory view mode. With the veil removed, you can now track just how tactless ‘the hoo-mans’ are when they’re in red alert mode. In a nanosecond, every trooper in the facility somehow knows where you are, down to the centimetre, and almost the entire garrison will conga line straight at you.
Worse, they seem to have this innate ability to track you for a considerable amount of time afterwards, even if you’ve acquired cover and put a football field of distance between yourself and your last known.
The average grunt archetypes (machine gunner, sniper, rocket dude, etc) are only trouble in packs. An array of armoured mechs (standard, flamer, and grenadier) or VTOLS, are much worthier foes. Pre-scanning them and using a small Wiki to discern their weak points will help, though often your better bet is simply luring them into nearby red barrel depots, natural chokepoints, or the path of aggressive flora and fauna.
A hacking layer in combat exists, but it’s undercooked. The idea is to get close to patrolling mechs to initiate a link, however, the mini-game required to temporarily disable your foe takes an age to implement. There’s too much squeeze for a tiny squirt of juice here. Sneaky avoidance, or attacking them outright, is far more efficient.
You’ll also have to contend with indigenous wildlife. The expectation set by the first film was Pandora as a green hell, infested with wildlife out to eat our eyes for Jujubes—space-panthers and space-rhinos, oh my! Aside from these incredibly rare, and only slightly irritating bites on your arse or shins, you’ll be left alone. Honestly, the most dangerous things out there are the prickly and/or explodey stationary shrubs.
Those minor, Little Shop of Horror attacks aren’t an issue for long, either. At roughly the 30% mark, you gain access to summonable air travel in the form of an Ikran (read: space-pterodactyl). It’s a great time-saver for when outpost fast-travel is unavailable, though the controls and sense of speed are a little lacking. Furthermore, airborne combat against VTOLs feels stilted and unsatisfying, mostly due to a lack of evasive manoeuvres or any kind of dogfighting dance.
Oh, and one other weird thing: tameable space horses—a huge vehicular downgrade compared to your Ikran—appear a few hours after that point in the campaign. They’re almost completely redundant by then.
While we’re on the topic of doing things a little arse-backwards, it’s bizarre that Avatar saves its least impressive biomes for last. The Act 1 area is all kaleidoscopic forests, and then Act 2 elevates this higher (figuratively and literally) with these striking prairie grasslands in the Upper Plains. What’s on the menu for the third course of this visual feast? Mountainsides shrouded in super thick mist, sprinkled with areas blanketed in ugly, green… fart-smog. It’s such an anti-climax.
Sadly, the same can be said of a final battle that sends Frontiers out with a fizz. Annoyingly, you’ll not be given the option to lay actual, interactive hands on the two main masterminds who ruined your life (and have been taunting you via Zoom the whole game). Also, the less said about the uninspired, kinda buggy ultimate battle—against a literally nameless, inconsequential nobody—the better.
There’s a Na’vi joke to be made here about being left with the blue balls, but I probably shouldn’t make it.
With that iffy dismount aside, I must still admit that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was quite a bit better than I thought it was going to be, on the whole. Despite some half-baked mechanics and ideas, I still had a blast shredding outposts in this overwhelming, sumptuous sandbox. Ubisoft has missed the bullseye on greatness here, but I’ll gladly make a return holiday for some two-player co-op, though the sting of unrealised potential will gnaw at me the whole time.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was reviewed on PC using digital code provided by Ubisoft.
