Avatar: The Game (Xbox 360)

Rarely do games based on films (or vice-versa, for that matter) prove to be anything but cheap, quick releases, intended solely for marketing purposes to increase overall revenue - cynical, but we all know it to be true.

Unfortunately, Avatar: The Game is no exception. Much may be being made of James Cameron’s long-awaited return to cinema, but he’ll want to put his head firmly in a hole if he knew just how the game version has turned out.

Rather than being a direct conversion of the film, Avatar: The Game works as an alternate adaptation, an accompaniment to the story. Everything takes place on the planet Pandora, which is being stripped of its resources by humans - the indigenous population, the ‘Na’vi’, obviously don’t take too kindly to this. The humans, as a result, come up with a novel idea of transferring a human’s consciousness into an artificial Na’vi hybrid, known as the avatar.

You play this very being, ‘Ryder’, who gets shipped amongst the Na’vi population, as a mole. Of course, you begin to realise the humans’ influence is largely damaging, and you are left with two choices - to continue as planned or side with the Na’vis. The game, here, offers you a branched pathway, and depending on which race you side with alters the game experience entirely; so a two-separate-games-in-one package. But regardless of which option you choose the game fails to provide any real variety.

Playable solely as a third-person-shooter, the missions you get given are overly long and tiresome, almost as if an attempt to justify its credibility. It’s very boring and repetitive, and you often find you just do not care what you are doing. From weak story arcs and rubbish character animations, this is just a simple run-of-the-mills shooter. The bad AI highlights this perfectly - many-a-time you find enemies doing nothing or just colliding into things. It’s really difficult to derive any ‘fun’, such are the lack of ideas. Your character does have special-powers to mess around with and there are a selection of weapons to choose from, but rarely do they alter the gameplay - you just simply aim, stab/shoot, aim, stab/shoot etc. It really is as bland as that.

As a rental, the game may serve some purpose as it does have a multiplayer-option featuring the likes of Team-Deathmatch, King-of-the-Hill etc, and the graphics, to an extent, are impressive, but this, on-the-whole, is one to avoid.



Released on 4th December 2009 by Ubisoft for PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii, PSP and Nintendo DS.

Written by Jaysen Ramasamy.