Avatar The Game – 360 or PC?

by Axis Of Reality

© 2010 Alex Baldwin – Features Editor

I’ll make this clear from the beginning: I’ve already seen the movie Avatar twice (once in 3D, once in 2D). I thoroughly enjoyed it both times, as despite the already well-trodden story the world is superbly realized and characters engaging.

Thanks to this I can review the game from the perspective of the game’s target audience: a fan of the film who wants another way to dive into the beautiful world of Pandora.

And to tell you the truth I was definitely looking forward to it on Xbox 360. The PC demo was a lot of fun and fellow OXCGN members have given me good reports from what they played at E3.

•James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game Trailer

So why am I now feeling so disappointed?

The primary purpose of a film tie-in game is to provide either an interactive retelling of the plot events or expand the franchise universe for the player. In this aspect Avatar: The Game succeeds in using the latter.

Other successful tie-in games such as Chronicles of Riddick and Star Wars: KOTOR have shown the potential for this style. The game can be constructed in the universe instead of trying to shoehorn what was designed as a 2 and a half hour movie into a 10 hour game. Much better in my opinion.

In this respect Avatar: The Game starts off by letting you choose a look for your character from a range of presets looking like they stepped straight out of Gears of War with just their race varying. I randomly chose the half-Asian, half-Caucasian looking one eager to step out onto the surface of Pandora ASAP.

Unfortunately the game had other ideas and plonked me in a generic grey army base for me to play ‘follow the radar blip’ and find the right people to talk to. I get that it’s going for a semi-RPG feel but I just wanted to get out into the jungles and start exploring. Unfortunately first impressions were equally lowered by the severe visual downgrade from the PC demo I played.

PC gets the wow factor

Obviously for most games the PC version will look the best but wow this is a bit extreme. I’ve played FarCry 2 on PC and 360 which uses the same engine (Ubisoft’s Dunia Engine) and they both looked great. Avatar on 360 is plagued by jaggies and a framerate that will instantly start chugging if you look at a crate the wrong way.

This may be to do with the support for 3D TVs that requires 2 versions of the image to be rendered each frame, a first for a console game that while extremely impressive to experience is useless for 99% of the game’s owners who don’t own 3D screens. Luckily the environments themselves hold up quite well.

Once you’ve done all the talking the game wants in the base, you get to go out into the forest and talk a bit more. Anyone who has seen the movie (or even the trailer) knows how jaw-droppingly gorgeous Pandora is with an incredible array of flora and fauna that despite looking alien and very varied has a great sense of consistency like a fully working ecosystem, and thankfully much of this stays intact in the game.

Surfaces have the slightly shiny, wet look of the movie and the glowing spots that shine at night, and generally it is convincing and prevents any sense of looking tiled. It’s just a shame the low resolution hides much of the detail.

The action hots up

But once you get into the action you’ll be more involved in watching out for Pandora’s lethal array of creatures and very lively plants. This works quite well, with packs of wolf-like creatures and poison-spitting plants preventing any long trek from becoming boring. The main difficulty of this is in the combat system.

As a human character you will be utilising a range of firearms in the familiar over-the-shoulder viewpoint. All good. Unfortunately some extra time should have been spent balancing this with the creature AI, as many creatures can move faster than the camera rotation speed and will be chewing on the back of your legs as you desperately try to swivel the camera around as 3 more attack you from the front.

A better auto-aim system could have fixed this but in the end it can be very frustrating seeing your health rapidly dropping as you fight to try and aim at the wildlife, unaided by a radar that does not mark them.

A quicker way to travel the forest is in vehicles, which are very bland to drive and do nothing beyond serving their purpose.

And travel you will, as the vast majority of the missions and objectives leave you chasing yellow blots on your radar which is sometimes confounded when multi-level environments are used yet the radar does not show what height the objective is or whether the apparently intersecting pathway on the map is in fact a bridge over the top.

However for the most part the combat works as expected, with humans using firearms and the Na’vi (the blue-skinned natives almost twice the humans’ height) using a combination or ranged weapons and melee combat.

We make choices on who to be

Early on in the game the player is given the choice of either following the story from the perspective of the Na’vi using their avatar, or staying sided with the humans. Excited to try out the Na’vi skills I choose the former and was whisked off to a Na’vi village.

This was unfortunately where some cracks became apparent. Having seen the acrobatic, flowing movement of the Na’vi in the film I was looking forward to seeing what Ubisoft (also makers of Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia and Naruto: The Broken Bond) would do with the movement.

The answer is: not a lot. You can jump. Weee. There is also a strange flipping dodge thing but I stopped using it when I realised it was an uninterruptable animation that more often than not would lead to my character throwing himself over a cliff or getting stuck between two rocks and requiring a restart. The automated climbing animation (only able to be used on preset vines) was also frankly laughable.

• Avatar: The Game Dev Diary overview

This wasn’t the only inconsistency with the film that jarred. While the film presented the Na’vi with similarities to some African and South American tribes, but clearly very intelligent with their own developed culture, they often seem like quite stupid cavemen in the game with none of the interesting accent they have in the film.

Na’vi’s creatures explored

Another thing that broke the immersion was riding the creatures. Since the humans have vehicles, the Na’vi have their creatures that are a significant part of the movie and explained in detail.

However, it seems the game’s development team didn’t get updated too often as one of the key points in the film is the biological connection between the Na’vi and the creatures using membranes at the tip of their braids connected to the membranes of the creature. It’s a very important part of the film’s story and the bond the Na’vi share with the life on Pandora.

In the game however, all this is completely absent. The player’s character just jumps on and rides them like a horse. They don’t even connect their braid. It’s points like this that unfortunately distance the game from the movie which is a bad thing in a tie-in and can jolt you out of the experience quite quickly.

But story and graphics aren’t everything, which is why it’s disappointing that the gameplay suffers because of both of these. Due to the unstable framerate a lot of the fluidity I experienced and loved in the PC demo is gone and makes all actions and movement feel quite jerky and stilted. Riding the flying creatures in particular is a challenge against the randomly unresponsive flying controls.

The RPG elements as well feel a bit contrived and pointless to the experience. I didn’t end up caring how much XP I had or what new skills I had unlocked – all I needed was the instant heal skill to get by, and everything else just wasted time I could use just shooting the enemies.

Ahh, the multiplayer

As for the multiplayer (online only, no splitscreen), I found it fun for a while in the traditional action / shooter game modes but in all honesty I don’t think I’ll be going back to play it again beyond what I needed to for this review while much better online shooters are in abundance on 360.

• Avatar: The Game Multiplayer Aspects

But all is not lost in Avatar: The Game.

There’s no denying James Cameron’s world is a unique and fantastically realized universe even if some aspects failed to make the jump from film to game, and the environments look great.

And while there’s a lot of running from point A to B and some unfair combat, the environments are interesting enough keep you going to see where you’ll be visiting next. For those who didn’t like the film however there is nothing here to change your mind.

It’s just a shame the game didn’t have an extra 6 months to really tune the design and fix up the framerate. That’s why if you’re planning on getting the PC version with a decent rig, add an extra 1.5 to the score.

While the 360 version is competent, the PC version is great. The gameplay really is that much better when the framerate is smooth and the precision of a mouse lets you target enemies that go much too fast for the poor console auto-aiming system.

Some nice ideas can’t stop the game giving you a quick kick in the pants from a lack of polish for console owners and some broken mechanics every time you’re on the verge of being immersed in a fantastic universe.

© 2010 Alex Baldwin

“360 = 6.5/10 ~ PC = 8/10

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