The game of the film of James Cameron’s AVATAR, I think it’s fair to say, was not hotly anticipated by many people. I thought it looked quite interesting, that maybe, just maybe, here was a movie game that could be held up as evidence that not all movie games were utter tripe. I was optimistic. Maybe, I thought, it wouldn’t be world-changing, but it might be solid enough to deserve praise

I wasn’t kind to the game in my tangent-heavy First Thirty, but the game has improved in my eyes since then. Now, rather than hating it’s insistance on burdening me with an 20-minute long, gameplay-free beginning, I’m disappointed with all the problems which ruin what could have been a good game. Hit the jump to find out why.

From the beginning, the game seems resolutely set on revealing as little as possible about the plot to you as possible. You begin having a conversation with an old-lady Sigourney Weaver, without being told who she is. You discover you’re on a starship, and arrive at your destination, the planet which seems pretty damn hostile to humans (weird place to establish a colony). The planet is called Pandora, and that may be an indication of how poor the idea of settlement here was. You have to go and talk to some scientist and your Captain, who’s called Falco (no, really), but your actions are given no context, and worse, no explanation. The concept of Avatars are not explained to you, and I for one would find it easier to understand what’s going on when it’s explained to me. Perhaps they’re assuming you’ve watched the film (or at least skimmed the Wikipedia article), but I was completely lost. Maybe it’s supposed to be mirroring the experience of my character, i.e. clueless soldier, but I really want to understand what’s going on, rather than just be thrust into the midst of a pitched battle, and be told to ”kill things”.

Part of the problem is that, about an hour in, you’re given the choice to play as either the noble Native Americans Na’vi, or the amoral genocidal corporation RDA. However, this decision comes at a point when you’ve really had little time to form any sort of attachment, emotional or otherwise, to either side, beyond the blindingly obvious subtext that THE HUMANS ARE EVIL! THE HUMANS ARE EVIL! The worst of it is, the story tries to spoon-feed you the ‘evil humans’ thing. It seems to think that it’s, in some way, subtle! There is actually the scene where a voice in your earpiece tells you that ‘the commander is taking in scientists for ‘questioning’. Yes, we get it. He’s torturing/killing the scientists. Because he’s EVIL! And ok, stories like this need villains, but this guy is just a douchebag! He doesn’t seem to be doing this for any reason, he’s just being a dick for the sake of being a dick.

Anyway, back to that choice. You’re presented with the ‘moral’ choice to be a human or a Na’vi (read: bad or good) and at that point, I thought: OK, I’ve been playing human for a while, let’s have a go at the Na’vi. They get to cut dudes up with massive swords! Besides, they’re transparently the goodies, so let’s go with it! So I chose Na’vi, and after some pottering around the village, I found I need to learn how to fly giant pterodactyl-like things from another Na’vi. The problem is, he’s taken against my character, and told me to go kill five wombats (or whatever, I wasn’t paying attention to the sub-WoW quest-giving) in order to gain his respect or something. I then walked along a bit, and a brief interstitial cutscene informed me that the evil humans were attacking the base. I got out my whacking stick, and loped off in their direction, whereupon I was cut down by a hail of gunfire. Oh, I thought. I respawned, and got out my bow. Right, let’s nail these bastards to the nearest tree!. Unfortunately, while you do have quite a powerful bow and arrow, it is rather an Ewoks vs the Empire situation. If the Ewoks had been as useless as they’d looked. I was destroyed by a volley of nailgun rounds and grenades. I tried again with swords, and again I was rebuffed by a near-solid wall of bullets. Right. Ethically the game wants me to side with the Na’vi, but from a gameplay perspective, I clearly want to be on the Human team.

Once I had replayed the introduction (this game doesn’t do itself many favours) and started my career as a bad guy, I immediately started running around with a flamethrower and shotgun, tearing stuff up. I really cannot emphasise enough how much easier it is. I didn’t play multiplayer, but I cannot conceive any possible reason why you would want to play the Na’vi (unless you have a masochistic streak longer than a list of people Jeremy Clarkson has offended, and the patience of Job). You can run through levels spraying fire left and right, and if you really need to do some heavy lifting, use a grenade launcher. The humans also have much better vehicles, as well. While the Na’vi are in harmony with nature, and have some pretty animals they can ride including a pink and purple six-legged horse (I wish I was joking) the humans have VTOL flying machines called Hornets… sorry, Banshees (which is just as bad if you think about it), some big exoskeleton things (which for some reason don’t make any use of the inherent advantage of a mechanised battlesuit: i.e, the ability to hit things really hard, so you just use a gun it’s carrying), cars with guns and missiles, boats with guns and missiles, cars with infinite-ammo rocket-launcher turrets… but for some reason, (as with most games, I suppose), your allies are incompetent, slobbering morons, who, to be frank, were probably a waste of money to ship to this planet from earth, but oh well…

Despite the increasing frequency with which I’m reminded that the commander is rapidly going psychotic (my favourite line “Don’t start growing a conscience now…”) the majority of the quests you’re called on to do are just variations… not even that, actually. They are just ‘go here, get some stuff, go to a freaking willow tree to get some ‘vibrations’ and go back to home base to have the scientist congratulate you and your commander berate you (yet again) for something you haven’t done (that he hasn’t mentioned previously). The world is also a pig to navigate, with a map which (irritatingly) lacks a zoom function, and the fact that all the lush greenery looks the same means that, while navigation is not totally impossible, when you’re running around in the overworld, it’s all too easy to miss your path because your view was obscured by a bush or a tree.

Don’t think it’s all bad. The Far Cry 2 engine provides a veritable feast for the eyes (albeit one that does have a tendency to flow together, making it difficult to distinguish between one thing and another). Visually, it most resembles Halo 3, with bright, vibrant colours and bloom aplenty. The game does a good job of realising another world, a world where you’re either in a forest or a Gorillaz video, but an interesting one nonetheless. The gameplay is ok, but the shooting mechanic is a bit of a mess, with no way to zoom, or improve accuracy, no cover mechanic, and an annoying camera which seems to think that I want the left half of the screen taken up by my character, and the other with a mixture of foliage, Na’vi and sticks. The game tries to inject a unique twist with a variety of selectable ‘powers’, but I found that in the heat of battle, it didn’t spring to mind to use It was Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation who observed that third-person shooters were these days just a template you could stamp a licence on and issue as movie games. That’s a shame, because I feel with a little more polish, and a little more innovation, or an interesting story, or something, anything to make it stand out, it could have been good. As it is, it’s just… bland. Boilerplate. Ordinary. Rote. The worst part is that it feels almost-cooked. If the developers had had just a little more time… but perhaps I’m being optimistic. The game was also going to be crippled by the fact that it’s tied to bad source material, and another six months wouldn’t fix the problems with the story, or make the gameplay better, or add anything substantial. Ok, I’ve been rambling for too long, let’s bring this in to land.

AVATAR isn’t by any means terrible. It has nice graphics and serviceable gameplay, and a few nice touches, but it’s overwhelmed by a feeling of mediocrity, of ‘been-here-before’, and a truly appalling story, poor mission design and less balance between the opposing sides than Fox News; and, while it’s no Rogue Warrior, it’s not something you want to get someone as a Christmas present. Unless you feel distinctly average towards them. 2.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.