Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is one of Ubisoft's most mesmerizing games and also a fine tribute to the world created by James Cameron. Although the story fails to stand out, the huge setting does, and offers both newcomers and veterans an experience hard to forget.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a visually breathtaking game with the DNA of standard Ubisoft games. The open-world activities get repetitive at times, the villain is uninteresting, and you need to continue to upgrading for gear that stops the momentum of the game. But, to experience this beautiful world outweighs the gameplay that can get tiring. You'll be left in awe of Pandora and be delighted to sink your teeth into this world.

The natural world of Pandora is the main star of this latest video game adaptation of the Avatar franchise. It's supported by the competent and familiar mechanics, but let down by the weak story and occasional lack of polish.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora offers a visually appealing open world that fans of the movies will certainly enjoy. That said, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is routinely held back by repetitive gameplay, while a lack of enemy types and weapons stops the combat from being quite as enjoyable as it could have been. Technically impressive and satisfying for the most part, it's also clear that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora feels essentially just like another Far Cry game from a game design point of view, rather than the sort of entirely fresh offering one would expect from a modern day Avatar video game.

While I eventually began having fun with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the game was a very difficult nut to crack. Rather than being open to the way I wanted to play it, Avatar pushed me to find the way it wanted to be played, and then kinda punished me for doing so. Frontiers of Pandora should feel free and flowing, but I've found a lot of the experience to be restrictive and near-punitive. Once I pushed through the game's many barriers to entry, I started having a good time, but don't expect to just jump in and have fun. Like Jake Sully, it's going to take a while to find your Avatar-legs.

With all these complaints, you might think I hate Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, but I don’t. I mean, I don’t love it, but given such a huge, richly imagined world, it’s hard to be too annoyed with it. There are definitely plenty of improvements that would make it more enjoyable to play, but as it stands, it’s a perfectly serviceable open world adventure.

Visually stunning, this is a fun but undeniably flawed visit to the superbly recreated world of Pandora. It should have been better; we’re left feeling blue about that. [Issue#36, p.70]

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is not terrible and I’d be lying if I told you I suffered through it, but I expect more from a AAA title than a semi-polished gameplay, a run-of-the-mill story and environments that oscillate between breathtaking and mediocre. Ubisoft Massive’s game has moments showing it could have been great, but overall turned out uninspired.

Quotation forthcoming.

While Frontier of Pandora's open world is an audio-visual feast, the formulaic structure of its gameplay and the tools it give you to wade through it feels far too familiar to make it worth visiting for long.

Apart from the truly beautiful graphics and phenomenally designed environment that is a real feast for the eyes, Frontiers of Pandora has little to offer that has not already been seen in many other Ubisoft releases, unless you are particularly fond of the world of "Avatar".