Over the years, there’s been a lot of great games based on movies…and a lot of terrible ones, too. But while most require you to be a fan of the movie to enjoy, there’s been some exceptions, including 1997’s GoldenEye 007, 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and 2019’s Zombieland: Double Tap: Road Trip.
Which is why I was hopeful, and curious, about Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora (Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PC), a first-person action / adventure game based on, set during, and cannon to James Cameron’s Avatar movies…movies I do not like.
In Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora,
you play as a Na’vi, a resident of the planet Pandora who was raised by humans in hopes you’d help forge an alliance between them and your fellow natives. Which, of course, backfires like it always does. Hence why you spend your time in this game trying to drive those lousy human invaders off your world.
I can see the Fox News segment now…
At its core, Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora feels like Far Cry. Specifically, Far Cry 2, Far Cry 5, Far Cry New Dawn, and especially Far Cry Primal.
Like every Far Cry game, Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora has you exploring a large, open world where you harvest and gather supplies, take out enemy locations, and get into random fights.
But what makes Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora…
like those specific Far Cry installments is that Pandora is a lush jungle, one largely devoid of structures and roads (though it does have a lot of gigantic, felled trees that are pedestrian bridges).
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora is also similar to Far Cry Primal specifically in how some of your weapons are handmade. When you start, your primary weapon is a bow and arrow. You then get a Staff Sling, which is like a lacrosse stick you use to fling fruits that explode or disperse gas.
This is not to say that Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora is completely primitive. As a Na’vi raised by humans, you also know how to use their assault rifles and grenades, as well as how to craft explosive arrows.
As much as Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora…
may feel like a sci-fi version of Far Cry, though, there are ways they differ.
For starters, Na’vi are twice as tall as humans. And since said humans wear camouflage, and can be rather spry, they can be tough to hit, especially with your bow when they’re shooting at you.
Your height also means that your weapons are bigger, too. Which is why your arrows can pierce the armor of mechs (especially if you hit their weak spots).
It also helps that the jungle is so lush in spots that you can sneak right up on your enemies, and patiently wait for a mech to turn around so you can nail its exhaust port with an arrow, and then wipe out the remaining soldiers with your assault rifle.
Together, these elements make the combative parts of Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora rather engaging. Nothing we haven’t seen before, of course — especially when you use one of the colonizer’s weapons — but still exciting and nicely challenging.
The thing is,
while all of this makes Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora feel like a sci-fi version of Far Cry Primal, the execution isn’t nearly as good as the concept. Especially if — like me — you couldn’t care less about the story.
The biggest of these issues is navigating the world. Pandora is huge, and, as I mentioned, largely undeveloped. But it also seems sparsely populated. So you spend an inordinate amount of time just walking. Walking to your next objective, walking to check out some spot on the map, always walking.
And god help you if you have to do some climbing. Making your way up a mountain can be exceptionally frustrating. Or rather, figuring out how to make your way up a mountain can be exceptionally frustrating. Unlike Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West, you don’t naturally see how to move through the terrain when faced with a vertical surface.
It also doesn’t help that your normal foot speed in Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora is a stroll. Sure, you run if you hold down the left thumbstick, but as anyone who’s had to do this for more than a few seconds will tell you, its gets really tiresome, really quickly.
All of which is why getting around in Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora is as annoying as it was to get around the remains of D.C. in Fallout 3.
There’s also a lot of needlessly complicated mechanics. Like how gathering some fruits just takes a quick press of a button, but others require you to slightly pull the trigger, then move the left thumbstick in just the right direction, and then pull the trigger harder. It’s like lockpicking in every adventure game: tedious and unnecessary.
Throwing grenades…
also requires more steps than it should. Instead of just tapping a bumper — y’know, like in most other games — you have to hold down a button (X on Xbox; square on PlayStation) and then hit the right bumper. It’s an extra step that, in combat, could mean the difference between killing a damn human, and being killed by a damn human.
Your character in Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora also suffers from a problem that has vexed Batman in the Arkham games, Lara Croft in the last couple Tomb Rader installments, and many others. While you use your senses to scan the world for resources and mission locations, they don’t stay highlighted very long, so you end up having to rescan the area repeatedly.
Your Na’vi sight is also used for investigations like the kind Aloy does in Horizon Forbidden West and Batman does in his Arkham adventures. Except here the mechanics are so exacting, and have such little wiggle room, that they end up being more tedious than compelling.
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora also has an issue so commonplace that I just cut and paste some version of this paragraph into every relevant review: some of the text is too small. If you sit at a reasonable distance from your TV — y’know, like your mama told you to — you’ll have trouble reading the mission objectives, the tutorial messages, and item descriptions.
Which brings us back…
to the question that sparked this whole journey: Will people who dislike the Avatar movies enjoy Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora? The answer is a resounding…eh, sort of.
If you’re a huge fan of the Far Cry games, and especially Primal, to the point where you can be somewhat forgiving of its foibles, Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora is worth picking up…when the price comes down. While it may not work all the time, when it does, it’s a solid shooter in a unique place.
But if you’re not a forgiving Far Cry fan, well, cancel your trip to Pandora. As fun as the combat may be, getting to those combative moments is not nearly as effortless as the Na’vi make it look in the movies. Which is why Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora grabbed me about as much as those films.
