Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is Off to a Shaky Start
The final AAA major release of the year, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, is launching tomorrow, but you may want to hold off on purchasing it straight away according to critics. Its currently sitting at a fair 69, with only 48% of critics recommending that you check it out. In a year full of games scoring in the high 80s and 90s, the latest Ubisoft offering looks like it may go the way of Immortals of Aveum and be forgotten before it even has any time in the limelight. Of course, these are only initial impressions and fans could love the project but, considering how generic it is shaping up to be, that’s quite unlikely at this time.
Image by Ubisoft
The game based on the highest grossing film of all time, places you in control of a Na’vi (the native blue people of Pandora) who has broken free from living among humans to reconnect with nature and take back their planet from the human invaders. To do this, you must take part in more than a few Ubisoft activities, from climbing radio towers to taking out enemy bases. The formula may be strong but, according to critics, it is getting a little dated- especially since Frontiers of Pandora borrows so much from the lacklustre recent Far Cry offerings.
Image by Ubisoft
IGN found that the world of Pandora was quite fun to explore but it fell into a lot of trappings that many other modern open world games do. This includes repetitive mission design, a lacklustre story and no fun incentive to explore. They gave the game a 7/10, indicating a decent but forgettable adventure:
“Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora features a stunning alien world to explore but doesn’t contain as many genuine surprises as other modern open-worlds.”
Game Rant were very unimpressed with the project- going so far as scoring it a 5/10. They agree that the gameplay feels dated, but also brought up the interesting point that a lot of what you experience in the game doesn’t even make sense from a narrative standpoint:
“In the face of an IP filled with rich themes with something important to say, Frontiers of Pandora ignores the point entirely and goes on to have a gameplay loop where players spend most of their time killing otherwise docile animals to make arbitrary numbers go up so they can be as immortal as possible within the confines of the game. This would be business as usual for any other open-world gameplay loop, but it's embarrassingly ironic and tone-deaf for an Avatar game.”
That’s not to say that every critic didn’t enjoy Ubisoft’s latest offering, however. In fact, Destructiod scored the game a 9/10- praising the world as one of the best in recent memory:
“If you walked away from Avatar wishing a world like Pandora actually existed out there, here you go. This is that world. Seeing Pandora is one thing, but being able to scale its massive treetops, soar high above its floating mountains on an Ikran, and traverse its wide open plains on the back of a Direhorse is really something special. This is the best version of Avatar yet.”
Image by Ubisoft
It seems that a lot of a player’s enjoyment of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will come from their familiarity and investment in the series. If you have never seen Avatar or its sequel and don’t particularly care to, this offering clearly won’t appeal to you. However, if you are a diehard fan of James Cameron’s blue aliens and the world of Pandora showcased in the films, this is the perfect opportunity to explore and get lost in the lore of the franchise. If you go in with the mindset that this is a Far Cry game with an Avatar skin, it seems that you could still have a decent amount of fun. Either way, it may be best to wait until a sale.
