- Become immersed in the world of the Avatar feature film, viewing James Cameron’s universe from your own perspective
- Take your stand in a raging conflict, fighting either for the indigenous Na’vi or the resource-hunting RDA Corporation
- Arm yourself with any of more than 60 total RDA and Na’vi weapons, customizing them for your own use
- Prepare yourself for battle by choosing any of 20 skills for each clan
- Design your own character and acquire new skills as you make your way through the game
Product Description
Avatar PS3Amazon.com Product Description
In a distant corner of the universe, a devastating conflict is about to erupt between two very different worlds. On the planet of Pandora reside an indigenous people known as the Na’vi. When the Na’vi find themselves engaged in a struggle with the RDA Corporation, a space-faring consortium in search of valuable resources, it sets the stage for a conflict unlike any the universe has seen before. Step into a dazzling … More >>
May 15th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
This game is lots of fun. I have been playing it all weekend and am still addicted. The game has little story but makes up for it with non stop action. It’s true that the game doesn’t do anything new and amazing but it’s a movie tie in. When has a movie tie-in done anything revolutionary?
The game plays almost like a single player version of a multiplayer game. You run around a huge map killing every enemy thing you see. Yes, most of the missions are recycled in different ways but the nature of the game is a shooter. The missions just giving you different reasons to do it.
I think the Na’vi side is a bit more fun because you have close range melee attacks that work well up close. As well as an awesome bow and arrow that can take out most tiny soldiers with one satisfying hit. Plus for some reason, I guess because they are tribal, you get the urge to play with a more hunting style. Climbing to the tops of giant trees and stalking tiny humans and taking them out with your bow and arrow really nails the tribal hunter awesomeness. The RDA side is shooter style only with no melee at all. That can be annoying because when enemies get to close they can be difficult to target because they move so fast when up close. But at least they are huge targets.
The graphics are unbelievable. The Jungles are so detailed and amazing to look at. The best part are the night areas. Everything glows in the dark. The trees, plants, animals. It looks almost like under the ocean. The perspectives are fun too. Playing as the Na’vi everything looks tiny including the humans. When you play as humans everything is huge. It helps to make both sides of the game feel original even though you are actually playing on the same maps.
The movie looks like it’ll be awesome, and I think most of the gamers here will become big fans of the sci-fi adventure. It’s unfortunate that the low score game magazine reviews will discourage so many people not to try this game. Hopefully after everyone sees the movie they will be inspired to try this awesome, entertaining game.
Rating: 4 / 5
May 15th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
QUICK IMPRESSIONS
After watching the movie twice (once ‘regular’ 3D, than on IMAX, getting a copy of ‘Avatar – the game experience’ came naturally, regardless of the so-so reviews I found at Amazon. To my surprise, I do NOT regret making this purchase – not because Avatar is an exceptionally innovative game but because it keeps the world of Pandora alive and teaming with life and conflict as we are all waiting for some more affordable ‘at home’ 3D technology to make the real Avatar and maybe a sequel or two possible in our living room.
So, briefly, the game is VERY good at giving us a sort of bird’s eye view of Pandora – the color, the features, the wild life, RDA’s war machines are all pretty good renderings of Cameron’s cinematic masterpiece – a 3D mode is possible but we don’t have that kind of a TV so we can only imagine what a 3D game would look like. Gameplay itself, while a bit repetitive, is not that bad and the lack of variety in weapons and skillsets is compensated by the several play modes. As for replay value, it really depends on how much you enjoyed the movie. By the way, I would not recommend playing this game unless you watched the movie because you can’t play Avatar with a cold heart.
GAME SETUP
You have the ability to give your character a first name – last name is always Ryder and you are a signal specialist. The game lets you shape you gender and appearance and, while at it, you will see how both your human and Na’vi face are going to look like. There are no difficulty settings so, unless you want to tinker with the sound settings or other minutia, you’re ready to go.
Of course, there will come a point in the game where you will have to choose between sticking with the humans or joining the Na’vis.
GAMEPLAY
The beginning doesn’t look like much – you show up at the base and you run chores. Well… as you do that you gain experience points that bring more skills and you are allowed to access more articles from the Pandoran version of Wikipedia that can give you some idea of what you are dealing with. Eventually, in the story mode, you will have to decide on which side you really are. If you stick with the humans, you’ll be riding mechanized vehicles and firing range weapons and lay waste to Pandora’s wildlife and native population. If you pick the Na’vi, your bow is complemented with melee weapons and you’ll be riding those amazing Pandoran dragons and… well… slaughter the little machine-gun firing but rather fragile humans.
The game play is very simple and easy to learn. You can evade, jump, shoot, and slow down time temporarily for climatic moments. You can do a lot of climbing in some parts however you cannot grab on to ledges and the terrain can get very confusing because of that. Sometimes you have to endlessly look for some vine to climb after giving up your attempts to climb the terrain without it. As a human, relying on ranged weapons exclusively can annoy some people because they constantly have to retreat from incoming enemies. As a Na’vi you have some melee weapons that can make many enemies easier to kill if they get too hard for your normal bow and arrow.
GAME MODES
If you want to take a break from story mode there is the conquest mode. Here you can command armies to conquer territory – send the humans back home if you are a Na’vi or eliminate the Na’vi if you are with the humans. All you see in the conquest mode is the statistics of what happens so don’t expect any climatic cut scenes. This mode can also benefit the normal story mode by giving you spoils as you progress through the game. These two parts of the game can refresh each other continually.
If you do multiplayer you go head to head with other players around the world on different maps throughout the game. There are many scenarios and maps so it stays fresh for a while. This mode can also help your skills for single play as well to help you get better. You usually pick between the Na’vi and humans so you can pick the side you are best with but, with good players it can get quite predictable with the humans continuously retreating and firing their weapons and the Na’vi trying to get close and engage in a melee that they almost always win.
So, to summarize, you can play Avatar as follows:
- Na’vi in story mode
- Human in story mode
- Na’vi in contest mode
- Human in contest mode
- Na’vi in multiplayer
- Human in multiplayer
MY RATING
Avatar could have been a blockbuster, the way the movie is but it’s not quite there. It’s a competently layout game with stunning visuals and offering some variety but there is very little as far as character development goes, there aren’t too many weapons and the action, whether playing the conquest or the shootouts can be a little repetitive.
I’ve enjoyed playing Avatar for the first few hours and I expect to come back to it from time to time but, while a ‘good’ game, I would not call it ‘top notch’ so it’s going to get 4 stars overall.
–
>> Brush your teeth, it’s the law! <<
Rating: 4 / 5
May 15th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
First, the Good: The game is absolutely beautiful. The environments are wonderful… This is why I bought the game. Exploring the world as a Na’Vi is quite fun. I didn’t do much as an RDA Human, but it was just as fun.
The Bad: There are many aspects that are grossly lacking in this game. The foremost in my mind is the creatues, as a Na’Vi. First of all, there is no connecting of the queue, you just hop on. As far as I can tell, my Avatar didn’t even have a queue (no long hair braid). There was no personal Banshee that you were bonded to, you simply rode them around in special parts of the story that allowed you to.
Worst of all in regards to the creatures, you could not attack from any of them. I expected to be able to fight with my Banshee and also to fire my bow from atop it. But no… Riding any animal in the game completely removes your ability to attack. Which means riding a horse into battle is a sure way to get the horse killed. Same with the Banshee. The “Thanator” has it’s own attack which is surprisingly pathetic and often misses, because when it is attacking, it can’t also move.
There is no stealth in the game. No sense of sneaking around, stalking RDA. You are either running full speed or walking, but no crouching and moving stealthily. There is a gimmicky invisibility ability, but that does not give the feel of a tactical game, more along the lines of … oh no, I am about to die, invisibility! Or, I don’t want to fight those guys right now, invisibility!
While the environments are beautiful, you feel walled in, heavily walled in. You can only fly so high before you hit a glass ceiling, and in some cases a glass floor. Additionally, flying the Banshee around was alright, but trying to land with it was a total drag. It could only land on perfectly flat large areas. Many a time I had to choose an out of the way, lame landing spot instead of a perfect tactical choice. We really should have been able to shoot bows from the Banshees… without that, there’s almost no point in flying them.
There are a few spots where you can get stuck permanently and have to reload, and NPCs will have dialogues with other NPCs even if only one NPC is present, but that’s nothing compared to the other issues.
The Ugly: The plot of the game is on par with that of a Uwe Bolle movie, if not worse. You are sent on mission after mission where the goal is exactly the same as the last mission. There is no variety and it gets old incredibly fast. I wasn’t even halfway done with the game before I was completely sick of the missions. Go find this guy, fight RDA, talk to this guy, fight RDA, talk to this guy again, fight RDA, get “Shard”. Now go to other guy, find a new guy, fight RDA, talk to new guy, fight RDA, go find this guy, fight RDA, talk to this guy, fight RDA, get “Shard”. Talk to this guy, fight RDA, find this guy, fight RDA, talk to this guy, fight RDA, get “Shard”. Talk to this guy, fight RDA, find this guy, fight RDA, go to this spot, fight RDA, gather “Song”. Go back to Hometree, talk to this guy, talk to lady, sing song with lady, talk to lady again, talk to this guy…. and then repeat that three times. (And that was the last half of the game, in it’s entirety).
I’ll be you were incredibly bored just READING that. Aside from that, your character is a complete imbecile that you never grow to like, ever. You don’t even get to create your own character… You select from a few premade characters which probably have the exact same dialogue, story, and name (I have no intentions of slogging through the terrible plot again to see if there is a difference).
I think the final sequence sums up the game very well. A Taruk (big red flying lizard) lands near you, you go over to it… reach your hand out, and voila, you can ride it now. I noted that it only had two eyes, but whatever. You jump on it’s back and take flight… woo, it’s big, it flies fast, yay. You fly essentially down a tunnel (you can go up a little, down a little, left and right a little, but not much) to an area that looks huge, which is completely walled in invisibly. There is a giant orange beacon for you to land on. You land on it, you walk over to a tree. The end. And that is the first and only time your ride the Taruk, amazing…
…sigh.
At least it’s pretty.
Rating: 3 / 5
May 16th, 2010 at 12:05 am
First the pros and cons:
The Pros
-Some gorgeous visuals and scenery
-Great looking vehicles
-Lots of action among two campaigns
-Somewhat interesting multiplayer
-A 3d version (only if you have a 3D tv)
The Cons
-Repetitive missions
-Clichéd gameplay
-Bad story
-Choppy controls
-Bad story
Avatar isn’t a really bad game, it’s just one that is lacking creativity beyond the alien landscape of Cameron’s movie. One immediate problems is the lack of binding storytelling. So little focus is given to the setup and characters that there is no real connection to the interspecies war saga. Even worse, Avatar forces you to make a major decision about the plot of your game at the very beginning: whether or not to become a traitor to the human race. It happens right away, there’s simply no motivation to make a decision either way. For what it’s worth, you play a signal specialist — a job description that apparently means badass, one-man army — named “Easy” Ryder.
Luckily for him, Ryder is special. Ryder has just arrived on the planet Pandora and his genetic code gives him the rare ability to take over the body of a vat-grown Na’vi — the humanoids native to the planet. Throughout the game, you are the only capable soldier, everyone relies on you to do everything. There’s almost never a logical explanation for most of what you do. It’s all basic busy work like, “Go find items One, Two, and Three” or “Go kill commanders A, B, and C.” Every location is occupied with people who are helpless without you and who constantly need you to go here and there.
Thankfully, as you travel there are plenty of battles happening around you, which helps make the war zone on the planet of Pandora feel more dramatic. A jungle world, Pandora has a real Crysis vibe to it, only with killer alien plants and animals and 10 foot-tall blue, angry natives running around. Graphically, it looks good in general, although the character models look a bit rough. Also, the scenery is somewhat angular; however, despite this, the game is mostly pretty.
Vehicles play a big role in the action. The maps for each location are relatively large, so grabbing an ATV or buggy to speed up the travel time is welcome. Controls both on foot and in vehicles are tolerable, but it’s way too easy to get hung up on frustrating invisible walls and other obstacles. You can even get completely trapped, forcing a suicide and re-spawn. Likewise, aircraft controls are sluggish and unresponsive and these failed moments render the best portions of the game merely tedious.
There are two separate story-lines in Avatar. The human campaign is exactly what you’d expect — a lone super soldier running around, killing things and completing tasks. Unfortunately, the alien side is pretty much the same. The main change is that the Na’vi have melee attacks and ride native beasts instead of vehicles. These savage natives are bigger, stronger and faster than the humans, so the combat mechanics feel different, but the mission structure doesn’t.
For fans of sci-fi action with lots of substance, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game is definitely not a must-have title. It’s playable and entertaining in small doses, but there’s so little originality in the game design that it feels like a quick — if not highly expensive — attempt to get the game out in time for the movie. The story is awful and the gameplay is far too repetitive to truly inspire and capture players. This is a real shame, because the source material clearly has a lot of unrealized potential.
Rating: 2 / 5
May 16th, 2010 at 2:32 am
After seeing and loving Avatar in 3d on IMAX I decided to purchase the game. The game arrived today and after playing for about 30 minutes I just can’t take any more. First and foremost the game does not contain the main characters of the movie which is a major disappointment for someone who loved the film. That’s right, be prepared to play and interact with a bunch of generic characters who have nothing to do with the movie.
After grinning and bearing the character disappointment I was even more disappointed with the graphics (I’m playing on a 1080p Sony SXRD XBR projection), character acting, and overall gameplay (controls, movements, and feature items and functionality). This game doesn’t follow or add anything to the movie so don’t expect it if you decide to purchase the game.
Aiming, shooting, moving, and utilizing special skills is a joke. Explanation: The aiming is oversensitive (Might be able to adjust the sensitivity but it would only go so far) and not smooth. Even the map and location indicators are amateurish. I’d go into more detail but there really isn’t any reason to. I will be trading the game in for a loss to get something I can actually enjoy playing.
I’m not an avid gamer but have most recently played Uncharted 2: Among Thieves(5 stars – Would be more If the scale was higher), Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots(5 stars), Lost Planet: Extreme Condition(3 stars), etc… I only mention this to give you an idea on how I’m basing my opinion of the Avatar Movie Game. In all honesty even the graphics on Lost Planet ($19.99 at Walmart) are more impressive and the gameplay is much better. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots or Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune or Uncharted 2: Among Thieves games BUY one of them instead of this garbage, you will not regret it.
Rating: 2 / 5