James Cameron's Avatar: The Game

As of this writing, I haven't seen James Cameron's latest effort, Avatar, but I hope for everyone involved the movie is more original and exciting than the game. But honestly, I can't see how it couldn't be... it'd take a phenomenal breakdown in communication and a few concussions for it to be worse.

The overly descriptive titled James Cameron's Avatar: The Game is a prequel to more simply titled movie. You play as Ryder, a member of the RDA corporation or "humans" with the rare genetic makeup that allows him (or her) to inhabit a Na'vi avatar or "smurf elves" (the Lord of the Rings variety, not the Christmas variety). About an hour into the game you're forced to choose which campaign you'd like to play through with little information or attachment to either. It's Sophie's Choice, really.

But in the end, I'm not sure your choice even matters. While the two campaigns should be different seeing as you play as two different races, one with the technological advancement of latter day cavemen and the other with the equivalent of Robotech, they are eerily similar. The major difference between the two is that the human campaign focuses on combat with firearms while the Na'vi combat focuses mainly on melee. On my Na'vi playthrough, I thoght that the abilities, like turning invisible, were unique to the Na'vi... NOPE! Surprisingly, your human counterpart has the exact same abilities. Playing the human campaign, you do have access to various land and air vehicles but as the Na'vi you have access to analogous mounts... and both control awkwardly.

Combat is equally awkward for both camps. Shooting your weapon as the human soldiers feels very loose. It's very much just point in the general direction of you opponent, shoot and eventually go down. As the Na'vi, it's hard to tell if you're hitting your opponent or just swinging wildly at the air in front of them. However, combat as a human does offer one advantage, scale. The Na'vi are about twice the size as an average human, so basically you get one big target. Unfortunately, the opposite is true for playing as the Na'vi. Most of the time, it's hard to figure out that:

1. You're being attacked and
2. Where you're being attacked from.

Which, I'm having a hard time deciding if the frustrating combat is better or worse than the boring missions. Literally the first hour or so worth of gameplay can be summed up as "talk to someone, go somewhere else, push a button, return".It's the gaming equivalent of busy work, like the developers felt they needed to pad the experience so they set up meaningless tasks for you to do in an effort to reach some fabled hours of gameplay. Probably the worst offense is having to watch the action in cutscenes that probably would have worked better as playable sequences.

But James Cameron's Avatar: The Game isn't a complete failure... it is a great looking game. (Plus if you've got a 3D tv and 3D glasses, you can experience the whole thing in the third dimension! But since I'm not about to spend thousands of dollars to test out one feature of one game.) The world of Pandora is alive with indigenous flora and fauna and the game takes great care in rendering them. For those of you who want to know more about the world of Avatar, the game is a great way to find out. You're able to scan every little bit of the planet and get a plethora of information. And hopefully the story will tie into the movie and at the very least enrich that experience.

I guess that's an argument for James Cameron's Avatar: The Game being a successful movie tie-in. It's not something that can stand on its own as a game, but maybe it was never supposed to? Maybe it was supposed to be an interactive version of a guide to the world of Pandora? Regardless of the developer's intent, it still needs to be judged as a separate entity. And it's apparent that while a lot of effort was put into the look of the game, someone was slacking when it came to the fun of the game.

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