The latest from Ubisoft Massive, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a gargantuan game world that looks stunning in practically every frame and goes the extra mile to fill it with exceptional detail. Where it begins to lose a lot of its steam from the opening moments is with its mechanics and structure which have not been iterated on since Far Cry. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, despite its beautiful game world and decent movement controls, falls apart at critical moments and does very little to be more than the standard Ubisoft open-world shooter.
The Far Cry comparisons are inevitable as the game practically wears the skeleton of the franchise underneath its Na'vi skin. If you've played a Far Cry game before- you're going to find yourself at home clearing outposts across the map while you join some kind of resistance group against the baddies. The game attempts to put an Avatar spin on things with quasi-survival mechanics such as Food and Energy. Unfortunately, the mechanics ring hollow and don't carry much importance outside of forcing your character to retreat every once in a while to pop a fruit while being shot at by a mech.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a solid game in isolation but it is severely weighed down by the game's refusal to grow past the tried-and-tested open-world game formula that has haunted every major franchise by Ubisoft.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora; Na'vi Far Cry
Gameplay
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora takes a little while to get going, but immediately, it's made clear that Ubisoft Massive has nailed the movement controls for the Na'vi. As a young Na'vi, you will be towering over human characters by a lot and it translates to the movement as well. The movement feels both fluid and quick even when playing on a controller and the sense of pace as you string multiple moves together as you traverse through the map feels decent. The movement controls begin to show cracks around the 2-hour mark as traversing long distances across the map becomes a lot more tedious. The game also takes its sweet time in introducing your Ikari (your flying mount), at around the 5-hour mark. But by then, players are liable to have grown tired of a system that once felt good at around the 1-hour mark.
The shooting suffers a similar problem as it doesn't feel outright inadequate at first, but by the 4-hour mark, it becomes a lot more tedious than it felt earlier in the game. The primary weapons at your disposal are an Assault Rifle, a Heavy Bow, and a Light Bow. While the bows sound great and feel adequately powerful, they begin to lose their novelty when going up against multiple mechs simultaneously in a medium-sized arena.
Speaking of combat arenas, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, doesn't do nearly as much to distinguish itself from the likes of Far Cry in terms of world design, level structure, or progression. This is most apparent in the standard "Clear the Outpost" level structure first introduced in Far Cry 3. Even though the game has decent individual parts, it rarely ever comes together in one glorious moment a la the gladiator level in Far Cry 4 or Blackbeard's farewell in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
For the most part, individual pieces of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora feel great but the lack of cohesion between systems and mechanics is what ultimately led to none of my sessions with the game lasting for longer than an hour and a half. It also doesn't help that the characters in the game have very little for you to latch on to and are often vessels for exposition.
Even though the campaign feels like a bit of a let-down, there is a good game here somewhere, based on its strong movement controls and fairly responsive parkour-y traversal across the map. I was not able to try out the co-op mode, but there is a good chance that the game takes on another shape entirely when experienced alongside friends and other players.
Story
It has been my long-held belief that Ubisoft open-world titles live and die by the effectiveness of their narrative. In terms of mechanics, every Far Cry game after Far Cry 3 has been virtually identical save for the introduction of a minor mechanic here and there. The differentiator, then, comes from how effectively the narrative can motivate the player to go from one same-y quest to the other. For instance, Far Cry 4's narrative was one of the more compelling reasons I was able to get through a lot of the tedium of the campaign.
The same works the other way around as one of the biggest reasons Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora's campaign felt like it dragged a tad bit too much was it couldn't effectively deliver the gravity of the situation or populate the world with interesting characters. The story follows a young Na'vi kid kidnapped by the RDA to be part of the The Ambassador Program (essentially Na'vi child soldiers trained by the RDA), who then fight their way to freedom and join the resistance against the RDA.
It doesn't help that the game telegraphs the villain with a gigantic menacing horn as soon as he walks into the frame in the first 20 seconds of the game. This means that the game trades nuance for a quick way to get a reaction out of the player. Sadly, because the villain and his motivation lack very little nuance, there is a strong chance players will not feel nearly as motivated to take down the dozens of medium-sized outposts strewn all across Pandora.
The campaign is about 18-20 hours long, but feels more like 30 given the gigantic scale of the world and the jagged pacing of the story. While there was nothing egregiously bad about the story and narrative - it wasn't particularly memorable either. Save for about 4 great cinematic set-pieces across the campaign, there is very little about the campaign I can recall off the top of my head.
Graphics, Performance, Sound Design
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an undeniable technical marvel by Ubisoft Massive and its visual and audio presentation impresses in practically every single moment of gameplay. Built on Ubisoft Massive's proprietary Snowdrop engine, the game world looks nigh perfect in nearly every lighting condition. The game looks particularly great at night, thanks to the bioluminescent flora. The sound of a dozen species all around you on a set of great speakers or a pair of headphones is some of the best audio design work I've experienced this side of The Last of Us Part II.
Frontiers of Pandora is a great case for studios to develop games on their proprietary engine should their budgets allow as each bit of the game world feels hand-crafted with exceptional attention to detail. In all my time with the game, I experienced no crashes or virtual artefacts save for a couple during particularly busy scenes. Now and then, the weather would change a little too dramatically, but those instances were rare enough for it to not be a massive nuisance.
The game runs a steady 60 frames per second at Performance Mode and the Quality Mode looks just as pretty as it should at native 4K. Given the game's movement and swift animations, a 120 FPS mode on the console would have been appreciated, but, it isn't essential to the experience.
Final Word: Avatar Frontiers of Pandora
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is not exactly ambitious in terms of game design or level structure, but it is a good first step for Ubisoft Massive to build upon in a future sequel or online game mode. The game's faults mainly come from its resistance to growing past the boundaries of the standard Ubisoft open-world game, but it is an issue that can be overcome in future entries should Ubisoft deem the franchise worthy of a sequel.
The game is the definitive Avatar experience, given that it is one of two games available for the IP and this is the more refined and polished one. Speaking of polish, it does feel the game has received the due time and care that it needed and that is thoroughly appreciated. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has a decent game in it somewhere, but one that is under the rubble of the Ubisoft open-world game structure. However, Ubisoft Massive deserves praise for a highly polished, great-looking, AAA game that delivers the kind of visual and sonic experience that is expected off of AAA studios.
