Ubisoft have approached this tie-in slightly differently, understanding that it's the concept rather than the characters that are important you play as a military grunt just landing on a new planet following a five year journey. Upon your arrival you are ready to prove yourself and work for the RDA on Pandora, a hostile planet inhabited by a humanoid life form called the Na'vi and with every other animal and plant looking to kill or maim you. It just so happens that due to your unique DNA you are a prime candidate for the Avatar program, where you are then entrusted to infiltrate the local inhabitants and assist the RDA in mining for Unobtanium (this is from the man that gave us the T-1000; inexcusable).

 

 

It's here that the game throws in it's one and only original feature, early on you must decide to stick with the evil military based RDA or save the planet with the hippy like Na'vi. Sadly other than the obvious differences in equipment there is little difference between the two other than story. The RDA use heavy weapons and vehicles to strike fear into the locals whilst the Na'vi rely on stealth and hand-made weapons including a bow and arrow that leads to a very Rambo-esque moment involving a helicopter.

 

Other than that there is little else to separate both of the campaigns following the initial split. They both include some very generic missions like shooting targets and collecting items and a fair amount of them are "locate and talk to" missions, where you do an awful lot of backtracking. As you progress through the game you automatically earn experience points that open up new weapons and also some special abilities like health regeneration, an invisibility cloak and a cool Viperwolf that will join you during an attack.

 

All of the action is presented in an over the shoulder 3rd person perspective, however the character is pushed quite far to the left of the screen, so when running in a straight line you tend to overcompensate by bringing your character to the left.

 

Avatar mimics well what I have seen on the adverts for the film so far, offering a unique and alien planet full of plants and animals, all looking great with lush colours splashed everywhere and the occasional neon lighting. Sadly for most of the game you will miss this as you are playing via the rather small mini map in the bottom right of the screen which highlights points of interest. The map can get confusing so you will be constantly referring to this to get your bearings. In keeping with the film, Avatar also has numerous 3D filters to try out but without the required technology I am unable to comment on this.

 

 

Whilst I am not surprised that a game based on a movie was not ground breaking I am still a little disappointed by this shoot by numbers approach. Although there are essentially two campaigns to play through they do get boring very quickly.

 

Overall then Avatar is quite a disappointing game, where the movie promises to take things to a new level and be like nothing else before it, Avatar the game is just like most other movies turned game, disappointing. Sadly this game is not as inspiring as the film, nowhere near it.