“a prime example of studio's who would rather be making a MOVIE instead of a video game"
PC | PS5 | XBOX SERIES
HOW I PLAYED: I played Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on PC via Ubisoft+ subscription. I played on my R7 7800X3D, RTX 3080 gaming PC with 32GB of DDR5 RAM. I was able to play at 1440p on Ultra settings, hitting mostly 80-90fps.
STORY — 13/20
INTRO
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora starts you off in the game's setting by showing you a group of Navi seemingly being raised by the humans on Pandora in one of their research facilities. The story roughly takes place right after the events of the first Avatar movie and the human characters decide that they are going to abandon all their research projects essentially killing off the Navi being raised there.
But one of the scientists rebels and fights back to save you and your friends. This is where you "the character" start your journey.
CUTSCENES
I could tell that this is where Ubisoft put the majority of its resources in Frontiers. The cutscenes look incredible and have very realistic animations and facial movements. All the cutscenes are in-game rendered, but part of me wishes we got some truly cinematic CG pre-rendered cutscenes for pivotal story moments.
WORLD BUILDING
World-building seems to be very formulaic in Ubisoft games. The way they deliver world-building in their games is by the use of optional side quests. I dislike this form of additional storytelling because I find the lore or story elements very minimal or "not worth the squeeze" after completing a very dull/unimaginative side quest.
OVERALL STORY
The story is nothing to rave about, it kinda comes off as the first movie but not as good. It hits a lot of the same story beats but the main issue I had is there isn't a strong antagonist. The one we end up with is a Temu brand Parker Selfridge - if you are thinking "who?" ... exactly
This guy
I found the final conflict/climax to be pretty flaccid... I didn't feel like any of the emotional elements paid off. And I was kinda left just thinking "Meh... I guess it's done".
GRAPHICS — 12/15
CHARACTER MODELS 4
The character models in Avatar were kind of a mixed bag, you could tell where Ubisoft put their efforts and where they decided to "cut corners". The Navi all look amazing with incredible detail, the animal life and companions also look very stunning. My main gripe is with a lot of the human NPC's, they all have this kind of plastic doll kind of look.
Again it was obvious with some of these designs which the studio gave the most favouritism.
ENVIRONMENTS 5
Frontiers of Pandora features stunning environments, with breathtaking landscapes and perfectly timed ray-traced lighting moments that left me in awe. I was constantly thinking "This was the same team who made Outlaws???".
But I did start to feel by mid to late game that a lot of the environments were looking "Same Samey". The green forest fauna started to show its "patterns", there were some "polluted" areas and up higher on the hill planes that offered a bit of diversity but I did feel like there could be more.
SPECIAL FX 3
I wasn't "wowed" by any of the special FX in this game. Which is kind of a letdown because the environments and scenery looked so good! Again I felt like some corners were cut here.
AUDIO — 9/15
AMBIENCE
If you have heard the OST of the Avatar movies then... that is what you should expect here. The ambiance was a lot of open-world "jungle" type sounds, which is fitting but nothing really moved me emotionally.
BOSS MUSIC
I think I encountered 1-2 enemies you might consider a "boss" and the music that played was just a generic "high tension" backing track you would normally hear during an intense mission.
Again, Ubisoft... what is with this trend of having no bosses in your games or some epic/climatic boss music?
SOUND DESIGN
I felt the sound design was decent, and the voice acting felt a little "phoned in" at times. And a lot of the tracks in this game just sounded like basic bare minimum "Sound like Avatar" scores. Nothing super offensive, nor memorable.
Shame...
PERFORMANCE — 9/10
FRAME RATE
I was quite surprised at how smooth Avatar felt compared to Outlaws. I think with the added bit of time Ubisoft was able to patch Avatar to run better. I didn't play on a console, but looking at the Digital Foundry coverage, the game appeared to hit its 60fps target in performance mode and 30fps in graphics mode. So Kudos to Ubisoft!
STABILITY
I ran into no major progress-breaking bugs or glitches. There were times when I would fall off an edge and move into the swimming animation, even though I was not in the water. But that happened twice in my entire playthrough.
GAMEPLAY — 19/40
CONTROLS
The controls are typical FPS controls. Everything felt ok, my only gripe is the button combination for the scanner probe. This button combination felt cumbersome and not fluent at all. So it was a pain to quickly switch from one to the other. Also, I am not a big fan of the scroll wheel for weapons. More on that in UI/UE
MECHANICS
The core gameplay mechanics were pretty lackluster, basic skill upgrades that give you a range of abilities from more damage to better crafting abilities. I think a game like this would have done better with a more simplified upgrade tree rather than 5 different categories to spend your points.
There is a HUNGER mechanic in this game, whoever thought this was a good idea. I hope you lose your position in making video games.
PACING
I shouldn't have been surprised, this is the same team that made Outlaws. But it was basically "go to this village, complete list of chores, move on to next village" - rinse and repeat.
I never felt like we had a primary goal other than we are "The resistance". But the same copy-paste missions got old really fast. Unlock outpost, Shut down drill site, Shut down Factory etc etc.
UI/UE
Scroll wheels are trash and I hate them in any game. Personal preference but I would way rather a dedicated button for cycling weapons and maybe if you hold it down then you can scroll through different items.
I also hate menu systems where pressing start takes you to the game menu, then you have to press a dedicated button to go to the "system menu". Just make it all one menu!
BOSS QUALITY
Terrible...
There was only 1 that I recall at the final climax of the game and it was a basic field enemy with a boss health bar and some added abilities.
The bare minimum you could do for a boss in a video game.
Truly awful Massive, you should feel bad for this.
ENEMY VARIETY
In one word, garbage.
You have your choice of
- Generic soldier enemy
- Soldier enemy in mech suit
- Jet that has INSANE tracking
or
- Dog enemies
- Random animal enemies
The animals you don't have to kill unless you want to use the half-baked food crafting system. For the stupid hunger mechanic.
Even on the easiest difficulty the enemies have the most INSANE agro range and tracking. They will shoot you through a crack in a wall from 1000 ft away. True marksmen!
GAMEPLAY VARIETY
Dull and painfully average. You can tell Massive put all their effort into the cutscenes for this game. Because all the missions were lazy copy and paste and the combat moments were super straightforward and dumb.
Also, the "hacking" or "fixing electrical issues" portions were a huge slog on top of the lame puzzle/platform mechanics.
I felt like I had been playing this game for a month but in reality, it had only been 10 hours...
REPLAYABILITY
Never again will I play Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Nor should you.
0 reasons to replay this game or do side missions. MAYBE you can get a little better gear?
But who cares...
BONUS — 3/4
There are color blind options as well as the ability to remap controls. I was also pleasantly surprised to see some cool audio options available for individuals who require more descriptive audio.
Great work Massive Games and Ubisoft!
OVERALL — 64/100
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora is like a Super Soaker from the 1990's, All show and No Play!
This is a game that is a prime example of studios who would rather be making a MOVIE instead of a video game. It was painfully obvious that all of their efforts went into the game's cinematic and cutscenes. Ubisoft's "formula" for making games is broken and needs an overhaul. They need some real gamers who know what players want to get in the decision-making positions and bring back game mechanics and storylines that players enjoy. Even though the game ran smoothly and had great graphics, this was a slog to get through and I would never recommend it to anyone.
TLDR: 63/100 (FAIR) Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora looks stunning and runs smoothly, but it's a shallow experience. The game focuses heavily on cinematic cutscenes, while gameplay suffers from repetitive missions, bland mechanics, and lackluster enemy variety. With a weak antagonist and uninspired story, the overall experience feels more like a missed opportunity than an engaging adventure. Despite its impressive visuals, it's ultimately a game that values style over substance.
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