REVIEW – Ubisoft’s Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora, an adaptation of James Cameron’s sci-fi universe, presents a stunning world. However, its weak action sequences and dull story leave much to be desired. Players take on the role of a young Na’vi who has escaped the clutches of the human military force, the Resource Development Administration (RDA), to explore the wonders of Pandora.

Leaping from the back of a dragon-like Ikran, you plunge from the sky and are gently caught by the canopy of a lush rainforest. As night falls, instead of darkness, the open-world action of Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora bursts into a kaleidoscope of color, with alien flora glowing in vibrant greens and brilliant blues. The distant planet of Pandora is rendered more stunningly than ever before.

Then the crackle of a cheap radio interrupts – a quirky member of your allied resistance using his expensive military equipment to make a groan-inducing tree joke. Suddenly, you’re jolted back to reality, sitting in your computer chair, wondering why a game so intent on immersing you in the world of Pandora and the lives of its blue-skinned Na’vi inhabitants would interrupt your experience with such… banality. This scene encapsulates the essence of Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora.

A young Na’vi on the run…

You play as a young Na’vi on the run from the Resource Development Administration (RDA), a human military force aggressively colonizing Pandora. Experiencing the taste of freedom as your character is exhilarating: dashing through the planet’s forests, jumping onto trees, and leaping from branches never loses its charm. However, racing through dense rainforests, flatlands, and dark swamps is a constant reminder of Frontiers of Pandora’s other shortcomings.

Although the first Avatar movie is one of the highest grossing films of all time, the game’s plot is so bland and formulaic that it fails to reach even the moderate heights of James Cameron’s narrative. Massive Entertainment’s Resistance story is told through non-player characters (NPCs) that range from barely tolerable to irritating and cartoonishly annoying. Even worse are the NPCs that wander around populated areas, making Skyrim’s monotonous guards seem like eloquent poets by comparison as they endlessly repeat the same few sentences, reminiscent of a Jehovah’s Witness mantra.

…and this young Na’vi wants you in his army!

Your mission is to convince other Na’vi tribes to join the fight against the human colonizers. Armed with a mix of alien and human weapons, you are ready to dismantle the invaders’ bases. The process of capturing these bases is formulaic and will feel familiar to fans of Ubisoft’s open-world Far Cry series. While it’s satisfying to blast away the driver of a giant AMP mechanized tank with a well-aimed arrow, the overall gunplay feels uninspired, with bullets lacking the impact of arrows.

Leveling up unlocks more equipment, which must first be crafted. Fortunately, gathering materials is one of the more exciting aspects of the game, and it’s fun to figure out how to gently move the mouse on PC or finesse the gamepad on consoles to best harvest moss, bark, or mushrooms. Pandora is teeming with exotic plant life, nearly all of which can be scanned through your Na’vi vision, highlighting harvestable materials, nearby animals, and enemy weaknesses.

This vision essentially mirrors the Eagle Vision in Ubisoft’s Assassin Creed series or the Witcher Senses in The Witcher 3. Like many mechanics in Frontiers Of Pandora, it feels like it’s been copied and pasted from other games without any real innovation – even a cliched hacking minigame makes an appearance. The young, naive Na’vi character somehow has a natural talent for handling complex military machinery, which feels contradictory. The game seems to hand out these top-notch skills to compensate for its otherwise unoriginal mechanics, artificially increasing the difficulty.

“Fly, Fly, like a Hawk in the Sky?!”

But when Frontiers Of Pandora gets it right, the game is a truly special experience. Climbing Pandora’s iconic floating islands to bond with an Ikran is a fantastic feeling, and flying through the skies afterwards is a wonderful reward. Like everything else in the game, however, this euphoria is short-lived, as you soon realize you’re disconnected from the world below.

There’s a reason Sony’s open-world Horizon series doesn’t give you flying mounts until the final act of the second game. It trivializes travel and makes the world feel less special. Frontiers Of Pandora gets around this in later regions by barring your mount from “unfamiliar skies” until you regain flight, but giving a player an ability only to take it away feels like a cheap way to add artificial pacing.

Despite its flaws, if you enjoy this type of open-world formula, you’ll likely find many hours of enjoyment in Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora. The game’s stunning depiction of Pandora alone is worth a playthrough. However, unless you’re a hardcore fan of the franchise, don’t expect to discover any uncharted territory that hasn’t been thoroughly explored by bigger and better games.

Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora is available for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. Our experience was on the Xbox Series X.

-Gergely Herpai (BadSector)-

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft

Style: Action-adventure

Release: December 7, 2023.
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