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James Cameron's Avatar: The Game
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Graphics & Sound:
James Cameron's Avatar: The Game tries its best to imitate the lush, colorful environments of the movie. It does well, but some areas get murky. You can tell what they are, but compared to you, most objects are murky blobs with little detail. I suppose it's difficult, when you play a lanky, 15 foot tall elf-like creature, to make everything as detailed as it should be and also correctly proportioned to you. But overall, when viewed from a few extra paces back from the TV, Avatar does a decent job of creating the colorful jungle scene.
That being said, the game is often a jittery mess. Cameras will back themselves behind walls, giving you a great view of the wall behind you instead of everything in front of you. Characters often get bounced around between invisible walls, and often your character will stand on thin air if you move to the edge of ledge or object, eliminating the chance that you could feel immersed in this world at all.
Sound consists of some ambient jungle noises: birds singing and insects chirping. The character you control, Rai'uk, says a few things here and there, mostly "Danger nearby" or "They are close." You do get a few cute things from the guards every now and then. They might whistle or say a few things to each other. It's nothing like the hilarious conversations you could eavesdrop on in say, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, but it's something. There are some cutscenes with voice acting, but oddly, it takes about 8 levels of gameplay to get your first taste of this. Other than that, the story is told through text blocks between levels.
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Gameplay:
James Cameron's Avatar: The Game puts you in the shoes of a young warrior from the movie of the same title. These tall, blue colored aliens are trying to cope with the invasion of their planet by space-faring humans. It seems that there aren't any real spoilers for the movie in this game, at least nothing beyond what you could draw from the movie's trailers. The story appears to run parallel to the movie's plot and you'll eventually run into the humans controlling alien Avatars. The simple plot involves the warrior fighting his way through the humans to recover artifacts stolen from his people. He generally goes from angry to angrier, as he watches the destruction and invasion of his land.
Avatar plays as a pretty forgiving platformer for the most part. There are also elements of stealth and action. You could consider it a Splinter Cell light: very light. You can stealth around your enemies and execute sneak attacks, or you can try to melee your way through everything, though this probably won't work very well until you've leveled up your weapons a bit. You can use tall grass as cover, or you can use high vantage points as hiding places, provided your enemy isn't on alert. You can also hide behind tall objects, but there's nothing as sophisticated as sound cover or cover in dark corners. Beyond this, the gameplay isn't very complex. You can level up your weapons and your abilities by collecting spirit points. There are also some flight on rails sequences where you control a large bird-like alien. It plays a bit like Panzer Dragoon: also light, very light.
There are a couple of special features you can access if you have either a MotionPlus or a Balance Board accessory for your Wii. Having the MotionPlus gives you the option of summoning a wasp to scout ahead and even destroy pesky laser grids for you. Having the Balance Board simply gives you an alternate way to control the Banshee, the large alien bird you ride on in a few sequences during the game.
There is also a two-player cooperative option to the game. A second player can jump in at any time to help you. Unfortunately, it requires an extraordinary amount of cooperation to make this mode work. That is due to the fact that you need to fight the camera as well as enemies. Also, if one person alerts the guards, it ruins things for the other player as well (guards on alert don't focus on just the target that alerted them). You'll probably have something like the following happen: your friend jumps in, attempts to play legitimately for a while, then discovers that they can whack you at very inopportune times to interrupt what you're doing and simply gives up on fighting the game and makes it their mission to annoy you.
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Difficulty:
James Cameron's Avatar: The Game can be frustrating at times, but is not unmanageable on the highest difficulty. One needs to say the word "escort mission" and it's pretty much understood. This game has one, and it's pretty aggravating. You escort a large beast through the forest at night, which apparently affords you no cover, even though everything is almost pitch black. The big animal is a walking target, drawing fire from any enemy within the area, so it starts to get a little unfair quickly.
Other than trouble spots like that one, you'll be able to make it through without too much trouble. Using stealth and cover is essential to getting through the game without dying, and these sequences aren't too hard, though they may take some patience to get through. Leveling your weapons can also help give you an edge. Avatar may lack polish, but it's not a game that doesn't allow you to become better at it over time.
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Game Mechanics:
James Cameron's Avatar: The Game could be worse, but it certainly isn't the finest thing Ubisoft has put its name on. Issues begin with the camera. Granted, there usually isn't a lot to keep track of (a few guards, a laser grid), but it doesn't make things easier when the camera fights to look somewhere else. It's really cruel when you say, "I want to look at that enemy that's bearing down on me" and the camera says, "No." Luckily, you can always tell where enemies are due to the markers that show up over their heads. These markers are always in the foreground, even when your view of the enemy is blocked.
There are the standard "waggle to attack" motion controls, as well as a bow and arrow aiming system. The waggle system is simple enough, but like many Wii games, it feels tacked on.
It's unclear as to when the game saves, but I backed out of the game a few times and was not left far behind the place where I left. In fact, Avatar is nice enough to save "ahead" sometimes, so if you're having trouble with say, a horribly unfair escort mission, you'll jump ahead of the area where you died. With no lives or continues to worry about, this means you can make it through the game eventually, even if you have to die repeatedly to do so.
The extra features that use the MotionPlus and the Balance Board don't seem to be much to write home about. While the wasp controls nicely, responding to every tilt with a turn or a change in pitch, it is just a wasp. It also doesn't make up much of the gameplay. The balance board controls were one thing I was not able to review, but those sequences, again, do not make up the majority of the game. The standard controls for the Banshee make use of the Nunchuk and were not that great. You tilt the Nunchuk to move the Banshee, but it feels sluggish and unresponsive. It's kind of a shame, since the controls could have easily been mapped to the Control Stick instead.
Avatar checks in as a game based on a movie and goes through the standard paces. The story for this game doesn't seem nearly as compelling as the one for the movie, and the gameplay is decent, but gets old quick. It's very linear, and doesn't give you much of a feeling that you're one of those adventurous, freedom-loving blue aliens, the Na'vi. Sadly, even with so much potential, it seems that the Wii version of a multi-platform game ends up destined for the bargain bin again.
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-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications AKA Christin Deville |
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