Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Review

By: Alex Chub | 13.12.2023, 11:46

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a great gift for fans of the film franchise and a visually impressive game in general. It offers a quite simple and straightforward story with no surprises, no unexpected twists and turns, and is generally predictable. It is spiced up with familiar activities and features from other open-world games by Ubisoft. So if you want to get lost for many hours in the endless expanses of Pandora, then you are welcome. But you shouldn't expect variety, so after a few hours of playing, you will notice that the tasks start to repeat and it becomes a routine. From a technical point of view, the game is made at a high level. Everything has been great with the picture and stability since its release, and you don't need to "insist" on the game for another six months waiting for patches with fixes, as it was with many releases this year.

5 reasons to buy Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora:

an extremely beautiful world of Pandora with a variety of flora and fauna;
good graphics and very good optimisation;
excellent implementation of platforming, vertical movements, and flights;
you are a fan of the Avatar film franchise and cannot wait for the next film;
a nice soundtrack in the style of the films.

2 reasons not to buy Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora:

the game has typical Ubisoft rather monotonous additional activities that turn into a routine;
a simple plot with no surprises.

Quick transition:

Time to return to Pandora?
How interesting and diverse is the gameplay of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
What about leveling and crafting in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
How well does Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
In a nutshell

Is it time to return to Pandora?

The developers from Massive Entertainment decided not to experiment with the plot and took as a basis the formula used in both parts of the film. So we have a typical story about the fight against evil invaders, a very clear division of good and evil without grey morality. A story that will be understandable to absolutely everyone. Even the negative characters, including Mercer, whom you meet at the very beginning of the game, are shown as literally textbook villains.

The events of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora takes place in parallel with Avatar: The Way of Water, but they do not intersect directly. Although Jake Sully is mentioned several times during the game. The developers tell us a story from the same world, but with completely different tribes, places, and characters. To be fair, it turned out to be extremely organic.

The RDA (Resources Development Administration) corporation, already familiar from the films, continues to destroy Pandora's nature and the indigenous Na'vi population in order to extract valuable resources. As one of the ways to suppress the resistance of the local population, the RDA chooses to raise Na'vi children with brainwashing and instilling the necessary "values" in them. We play as one of these Na'vi children, a member of one of the tribes exterminated by the RDA.

The character wakes up after 16 years of sleeping in anabiosis, along with several other similar teenagers who have been re-educated. He immediately gets caught up in the whirlwind of events and becomes a member of the resistance during the RDA's second attempt to capture Pandora. He still has to learn how to live freely on Pandora and gain the knowledge of his Sarenta ancestors, who were storytellers and travellers.

Of course, it becomes clear that there will be no peaceful solution and that RDA will have to be fought by force. There are several different Na'vi tribes in the game that try not to enter into conflict with the RDA, and the hero will have to establish good relations with them and prove that the only possible option is to unite and fight the RDA.

We should also talk about the world of the game. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has a huge number of biomes that differ from those seen in the films. At the same time, the style has been preserved and Pandora is clearly recognisable in the landscapes. It features monumental natural structures, dense jungles, spacious plains, skyscraper-sized trees, and not much smaller fauna. It is claimed that the game used some of the ideas that will be in the third film part. At the same time, some elements from the game may appear in future films.

The world of the game is extremely detailed, with lots of details and impressive landscapes: dense impenetrable thickets, steppes, jungles, flying rocks and, of course, many animals of different colours, shapes and sizes. At night, it also glows with different colours. Sometimes this whole colour palette looks a little too bright. Playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, you just enjoy travelling around this world, constantly stopping, admiring the view, and taking another series of screenshots. It looks even more impressive from above. This is possible after you get your own flying vehicle in the story - the local predator Icran, which we saw in the films.

In general, the visual part of the game makes the biggest impression

How interesting and diverse is the gameplay of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?

If we talk about the gameplay, we have a fairly typical Ubisoft open-world game like Far Cry or Assassin's Creed, so we have a huge map with a lot of points of interest. The main difference is a greater emphasis on verticality. Our protagonist is a rather agile and fast Na'vi who is very good at climbing rocks and trees. The elements of the environment help him in this: plants that work like a trampoline, huge leaves that catapult the hero, vines for quick climbing of trees and huge leaves that help not to die when falling from a great height. But even this is sometimes not enough. For example, I was able to get to the desired location in an additional task only after I got an Ikran at my disposal. Flying it not only allows you to admire the scenery, but also helps you get to the desired location faster. And for fast movement on the ground, there is a local analogue of horses.

Despite all its beauty, Pandora's World is a dangerous place. Travelling around, you can come across plants that emit poisonous gas or explode when you approach them. Not to mention animals. There are a lot of hostile animals, and some of them are very dangerous. So it's very easy to turn from hunter to hunted. But you can also use this to your advantage. For example, to set a large aggressive animal against RDA fighters. This tactic can be very effective, and you can easily get rid of one or two enemy mechs.

The storyline tasks are quite diverse: there is research, time-limited episodes, small elements of stealth (although it is not very interestingly implemented in the game), and animal rescue. There are a lot of dialogues, cinematic moments that reveal the story, the past of the hero's tribe, and the details of life on Pandora. But, as with most Ubisoft games, you won't be able to follow the plot exclusively. You will have to regularly engage in additional activities to collect the necessary resources or level up your character. And this is where the not-so-interesting routine begins: flowers for upgrading the hero, collectibles, laboratories, processing plants, and RDA checkpoints are made in the traditional style and offer little variety.

RDA enemies are familiar from the Avatar films: there are infantry of various types (including snipers and grenade launchers), exoskeletons, combat robots, and helicopters. There are also air defence systems and guard turrets on bases. Usually, battles with RDAs are quite boring: the artificial intelligence of the enemies is primitive, they just bombard the player with bullets and grenades, and in open locations it comes down to a simple scheme: destroy some of the enemies, run away for a certain distance, return and finish off the rest. Bases and processing plants are a little more interesting: there are places to hide and sometimes you can take out part of the enemy forces quietly. Infantry can be killed by a single arrow. And robots have their own vulnerabilities. Usually, a combination of firearms or rocket launchers and different types of bows or spears works best. Bases usually have a large amount of loot: both the necessary resources and new weapons. The area around the processing plants is polluted, but after they are destroyed, it is cleaned up and all the vegetation begins to flourish.

The developers tried to bring something new and added elements of investigation and hacking to some tasks. But they are made at a very primitive level, so they do not improve the situation much. Investigation is actually a set of certain elements in the search area (footprints, broken branches, abandoned electronics) that need to be combined into logical pairs, after which the protagonist draws certain conclusions about the events. Hacking is also quite simple: using a special SID device, we look through the walls in search of wires, find and repair damaged elements. After that, we hack the main panel, which is implemented as an elementary puzzle in which you need to go from the starting to the final point in a small maze of wires with obstacles in a limited time.

So in general, the gameplay is quite typical for Ubisoft with familiar problems.

What about leveling and crafting in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?

All the mechanics related to character leveling and crafting are well known from other modern Ubisoft games. The character level is determined by the current armour, weapons, and skills. And it will be extremely difficult to defeat an enemy with a significantly higher level. Thus, the game pushes the player to engage in additional activities, which are mostly quite monotonous and quickly get boring. The character receives points for leveling up by completing tasks, as well as thanks to certain flowers, which are usually found in hard-to-reach places. A separate branch of skills is ancestral skills. They cannot be obtained through regular points, but require the search for certain flowers of a different type.

New weapons and armour are created on special workbenches in settlements or research stations. The latter must also be activated by repairing the power supply. During the game, the character receives blueprints for various new items that require certain resources: wood, tree fruits, resources obtained after hunting local fauna. So you will have to run around to craft the best things. Depending on the quality of the elements used, the quality of the items may vary.

It's about the same with food. During the game, the energy of the character and his or her Icran runs out, which affects the speed of health recovery, movement, and jump height. You can simply collect the fruits of various plants and animal meat. But there is a system of cooking food from several components. It usually restores more energy and also has additional temporary effects. So we're back to the routine collection of resources on the map. And it's worth noting that some resources are quite difficult to obtain if you want the highest quality. For example, it is difficult to track down a rare high-level animal and kill it by hitting it in a vulnerable spot. And each plant has certain ideal conditions for collection: time of day and weather.

In the settlements, some things can be obtained by having a high reputation with the tribe. Or you can buy them. And the resources needed by traders are different, some are found exclusively at RDA bases. And we're back to the same clearing of points of interest on the map. So in general, the picture is absolutely typical for Ubisoft games. Those who like to vacuum the map will like it, while everyone else will get bored with these activities pretty quickly.

How well does Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora looks, sounds, and is optimised?

The game was created on the updated and improved proprietary Snowdrop engine developed by Massive Entertainment. It was used in the Tom Clancy's The Division series and was also chosen for the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Remake. The engine was perfect for an open-world first-person game. The world turned out to be extremely detailed, bright and picturesque. At the same time, there are no problems with stability and performance. Among the minor moments observed during the game, it is worth mentioning the slow loading of textures, which happened only a few times. And a slightly limited playback range, which can be noticed when flying. Although this is quite typical for open-world games.

The gg editorial team played Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on Sony PlayStation 5. Like most modern games, there are two graphical modes available: quality (higher graphics settings, 4K resolution, and 30 FPS frame rate) and performance (lower settings and a target frame rate of 60 FPS). I mostly used the performance mode: the picture doesn't deteriorate too much, and playing at a higher frame rate is much more comfortable. We did not have the technical ability to check the frame rate stability. But, according to our own feelings, the drops, if any, are minimal. Of course, there are loading screens in the game. But only the first one is quite long. After that, the game world is almost seamless. There are only small loads between cutscenes and gameplay.

The game uses the features of the PlayStation 5 very well. Namely, virtual surround sound, as well as the capabilities of the DualSense controller. This applies to both vibration and adaptive triggers. Vibration reproduces steps on different surfaces, falls, movement through dense thickets of trees, etc. very well. Triggers are used both during combat and in some other activities. For example, when hacking electronics with a special device called a SID, or when picking various fruits. You just need to press the trigger a little, find a good angle with the stick, and press the trigger all the way through. With weapons, everything is more familiar: triggers behave differently with different types of weapons, make you feel the tension of the bowstring, or the recoil from a firearm.

The soundtrack of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is fully consistent with the franchise and is made in the style of films. Therefore, we have more background melodies during exploration and epic compositions at key moments of the plot and battles that are organically combined with the sounds of Pandora's nature. The soundtrack fully copes with its main task and complements the picture with the appropriate sound mood.

Bottom line. Three things you need to know about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an Action/Adventure game in the open world based on the popular film franchise.
It has an amazingly beautiful game world, but a mediocre plot and additional activities.
It is well optimised and shows a great picture.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
Genre.	Action/Adventure/Open World
Platform.	PlayStation 5/Xbox Series/PC
Number of players	single player/multiplayer
Developer	Massive Entertainment
Publisher	Ubisoft
Release date	7 December 2023

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