Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora /REVIEW

First thing you will notice in Massive Entertainment’s new game is how stunning it looks. And that’s whether you like Avatar’s art design, in which case you will love getting lost in its beautiful alien world, or not, in which case you will still be amazed by the technical achievement on your screen. Especially if you wanted something more from PS5 and Xbox Series consoles after being stuck in such a long cross-gen period.

In other words, Frontiers of Pandora looks so rich in detail, with its jungles lush and thick in a way that simply screams “Next gen!”, its flora and fauna beautifully rendered and lit with ray traced lightning, and its floating sky islands stretching far, far into the distance — making almost every view a sight to behold.

As for the game itself, it is basically Far Cry set in the colourful Avatar universe. You will stalk your enemies in the wilderness, switching between stealth and open combat, liberating countless outposts while hunting different space animals and gathering space fruit that you will later use to craft new weapons and armour. Oh, and there are many, many collectibles strewn across the map, mostly lacking any significant narrative or gameplay purposes.

Similarly, the game’s story is nothing to write home about — you are an unnamed Na’vi raised in captivity by the evil RDA, now trying to unite various Na’vi clans in a fight against the cruel and resource hungry human colonisers. Which will prove to be a task that will see you running and flying through beautiful Pandoran jungles and riding its space horses across its vast, windswept plains… doing chores for characters that you will forget by the time you reach your quest destination. Unless you remember them for all the wrong reasons — like being annoyingly predictable.

Luckily, all that running and flying is supported by a movement system that is one of the highlights of the game — once you get used to it, you’ll be moving quickly, becoming quite adept at using the game’s alien flora to jump and climb around, reaching places that you couldn’t with your regular double jump. And then there’s your flying mount, that you will get early on in the story, and with which you will be quickly getting to places while enjoying the scenery, and sometimes even fighting enemies in the air (you can basically use all your weapons while flying).

Combat on the ground, meanwhile, is something you will engage with much more, shooting enemies with arrows and spears, as well as with their own shotguns and assault rifles. You can also try to sneak around and kill them silently, but for me, stealth proved to be kind of clunkier and more difficult than in Far Cry, which is why I usually opted for open combat instead.

And that brings me to the general lack of variety in enemy types and their outposts. During the whole game, you will be fighting just a couple of different enemies — regular infantry and mechs — with slight variations in the weaponry they use. Combined with a very boring and unimaginative hacking mini-game (that can mercifully be skipped by enabling the auto-complete option found in the settings), all of that results in missions that lack variety and unique moments or ideas.

Yet, for all my complaints, Massive’s new game is very often pleasant to play and lose yourself in, like many other Ubisoft open world games. It has a certain flow to it, and thanks to its solid movement system combined with a flying mount and beautiful, beautiful vistas, it’s a fun experience and a feast for your eyes.

So I guess that, in a sense, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is actually perfectly faithful to its source material. It’s technically impressive and often gorgeous to look at, with some fun flying sequences and combat in the air — and it puts an always welcome focus on environmentalism. But, at the same time, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, neither narratively nor systems-wise, and it lacks good — or at least interesting — missions, dialogue, characters and story, that I hope we will get in the sequel.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora | developer: Massive Entertainment | publisher: Ubisoft | platforms: PlayStation 5 (played), Xbox Series X/S, PC