Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora gives you the strength and stamina of the Na’vi, but not the consistency and depth of their homeworld. Unless you’re an avid fan who wants every morsel of storytelling, Ubisoft’s latest open world doesn’t always justify the trip.

Even so, I found a lot to love in Frontiers of Pandora, including the welcome addition of two-player online cooperative play, which lets players enjoy the game with a friend. With time, the many interlocking features started to make sense, and I pushed past any frustrations to find a remarkably large and rewarding game. Enter Pandora’s vast wilderness with patience and a willingness for a measured march to understanding, and I suspect you’ll uncover what I did – a flawed but still praiseworthy addition to this growing science fiction universe.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora features a stunning alien world to explore with a refreshingly uncluttered approach to navigation, countless enemy bases to destroy and Na’vi clan sidequests to complete, and no shortage of exotic flora and fauna to harvest and hunt. However, its combat is pretty one-dimensional, its mission design is a bit on the repetitive side, and its environment is generally lacking in any major surprises beyond visual splendor, meaning that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a solid shooting adventure that’s more inside the box than truly out of this world.

In the face of an IP filled with rich themes with something important to say, Frontiers of Pandora ignores the point entirely and goes on to have a gameplay loop where players spend most of their time killing otherwise docile animals to make arbitrary numbers go up so they can be as immortal as possible within the confines of the game. This would be business as usual for any other open-world gameplay loop, but it's embarrassingly ironic and tone-deaf for an Avatar game.

A decent, if unspectacular take, on an alien Far Cry that uses its source material well to create an engaging world to explore.