Eurogamer Expo 09 Hands On Preview: James Cameron’s Avatar

Released December 4 on multiformat

You’ve seen the promos and heard the gossip around the film industry right now.  James Cameron is back on the scene, more than a decade after his last epic movie Titanic smashed its way through the record books.  Only this time he’s brought a toy along with him in the form of 3D glasses to create Avatar, quite possibly the movie of the winter.  The game though may fall far short of that claim in the gaming market.

Whereas Saw: the game is showing positive signs of being a worthy movie tie-in, Avatar seems to be ticking all the wrong boxes that leads to so many games based on movies failing badly.  This all begins at the start of the demo where you have to guide a transport aircraft to a drop off point.  The vehicle seems clunky to control and difficult to navigate, made all the more irritating when you have to dodge between trees and branches otherwise your guy is going to have a more tragic landing into the forest.

Once you finally make it through to the checkpoint, maybe out of skill but probably out of sheer luck, the action does begin to pick up.  The controls are as typical to any other shooter, with the Right Trigger shooting and Left trigger dodging.  The enemies come fast and makes the drama fast and furious but all together it feels a bit too familiar.  Anyone who has played any of the Halo games will probably agree that Avatar represents a similarity to this great trilogy, only with a more colourful look.

The gameplay also suffers from being too much on the rails.  Coming into the forest on an aircraft gives you a sense of space and exploration to the scenario but once on ground you are stuck to following a path that has already being laid out.  Any attempts of you trying to break away from this route will see your guy slam into an invisible wall, unable to explore anything deeper into the forest around you.

The look of the game is full of cover and doesn’t look too far away from the trailers of the actual movie.  It is very bright and definitely beautiful to look at but unless the gameplay improves massively soon, this is going to be one exploration human should have left alone.