The story of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora takes place eight years before the events of the first feature-length film. You play as one of the kidnapped Na’vi children who is now grown and pushes back against your human captors.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has been compared to Far Cry, another game done by Ubisoft, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are cut from the same cloth. I would say that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora plays more like an open-world survival game but at the same time is linear. Now as confusing as that may sound, allow me to elaborate.
The game features large open areas that feel extremely large and vast, but are broken up into sections. So for instance when you escape the facility from which you have lived most of your life, you end up in the forest. Between the facility and the forest, you have a loading screen.
This sectional way of progressing through the game is seen throughout and makes the game feel more linear than that of a vast open world. The game will present you with quests you can take on with both side quests and main quests that help to move the story along. How you approach each objective is up to you. You can engage your enemies or attempt to complete objectives using stealth mechanics giving you that sense of open-world freedom. As a Na’vi, you can self-heal and jump very high and both of these abilities combined will help you to get out of sticky situations should you choose to engage the enemy and find that you are not yet able to take them on the way you had intended.
Adding to the open-world feel of the game is that you have to manage your hunger, thirst, and craft weapons and items that you will need to take down animals for food or dispatch and loot your enemies. The weapons you craft can be in the form of arrows for your bow, spears, or other projectiles like explosives. You also will eventually be able to use human weapons such as guns later in the game.
When it comes to managing your hunger and thirst, you can find plants to eat that will help keep your hunger at bay and replenish your health. Drinking water from various water sources such as lakes, streams, and sometimes plants will help keep your thirst level up. Meanwhile, creatures you encounter may be hostile, neutral, or afraid of you depending on the creature itself. All creatures you encounter can be taken down and harvested for food and other resources. Harvesting resources from plants and creatures you take down can be used to not only craft weapons, but be used for ingredients to cook meals which will keep you fed. Looting from humans can give you resources to make weapons, and rarely provide you access to full-fledged weapons like guns.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is easily one of the most graphically impressive games I have ever played on the Xbox Series X and it works well to show off how powerful of a system it truly is. The frame rate is at a steady buttery smooth performance constantly. This helps to bring the world in which you’re traversing to life. Beyond the great frame rate, the plants, animals, and water all have a look of alien realism to them that is really impressive. Branches and plants sway in the breeze, jumping from a high branch or cliff to the ground will cause dust particles to come up subtly from underneath your feet.
Bugs will crawl and fly around in a natural way. Jumping into water, you have aquatic plants that behave naturally and the water has a murkiness to it that isn’t a sign that it’s dirty, but a way of presenting how it would look if you were to be swimming around underwater trying to look at everything around you. All of this realism between the plant and fauna behavior to the graphical presentation of this game help to bring a sense of realistic beauty to this game that is unrivalled in my opinion.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora features a soundtrack that is theatrical film-worthy and given the IP, it’s to be expected. The musical score can be hard-hitting during action-packed combat sections, intense in areas where stealth is required, and soft and subtle when traversing the landscape and exploring. With its broad range of music, it not only helps to set the tone based on what’s happening on screen but does a great job of invoking emotion. Invoking emotion in a player isn’t normally seen in a game and is much more common when watching a film. Beyond the musical score, there are the sound effects that help to take this game to the next level.
While traversing the landscape, you can hear your character breathing heavily if they are running, and they will grunt or yell if they are hurt from enemy fire or from traversing the environment such as jumping down from a high tree or cliff. Animals can be heard in the distance with tones and pattern changes depending on if you’re just invading their space, or trying to hunt them for food. Bugs can be heard buzzing in the air as you walk by. Plants, grass, tree branches can be heard crunching or snapping under you as you move through them. The sounds and music in this game make it feel like a truly surreal experience.
As much criticism as this game has gotten since its release, comparing it to something like Far Cry isn’t fair to a game of this calibre. Rarely has a game…no, actually never has a game blurred this much between film and video game. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora looks pretty realistic from a graphical standpoint, has a musical score that is dynamic based on the player’s current situation, sound effects and physics that help to bring the game to life in a way that I have never seen prior to my time with this game.
Given all of what I just mentioned, this game truly is able to blur the line between film and video game. The game plays more like a beautiful, fully immersive, interactive film than a video game being played in the comfort of your home.
Whether you’re a devoted Avatar fan or not, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora provides a breathtaking experience like no other game has offered so far. You owe it to yourself to check this game out, it’s a great experience and one I would recommend to any action-adventure game fan.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.