Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Reviews
We're still making progress through Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, but so far it's been just the game you'd expect: a lush and vibrant world spread over the typical Ubisoft formula.
Frontiers of Pandora's stunning presentation and fantastic world design are failed by atrocious technical issues.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora features a stunning alien world to explore, but doesn’t contain as many genuine surprises as other modern open-worlds.
It may be Far Cry by any other name but if you're an Avatar fan, that's always dreamed of exploring Pandora for yourself, this hits all of the right notes.
A decent, if unspectacular take, on an alien Far Cry that uses its source material well to create an engaging world to explore.
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.
Though it includes a lot of familiar open-world elements, a minimalistic user interface, fun movement mechanics, and a gorgeous setting make it a blast to explore Pandora.
If you walked away from Avatar wishing a world like Pandora actually existed out there, here you go. This is that world. Seeing Pandora is one thing, but being able to scale its massive treetops, soar high above its floating mountains on an Ikran, and traverse its wide open plains on the back of a Direhorse is really something special. This is the best version of Avatar yet.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an astonishing achievement, with exquisite visuals and a remarkable balance between pacifism and action. This is an enthralling alien world that plays host to a unique FPS.
It doesn't break the mold in its gameplay proposal, but Avatar Frontiers of Pandora is an amazing recreation of this cinematic universe, with gameplay and narrative moments that will impact you.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
It helps that you can see what you're doing when you're driving around a desert.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is one of Ubisoft's most mesmerizing games and also a fine tribute to the world created by James Cameron. Although the story fails to stand out, the huge setting does, and offers both newcomers and veterans an experience hard to forget.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is not an unforgettable open world experience, but it remains a solid, action-adventure that lasts the right amount of time and is graphically spectacular, although with such a brand and with a "fuller" and focused map it could have delivered even more.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Like it or not, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora feels like the perfect companion piece to James Cameron’s movies: it’s big but often intimate. Savage but calm. Familiar but charming. Even without playing a single minute of it, you should know whether it’s something you want to play. If you decide to make the jump, I suggest letting go of cheap analogies and using Na’vi instincts first and gamer brain second.
The idea of Avatar being mixed into this formula is great, and when you're flying on your ikran, it's an intoxicating experience, even if aspects of the combat and game stability leave something to be desired.
It's not without its flaws, but Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is still one of Ubisoft's best games of recent years.
Look past Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s dull story and you’ll find spectacle and freedom lurking in its Na’vi customs and breathtaking ecosystems.
A beautiful open world world can't make up for a dull rebellion that succumbs to Ubisoft's by the numbers method.
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. Sure, anti-pollution sentiments are there because it's impossible to make an Avatar spin-off without them, but they're there superficially and treated as a checkbox for players to complete - ultimately ringing hollow. A betrayal of Cameron’s themes with the Avatar IP, seemingly stapled together as an attempt to get a slice of the highest-grossing film of all time’s pie, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora isn’t just generic; it is downright cynical.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has some excellent mechanical depth let down by repetitive missions and a very safe story. When you're flowing through the environment taking out RDA soldiers with volleys of arrows, it feels fantastic. Unfortunately, the game doesn't provide many opportunities to use the full breadth of its systems. Still, it's drop dead gorgeous and very fun for what it is.