Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Reviews
Avatar Frontiers of Pandora soars to new heights with its innovative gameplay mechanics and gorgeous world design. But I constantly found myself hitting walls and fighting against the game's combat instead of working with it. There were moments that I dreaded partaking in, and others that I reveled in.
While I eventually began having fun with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the game was a very difficult nut to crack. Rather than being open to the way I wanted to play it, Avatar pushed me to find the way it wanted to be played, and then kinda punished me for doing so. Frontiers of Pandora should feel free and flowing, but I've found a lot of the experience to be restrictive and near-punitive. Once I pushed through the game's many barriers to entry, I started having a good time, but don't expect to just jump in and have fun. Like Jake Sully, it's going to take a while to find your Avatar-legs.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a fantastic game even if it leans heavily on its Far Cry roots. Graphically, Pandora is simply stunning to behold, whether running on the land and jumping from vines or soaring through the flying mountains; the visuals are just breathtaking at almost every angle. And while it has solid combat gameplay when it comes to the native weapons, I still can’t tell if the awkwardness of the human weapons is on purpose or not. Not to mention the awful objective markers, hunter vision and hunger system. Oh, I didn’t even tell you that you have to keep your Ikran feed as well. It’s all rather frustrating because I enjoy my time with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and it would be a fantastic game but for those issues above. It all adds up and just amounts to being frustrated with the game which is devastating because there is a fantastic game buried under all these mechanics.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a remarkable achievement in many ways, bringing a cinematic world to life on a massive, technically-impressive scale like few games have done before. Unfortunately, limited, frustrating combat means the game isn’t always that fun to play once you bump into the RDA. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s world is worth experiencing if you’re a fan of James Cameron’s movies, but as the franchise often reminds us, sky people ruin beautiful things.
Despite its occasional shortcomings, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is still a lot of fun to play. Flying an ikran does its fair share of wish fulfillment, but Pandora has a lot to offer elsewhere too. There’s a wealth of things to look for, and despite some alarmingly vast distances, exploration mostly remains entertaining thanks to the stunning scenery.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an excellent open-world adventure. Thanks to Ubisoft Massive's collaboration with Lightstorm, this is easily the best movie tie-in we've experienced. The level of detail is second to none, and fans of the series will have a whale of a time spotting little references here or there to the mainline films. However, we'd be tempted to say unlike Hogwarts Legacy, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora would be a good time even if you weren't a fan of the series or haven't seen the films. The game is certainly filled with tropes of the Ubisoft formula, but the lore and focus on harvesting and hunting elevates that open-world design to create an immersive and inviting setting that we happily lost ourselves in.
For gamers with a current gen console or powerful PC, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an incredible-looking open world experience. It is a seamless extension of the films, which will appeal to many fans. But underneath all that flash, flora, and fauna is a lack of imagination and unsatisfying FPS combat. Pandora’s lovingly recreated beauty contains mystery, power and a fair amount of disappointment.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora offers a visually appealing open world that fans of the movies will certainly enjoy. That said, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is routinely held back by repetitive gameplay, while a lack of enemy types and weapons stops the combat from being quite as enjoyable as it could have been. Technically impressive and satisfying for the most part, it's also clear that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora feels essentially just like another Far Cry game from a game design point of view, rather than the sort of entirely fresh offering one would expect from a modern day Avatar video game.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a huge game in which exploration plays a very important role, as every corner of the Western Frontier is full of plants to catalog, ingredients to collect and materials to use to improve our equipment. The fights are very addictive and it is essential to combine stealth actions with raids based on the surprise effect. The proprietary Snowdrop engine offers us a beautiful graphic representation, which combined with a quality soundtrack guarantee an almost cinematic experience. Those looking for non-stop action might find a few too many dead moments, but it remains an open world shooter adventure of extreme quality despite never trying to introduce any novelty to the genre.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Net of some gameplay problems that make Avatar Frontiers of Pandora a sometimes wasted opportunity, Massive Entertainment's latest effort is the perfect product to take a virtual journey through the lands of Pandora.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is the perfect adaptation of James Cameron's films. The work of Ubisoft Massive does not propose anything original, but everything it presents to us is done greatly.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
In short, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a well-rounded title that will please anyone who dares to defend Pandora as a Na'vi.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
All in all, an excellent adaptation, but also a good open-world action game.
Review in French | Read full review
Frontiers of Pandora is, in essence, just another Far Cry experience—one with breathtaking art direction and a thoughtful portrayal of an alien culture, but a Far Cry experience nonetheless. It’s a tired formula applied to a property that’s capable of showing us much more. This game’s Pandora is a beautiful place to visit, but living there makes for a boring existence.
At some point, however, I switched off internally during the trivial story sections. And even though the game promotes free exploration well, I still caught myself working through the points on the map every now and then. So, for me, Ubisoft doesn't completely resolve this part of its formula, but it's on the right track.
Review in German | Read full review
'Frontiers of Pandora' may occasionally feel like a reskinned 'Far Cry', but it absolutely nails the ambience and atmosphere of James Cameron's eco-scifi world. One of those rare licensed games that retroactively improves the source material it's based on.Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
I really wanted to like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora more than I did, but the game’s various shortcomings make it difficult to love entirely. The exceptional graphics and brief moments of greatness make it worthwhile for Avatar fans, but most anyone else is likely to be frustrated by how close it comes to doing something special only to fall shy of its potential.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora can't put its human nature aside long enough to properly honor the Na'vi.