Avatar Review: Pandora’s Edge – The Beauty of Nature

The Avatar series has been rightly criticized for many things, but one thing cannot be denied: it introduced us to a planet with such intoxicatingly beautiful nature that some people suffered from depression after leaving the cinema due to how drab our “everyday” reality is in comparison. In this key feature, the film manages to make perfect use of the latest gaming processing, because thanks to the Snowdrop engine technology, the nature in this video game looks almost identical to the original film. The central theme of harmony with nature underlines a slightly stronger inclination towards the stealth and survival genres than we are used to in Ubisoft games.

• Platform: PS5 (review) XSX|S, PC
• Release date: 12.07.2023
• Manufacturer: Massive Entertainment (Sweden)
• Genre: Survival/Stealth/Action
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: yes, 2 player co-op
• Data for download: 90 GB
• Play time: 30+ hours
• Price: CZK 1,729 (Ubistore) or CZK 369 per month for a Ubisoft+ subscription.

From creeping to unstoppable

While the game’s visual splendor is perhaps its most talked about topic (it was named the game with the best graphics of the year by Digital Foundry, for good reason), I personally ended up having the most fun playing the game, with gameplay that may at first glance resemble traditional Ubsisoft templates, but if you try to “run” through the game in the proper manner, you’ll get a real kick out of it. For example, during the first hour of play, I ignored the game’s system that lets you “scan” and identify different types of jungle vegetation (a bit like Metroid Prime), so I couldn’t tell the difference between healing herbs and those that hurt or perhaps speed you up, which quickly backfired on me. And ignoring the mechanics of carefully picking fruits from plants so as not to damage them or reduce their effectiveness.

I had an even harder time trying to take out the first major human bases in the style I had grown accustomed to over the years in the Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed series – my wooden weapons weren’t enough to take out the armored soldiers or their mechs in one shot, so attempts at stealth quickly failed and attempts at direct combat were instantly cut short by my half-naked Na’vi being torn to pieces. Archery wasn’t very accurate for me at first, and rifles weren’t working quite as well as I wanted either due to my fighter’s unusual posture (no scope or aiming at the cheek). I had to learn to follow the enemy’s tracks much more carefully and for longer. When it came to combat, my only hope was speed and hit-and-run tactics, more or less running back into the jungle after each individual attack to shake off my pursuers and attacking again shortly after, greatly helped by my excellent control over fast acrobatic movements. Of course, it also depends on the difficulty setting of the game, but the first half of the game was very adrenaline-filled for me due to the high vulnerability and lack of manual saving.

Attempts at direct combat were interrupted when the half-naked Na’vi was shot to pieces.

However, as you progress through the game, you will learn to use all of your tools and weapons better, upgrade them, and also improve your character’s stats, especially if you also do a lot of the side missions and activities, gradually gaining enough strength, stamina, and practice to be able to fight armies of human enemies and their machines on almost equal terms. In the second half of the game, I felt like a real Predator (with a capital P, because I’m referring to the specific predator from Arnold’s movie) as I swooped down on an enemy base like a creeping death and delivered one devastating blow after another, often wiping out the enemy’s entire team before they even realized I was there. The point of my story is that the experience of playing through the entire game for me was noticeably different from similar-looking Ubisoft games, and I felt like I was playing a relatively strict survival or stealth game rather than a “traditional” open-world action game like Far Cry.

Nirvana for film buffs

You might be surprised that I haven’t said a word about the game’s plot yet. This is mainly because the story isn’t particularly good and is very predictable – you’re one of the indigenous Na’vi “Indians” living in harmony with nature and facing colonial appetites and the ruthless industrialization of the human conquerors – so basically the same as in the movies. Despite the overall simplicity of the plot, things get interestingly deeper and more complex in the third act, when you have to discover the past of a special research project in a dilapidated underground laboratory – which was very reminiscent of the atmosphere of the TV series “Horizon”. Also, some of the story missions in the last third of the game were very good and I wondered why these exciting passages were not earlier in the game.

However, if you are a big fan of the film, you will likely see the game in a completely different light. Like Hogwarts Legacy earlier this year, fans will get a loving and enchanting take on the world they love, and will finally be able to walk around Pandora in their own skin, experiencing the amazing twilight and subsequent illumination of the jungle with neon bioluminescent lights. Iconic sequences from the film will be a joy to behold, such as when you climb “flying rocks” and giant vine bridges between them above the clouds to catch and tame your Ikran in the nest above – accompanied, of course, by the same bombastic orchestral choir that played in the film. The game as a whole may be relatively ordinary, but there are some moments that are simply stunning.

If you’re a fan of the original film, you’ll look at the game with different eyes.

Playing on PS5, I was pleased with the technical state – in performance mode, it manages to maintain 60 frames per second most of the time, and if you have a VRR display, the occasional dips are not something that will ruin your experience. On the contrary, you will be amazed again and again at how the game can look so beautiful. This is also helped by the three noticeably different biomes of the game, from dense tropical jungles to vast plains with stunning views and a rugged mountainous landscape at the end. Plus, when you realize that after getting your Ikran, you can take off at any time and still play the entire game in co-op with another online player, you really have to be amazed at the technical and artistic execution of this game.