Avatar Tie-In Kills the Magic

While the high tech geek in me can love the Avatar movie for the colorful, wondrous work of technology that it was, I can’t help but be brought back down to Earth by the overwhelmingly disappointing tie in game. Everyone knows that movie tie ins are vastly hit or miss, and when they miss, they miss big. Never was this more true than with Avatar, which takes what was already a thread bare plot from the movie and beats it to death. Although in this version you’re offered the choice of staying with ecoterrorist group RDA or siding with the peaceful blue Na’vi, neither path will lead you anywhere interesting.

A bad script and even worse voice acting strips any sense of magic from the plot line, instead leaving you with an overlong, fairly basic first person shooter game. In Na’vi mode, you can use a variety of melee weapons that offers some entertaining combat options. However, in RDA mode, the completely lack of interesting choice only points out the technical glitches the game is prone to with even more stark clarity. AI characters often make moves that offer no logical sense, and even you can end up stuck in weird positions.

The scenery, although impressive at first, quickly becomes about as humdrum as the game, offering little but monotony and distinct sense of deja vu. It might be helped by decent vehicle play, except that when you’re in a vehicle the camera bounces so violently that all you’ll want is the monotony of walking through the jungle back. While the 3D aspect of the game is a nice feature (if you have a hi-def TV, anyway), it certainly doesn’t make up for the variety of ways in which the game fails to be anything interesting.