James Cameron's Avatar: The Game is a 2009 third-person action video game prequel to James Cameron's film of the same name. The game was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released on the PlayStation 3,
Xbox 360, PC, Wii and Nintendo DS on December 1, 2009, with a PSP
version released later on December 8, 2009. It was announced by Ubisoft
that it would be using the same technology as the film to be displayed
in stereoscopic 3D. In a Nintendo Power interview, it was stated
that the Wii version will use Ubisoft's Jade engine. As of May 19, 2010,
the game has sold nearly 2.7 million copies.
A significant feature has Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle
Rodriguez, and Giovanni Ribisi reprising their roles from the film. The
casting and voice production for Avatar: The Game was handled by Blindlight.
At first the player is allowed
to choose the appearance of the character from a set of pre-defined
faces, although not the name. After the player has chosen a side, each
side the player chooses offers different gameplay, weapon set, skill
set, and environment.
As a Soldier, the player is equipped with firearms such as assault
rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, and Flamethrowers. The soldier
generally have to eliminate the enemies, which are fast and resilient
and usually charging towards the player, from afar. Playing as an Avatar limits the player
to only one Avatar-issued machine gun and various primitive weapons
such as bows, crossbows and melee weapons. The Avatar player usually
has to charge the enemies since ranged weapon are either weak (the
machine gun), have slow rate of fire (bows and crossbows), or have
limited ammunition; however, the human enemies are generally weak and
the basic foot soldiers can die after getting hit once with one strike
of a club. The environment also reacts differently to the character:
many plants will attack the soldier, while the Avatar can walk past
said plants unharmed. A variety of vehicles or mounts are also
available to each race.
If the player's health is reduced to 0, (s)he can use a Recovery that
instantly recovers to full health. Recoveries can be acquired by
gathering cell samples left behind by killed creatures (including Humans
or Na'vi) or plants, but only 5 Recoveries can be carried at any one
time. Avatar players can collect Cell Samples more easily from many
plants without having to "kill" them. If the player falls to his death,
however, he cannot use Recoveries and have to reload from a check point
which is automatically saved. The game offers no way to manually save
when playing the game (it is only saved when player reach certain
points, completed an objective, or quit the game). A special case
involves a separate checkpoint when the user decides which race to side
with, which cannot be overwritten.
As the player completes mission objectives or eliminates opposition,
the character gains experience points and levels up. The leveling up
process is quite linear, with no way to customize the character. Each
level rewards the character with better versions of the weapons, armor
and skills she/he already has. The character can have only 1 armor (one
type of combat gear at a time, though with higher levels, different
types become available, which may be selected instead of the original), 4
skills and 4 weapons equipped into quick slot at any one time. The
skills can be offensive (boost damage, summon air strikes / wild life),
defensive (boost damage resistance, heal) or tactical purpose (boost
speed, invisibility).
Experience points is also converted to credits that is used in the
Conquer minigame. It is a Risk-style strategy game in which the player
captures territories from enemies. Credits are used to buy troops
(which has 3 types: infantry, heavy ground unit and air unit), defenses
or limited special attacks. Some territories captured reward player
with passive enhancements such as damage boost, critical chance, armor,
health to use in the main game, as long as they are in the player's
possession. (PlayStation 3 and Windows version).
