Review: James Cameron's Avatar

[EvilSpaghetti]

James Cameron's Avatar
Mobile Game Review

Title: James Cameron's Avatar
Developer: Gameloft.
Publisher: Gameloft.
Release Date: Out now.
Format: J2ME
Game Features: Play as Jake and explore the world of Pandora through 7 environments.
Reviewed on: SE K800i

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Summary

James Cameron’s Avatar™ takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption and discovery as he leads an epic battle to save a civilization. In the official Avatar mobile game, the planet Pandora’s last hope lies with the human Jake Sully. Transferring his consciousness into a human-Na’vi hybrid – a living, breathing body that resembles the Na’vi but possesses the human subject’s thoughts, feelings and personality – Jake undertakes his mission as an ‘avatar.’ Join Jake in the mobile game’s original, action-packed adventure. Undertake a mission to liberate a planet, unite the Na’vi tribes, and revive the legendary Sacred Weapon. As Jake, you’ll explore lush jungles, soar through the skies on a banshee, survive ferocious battles, and develop fantastic powers in your struggle to save a world and a people.

Review

Today we have yet another request review, not only that, we have another Gameloft game, I don't want to sound negative already but I've reviewed quite a few Gameloft games since my return and only one of them have been worth playing, sadly the request I received from gelus was for James Cameron's Avatar, not only did I hate the film but I also hate film-to-game games bar one game (Kung Fu Panda mobile), but I played it and I have a review for it, so let's give it a go shall we?

We'll start of with the story, if you've seen the film you'll know the story, I don't really want to bore you with the details but to sum it up, a paraplegic marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home, blah, blah, blah, now as you play through the game you kind of get lost with the plot as the game doesn't actually seem to follow the film, but it does, if you get what I mean? It's more of a watered down version, but it's been watered down too much that you don't actually know what's going on.
Gameplay, well as you may or may not know the Avatar is an athletic erm... Thing, so you'd expect to be jumping around a lot in this game, and that's exactly what you do, but as I was playing this game in my mind I thought I was playing Assassin's Creed 2 and then I hit me, this game is just Assassin's Creed 2 re-skinned, it has the same combat system and even the way you climb is the same, so it appears that Gameloft are up to their old tricks again, which left me feeling slightly disappointed, again, but nevertheless I continued playing, and as I continued playing I started to notice that the animations were a little, well I don't know how to put it, so I'll just say they didn't seem right. Keeping on the subject of gameplay this game has no difficulty at all, not only is it easy, but it seems that a lot of the game is done for you, what I'm trying to get at here is that the game gives you too much of a helping hand when it comes to running, jumping and swinging, it pretty much takes skill out of the game, which in the end makes it a bore to play.
I said at the beginning of the review that I hate film-to-game games purely for the reason that the game developers don't get to use any imagination whatsoever, they have to stick to a story, characters, etc, and imagination is what makes games great, to take imagination out of a game is pretty much like ripping out a man's soul and telling him to live a normal life, if you don't know what I'm talking about here is, no imagination equals no fun, and for me film-to-game games serve one purpose and one purpose only and that is to promote the film, everything I've said in this paragraph is pretty my Avatar on a plate
If I can name one positive about this game it'd have to be the graphics, as with most Gameloft games the graphics are colourful and pleasing on the eye, but don't let them suck you into the game because you'll only end up regretting it. My suggestion, play Assassin's Creed 2 instead.

Conclusion

Well that's another Gameloft game reviewed and another Gameloft game I feel I've played so many times before, it's a game that was pushed out to promote a film, but the only thing this game has done is demote it, if I had played this game before I had seen the film I would never had gone and see in... On saying that I wish I had now.

Screenshots

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Graphics: 7/10
The only good thing about the game.

Sound: 5/10
Average.

Game play: 2/10
A poor re-skin of Assassin's Creed 2.

Story: 1/10
It's not great.

Overall Score: 4 out of 10

Download the game: Here.