What We Know So Far

This is the official game for James Cameron's upcoming film, Avatar. The game places you in control of a character that you create, choosing their sex and race, and takes you through a storyline that connects with the movie but isn't the story of the main character from the film. It's supposed to come out before the film does this December.

What's New for Penny Arcade Expo

This is GameSpy's first look at the Avatar game (outside of a trailer from the recent gamescon), so everything is new. Personally, I had no knowledge of the game, and didn't expect it to be a third-person shooter at all. While I was told the game is ultimately a story of redemption, you would never guess that from the demo I played. The demo has you tromping through Pandora (the alien planet the movie revoles around), shooting all the wildlife and local populace you encounter. The comparisons to games like Gears of War were immediate, as the character design and over-the-shoulder perspective made it feel very close to Epic's titanic shooter (making the lack of a sprint or cover system stand out as well).

The demo also showed a couple of the game's rides, with players taking control of a flying vehicle and a mech during the session. Both of these vehicles worked just fine, and I could see how the game intended to use these to break up the pacing, but overall I was a little disappointed that I only got to use them for a minute or so.


Why You Should (or Shouldn't) Care

I didn't dislike Avatar, but so far the short demo I played hasn't convinced me that it has anything unique to offer outside of a storyline connected to the movie. It's easy to draw comparisons to everything you do in the game to another game I've played, so the storyline is really going to have to come through to make the game feel like something other than a competent, derivative shooter. And while the ability to play in 3D is cool, and it works impressively (though it looks substantially more pixelated than the standard graphics), it's going to reach such a small audience that it kind of seems ridiculous that it's in there at all. Hopefully it'll have as great a story as the movie has promised, but it appears I'll have to wait until the game's release before I can see how well that comes across. Avatar is still a wait and see for me.