Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Developer Ubisoft took a pretty big swing on this one but came up a bit short. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora earns major props for presentation, giving players a sprawling and luscious world loaded with fascinating natural wonders to discover using your special Na'vi senses, such as plants with flowers that explode and massive animals with horns the length of cars. The story also provides interesting new details about Pandora and the struggle between the colonizing humans and the local Na'vi that fans of the films and their lore will hungrily devour. If nothing else, it provides the sense that there's more to the Na'vi's resistance to the human occupation and invasion than what's going on with film protagonist Jake Sully and his tribe.

That said, there's also something strangely empty about the adventure, at least compared to Ubisoft's other open world games. Most of the characters aren't as fleshed out or interesting as one might expect, and the story, though charged with timely social commentary and biting colonial criticism, can't help but play second fiddle to the spectacular events of the films. The first-person action, meanwhile, is pretty standard for the genre, with familiar attacks and traversal movements that feel as though they were simply lifted from other games. Even the in-game menus are lackluster, with little of the thematic style or creative interactivity typically built into Ubisoft's dashboards and interfaces. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a capably executed and moderately fun romp around an enchanting alien planet, but it also does little to truly stand out in the crowded genre of open world action/role-playing games.