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).
