(bright tones) - [Jake] Hey, and we're
back with another episode of "Before You Buy," that
show where we give you some straight up gameplay
and our first impressions of the latest games releasing. As usual, it's me, Jake, and today, we're talking about "Avatar:
Frontiers of Pandora." Yes, the busy fall, the holiday gaming season isn't done yet, squeaking
out at the end of the year, it's this, the world of
avatar finally has a new game. It's been a long time,
and this one sets out to really recreate the experience of feeling like a Jake
Sully, running around and spearing and gunning as a
big blue person flying around, riding around in a lush,
strange alien world. And ladies and gentlemen, I
think they kind of nailed it. It's a flawed game with
some things I didn't like and it is very reliant
on the "Far Cry" formula. This is a Ubisoft game through and through with the ups and downs, but if you're not sick of "Far
Cry" style open world games, you can forgive some things, and maybe if you really
love the "Avatar" movies, I think you'll have a good time messing around in this world. I wouldn't write this off. And just so you know, we've
been playing a review copy from Ubisoft and we've been
playing on the PC version, so console performance is
still to be determined. Also, of course, this
video is spoiler free. Any of the cut scenes you
see here are pretty early on. So this game takes place on Pandora after the events of the first movie. You and a group of Na'vi
children are basically taken away from their homeland and
raised in captivity by humans, like humans, like being
taught human things for science or whatever. But once you come of age,
stuff starts to fall apart because of the hell that Jake
Sully and his company brought upon some of the humans in the worlds, so the corporations on the planet start to get a bit skittish, and basically, you're kicked to the curb
and end up escaping out into the world of Pandora. And from there, even though
you are a natural born Na'vi, you know the bare minimum about
the world and the culture. So you kind of learn
about these new regions and subcultures through
the character's eyes. You create your own kind of male or female Na'vi character there. There's not a lot of options and a lot of them look pretty similar, but it's still appreciated, I guess. It's nice to have a character creator and kind of pick your
patterns and your hairstyle. It's really all about the
gear you get in the game. Now, your character is
pretty simple story-wise, and kind of acts as just a vessel to you learning this world. They have some charm here and there, but ultimately, a lot of the story is just characters standing there and saying a bunch of stuff to you. It throws a lot of characters at you and some of them kind of
just fall to the wayside or you forget about 'em, but
some of them are significant. It tries for some emotional beats, but most of it didn't land for me, except for a few big moments. That's one of my big negatives here, but it's just my personal reaction. I didn't find the
through line of the story very interesting, but I did enjoy seeing and learning about new
regions and different Na'vi tribes that have their own distinct roles and characteristics. It was kind of cool, but
I also liked the movies, so I was going into it kind of hoping to see some fun new additions to the lore. They also tweaked some
things and kind of hand wave or explain away some things
maybe out of convenience's sake. I think the hardcore fan base is really gonna be the decider of that. Still, some of the significance of the different Na'vi
tribes here are very cool. Specifically, your
character having their own kind of unique spin on one
of the tribes in this world. It was just interesting. Where the game makes up for
some of that lacking story stuff is the gameplay and the world. This rendition of Pandora is awesome, like it has tons of details, weird plants, little interactions everywhere,
the world reacts to you, tons of stuff to hunt for
to better your character. All meaning like you're always
stumbling upon a new place, like a weird tree or a waterfall or some new biome with
creepy looking plants. It has the rivers, the sky islands, all the stuff you'd expect
from James Cameron's movie, as well as just some more
lush jungles and forests and planes and biome variety. All of it looks and feels
exactly like the movies. I am amazed how they actually nailed it. The density is something else, and the game looks pretty gorgeous, and a rare brief "Before
You Buy" shout out, I have been capturing all of this footage on a Falcon Northwest Talon PC. Now, I usually build my own PCs, but I went with a pre-built here, and just saying they
did a really good job, it's flawless and the
customer service was awesome. Falcon Northwest worked
with me to make a PC that reminded me of a
DeLorean or a Robocop and they delivered. We're bad at photography, but here are some of the official shots. This is gonna be like the "Before You Buy" capture beast for me. Thanks, guys. And now, the game ran
well on a high-end PC, but I was surprised how well it scaled when I ran the settings down to low. I still found the game to
be surprisingly good looking and still had a lot of that density there. On most settings, I did
have some noticeable pop in from higher up, like the high views, and also the occasional
open world Ubisoft glitch, like an NPC clipping or disappearing, but for me and my experience,
that was few and far between, at least I would say
nothing disastrous yet. Again, I don't know how the
console situation will be, I only had access to PC, so be vigilant and keep your eyes peeled upon launch. But what impressed me with
the world detail and density was how it kept up with
everything you're doing in it. Essentially to boil it down,
it's kind of like "Far Cry," but if you could run much
faster and kind of jump and climb with the speed and
fluidity of "Mirror's Edge." Now, this isn't like a
full-on parkour game, but you control your jumps
by holding down the button, which feels really nice
and just the distance and the hoppiness to it feels great and reminded me of "Mirror's Edge." And then along with that, you're
also bouncing on mushrooms and flinging yourself with giant leaves and catching vines in
midair that zip you up to higher ground, and all
of it feels really nice and generous, making it
easy and fun and fluid to get around, it's just a blast. And plus, when you get access to mounts, it makes it that much more enjoyable, because there is a point
where running around aimlessly did start to feel a bit tedious, and just when I started to feel that, I got access to the aerial mount, and that's where I thought
flying around or using animals would be pretty limited, just because of how wacky the map is, but you can fly up really high, dive down, do barrel rolls, relatively
land wherever you want. There's a surprising amount of freedom, and you can fire a weapon while flying, so you're shooting arrows
into helicopter rotors to take them down and you can
feel like an Avatar badass when it's all popping off. That's what I think Avatar
fans are coming for here, You know that Avatar power fantasy, and it absolutely works. In between that, though, it's a lot of your typical video
game crafting and hunting and harvesting and loot stuff we've seen a million times before. If you play a lot of games, you might feel a little
been there, done that in certain aspects. At the very least, it
feels a bit fresh here because your equipment
is just so different and the stuff you're harvesting
is often weird bits of fruit or things that you have to manually pull through a mini game. It feels fresh at first, but becomes the same
tiresome, repetitive stuff after the first few hours, you know, the most stuff is introduced. There is plenty to do
and keep busy though. There's a lot of side quests. I didn't jump into too many of
them to be completely honest, but the ones I did check
out were mildly interesting, mostly simple but had
some writing and dialogue and mini stories to them. The other kind of issue is the combat. It's not bad, but I'm
just not as much of a fan of the actual encounters themselves. The main thing is your bow of different varieties and ammo types. It feels decent, not
as strong as "Far Cry," but it works well enough,
because you're so big. you're basically shooting
javelins at little men and you can feel the impact with the sound of these arrows just slamming through a poor, little six-foot-tall guy. And the guns feel pretty solid too, with a good heavy, duty
chunka chunka to them, some real heft, kind of really just fits, kind of works in that
James Cameron Sci-fi vibe. The battles themselves,
though, are a bit chaotic and not as engaging as I'd like. They just feel kind of messy and weird. I loved upgrading my character to ripped dudes out of mechs. That is extremely satisfying, and I like putting skill tree points into being less detectable in stealth, but unfortunately, I found
the stealth way too limiting and the enemy's far too
eagle-eyed for it to be much of a satisfying option. There's just not much of a stealth system, even though the game is
filled with those Ubisoft, "Far Cry" style bases
begging to be taken out. It just didn't feel quite balanced right, and taking out bases, I never
really could stealth them. It usually devolves into messy chaos where you attack some enemies,
you get almost blown to bits so you retreat to recover some
health and you run back in. It works, but I just wish
there was a bit more to it. You get more tools as it
goes and you can lay traps and stuff, and again,
there is a skill tree that gets you a couple nice benefits, but the moment-to-moment meat
of it just didn't thrill me as much as I was hoping. Again, it works, it's playable. Some people might find
it more fun than me. I just wish it was as
fun as running around and riding on beasts and discovering weird
glowing caves and stuff. Just living in the world of Avatar might be enough for some folks. That's where the game nails the feeling. The repetition and the
combat issues I have don't completely tank the game, but your tolerance level may vary. I mean, the last "Avatar"
game that came out in 2009 did not get the greatest
reviews or anything. The game had plenty of problems, but it made some fans of
the movie really happy and they had fun. I think this time around,
it's a much better go, so that's gonna be good
news to some people. What's not cool is that there's also a microtransaction store on
a full priced $70 US game. I'm not a fan. It's mostly cosmetic
stuff and little trinkets for a single player game, but still, it's there
and worth mentioning. They have expansion
content apparently planned. That's something I'd be more
interested in paying for in a store, but to get skins and stuff in a completely
single player game, I just had to bring it up. Otherwise, this is very much, I guess, the definitive Avatar game. There's not really a lot out there, but Massive does a good job here. Massive, the developers,
really play to their strengths, specifically in the world
detail and the density, and I love flying around
and jumping off my Ikron and diving down and you know, dodging. There's so much to it that is really cool despite my complaints, I think it's just really
gonna depend on, you know, your tolerance level for certain
types of video game flaws or repetition and how much you like James Cameron's "Avatar." I know there are plenty
of people out there, I know there's an audience for this, and I'm just glad they didn't
completely screw it out. If you love the movies and you
like some of the big moments of the movie, this game delivers. There's a couple of things
that really made me smile when the music kicked in
and a big scene happened. I got the feel, they nailed that. But again, this is a "Before You Buy." You know how this goes by now. I give you some pros, some cons, and a bunch of personal opinion, so let me know in the
comments what you think. Have you been looking
forward to this game? Are you one of the people
that just doesn't really care about Avatar, or are you one of the people that are absolutely in love
with those big blue freaks? Let's talk anything "Avatar:
Frontiers of Pandora," and really the series in
general down in the comments. I want to hear from you guys. If you like this video and you
like what we're doing here, just talking games and and
showing you gameplay and stuff, clicking the like button helps us out. We really appreciate that. And if you're new, consider subscribing, clicking the notification bell, checking out the description, hanging out because we put out
videos every single day. But as always, thanks for watching and we'll see you guys next time. (gunshots) (characters grunting) (gunshots) - [Character] You might
need some dapophet pods.
