Open-world video games are often filled with repetitive tasks that quickly wear thin, but one such element in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora actually gains some new life thanks to interesting gameplay tweaks. The new game from developer Massive Entertainment and publisher Ubisoft takes place on the alien moon of James Cameron’s Avatar films, stepping up to the challenge of filling out that lush alien world appropriately. Although it doesn’t reinvent the wheel in every regard, the areas where Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora takes the time and effort to rethink things help it stand out as an engaging game overall.
It’s easy to compare Frontiers of Pandora to Ubisoft’s Far Cry series, as a lot of the same DNA is visible in the overall open-world approach of both games. The world is sprinkled with its fair share of standard bases to infiltrate and collectibles to find, and some areas can feel barren of any real surprises or revelations. Gathering plenty of loot is also a major part of progression once more, but the way that Frontiers of Pandora goes about this is more interesting than the methods that have stuck with Far Cry over the years.
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Frontiers Of Pandora’s Gathering Mechanic Is Fresh
Gathering in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora doesn’t just occur by spamming a button while walking up to resources, focusing instead on a mini-game that places a little more emphasis on the actual act of collection. Plucking nature’s bounty is most effective when it’s done at the right angle, and different plants have different ideas of what exactly that angle is. The game tutorializes this learning process with a visible indicator that shows the direction to take while detaching fruits, stalks, roots, and more, but it doesn’t take long for the helping hand to go away on default settings.
Optimal harvesting in Frontiers of Pandora works off of sensory feedback, as resistance comes into play whenever something is being pulled in the wrong direction while finding the sweet spot results in smooth sailing. It’s not fundamentally dissimilar from mechanics like Skyrim‘s lockpicking, providing a fundamentally simple challenge but forcing the player to stop and consider things for a moment. On a controller, rumble helps to indicate resistance, while mouse and keyboard rely solely on visual and audio cues to make the same basic impression with a little less impact.
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The mini-game isn’t the only thing that determines the quality of resources in Frontiers of Pandora, as a number of other factors can increase the difficulty of getting materials of the highest possible quality. Some resources are best gathered while it’s raining, for example, while superior options for others could be found in specific environments that are harder to find or access in Frontiers of Pandora‘s map. Although resources of average quality are perfectly sufficient in the early game, later challenges in Frontiers of Pandora often reward putting a little more work into hunting and gathering.
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora Makes Pandora Feel Real
Attaching a minor mini-game to gathering might seem like a small addition to the game, but it helps connect the player’s actions to the world of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in a way that makes the setting feel more direct and alive. This follows nicely in the overall mode set by the films, which are consistently focused on moving through a CGI environment in a dynamic way rather than using it as a basic green-screen backdrop. The feature can still be turned off if it ultimately feels too time-consuming, but limited inventory space usually makes gathering judicious enough to never register as a chore.
Among any given species, individual plants all follow the same gathering pattern, and it doesn’t take long for any that are being frequently harvested to become memorable. There’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that yanking a particular fruit to the left will be the most efficient, which ties into the overall experience of learning about flora in the game. Some plants lob projectiles or shock interlopers, so learning how to properly gather the materials can occasionally be more complicated than just mastering the mini-game itself. The Hunter’s Guide offers a rich index of information about discovered life, operating similarly to the Codexes in the Assassin’s Creed games.
Gathering Matters In Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora
Also key to the increased engagement of gathering in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is the basic fact that it actually matters, an area where Ubisoft games have surprisingly had trouble in the past. Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed both tend to include plenty of items that have no actual use beyond their monetary value, so filling up an inventory and running to dump it at a trader becomes a tiring and pointless task before long. Anything that can be gathered in Frontiers of Pandora can be put to specific uses, reflecting the value that the Na’vi place in making proper use of Pandora’s resources.
There’s actually no monetary basis to the economy in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora at all, focusing on trading and favors rather than financial exchange. If clans are in need of specific resources, contributing them to a community basket earns Frontiers of Pandora favor that can be used to effectively “buy” items from Na’vi. Gathered resources can also be used to cook a variety of recipes and craft weapons and equipment in Frontiers of Pandora, so it’s hard to end up burdened with anything that can’t be put to reasonably effective use.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora‘s approach to updating the Ubisoft formula isn’t perfect, and certain other mini-games and tasks can ultimately feel a bit more tiresome by the end of the game. When it comes to resources, however, the game makes some smart decisions that help improve the overall experience by a significant margin. Gathering might feel like a mindless chore in a lot of open-world video games, but Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora takes pains to ensure that Pandora is more than a place to be plundered.
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora
- Franchise:
- Array
- Platform(s):
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- Released:
- 2023-12-07
- Developer(s):
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- Genre(s):
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- ESRB:
- T
