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Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora | Review Thread

King Dazzar

Member

He liked it then!!
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
It's a pretty game. For sure.

Video sadly limited to 1080p, further reduced to 720p cause of Streamable limitation.






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Bonus:


Quality top vs Performance Bottom:


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Honestly, i havent played with the settings at all or ran the benchmark.

The benchmark is incredible, I spent an hour with it yesterday... But I still don't know what DLSS ultra quality is, might be DLAA?

I tried to pop out in front of a mech, then circle around to shoot it from the back. It also turned around and met me halfway through 🤣 Also their flanking is pretty good.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
The benchmark is incredible, I spent an hour with it yesterday... But I still don't know what DLSS ultra quality is, might be DLAA?

I tried to pop out in front of a mech, then circle around to shoot it from the back. It also turned around and met me halfway through 🤣 Also their flanking is pretty good.
Their flanking is almost too good. I dont know where this fucking AI tech is from but i havent seen flanking like this since KZ2 and OG crysis. And even then those guys werent this fast. Division was NOT like this. I want to like it but i die way too fast.

I just spam stun grenades and then melee them. its an eternal skill you get in the first area of the game so be sure to get that.

and yes, Ultra quality is DLAA.
 

TheStam

Member
Played a bit as Ubi sent some 20 EUR off code. The game is taxing as hell on PC.. Wondering if I should refund, cause I'm not sure yet I'm even having fun, but I only played an hour.
I have a 4080 and this is the first game I feel like I can't get the performance I want with mouse and keyboard even on high. Maybe I'll play it with a controller or wait for patches. Especially DLSS3 framegen because it feels like this AMD one isn't really cutting it.
 
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Chuck Berry

Gold Member
The benchmark is incredible, I spent an hour with it yesterday... But I still don't know what DLSS ultra quality is, might be DLAA?

I tried to pop out in front of a mech, then circle around to shoot it from the back. It also turned around and met me halfway through 🤣 Also their flanking is pretty good.

You can find a decent shotgun pretty early on in that very first locked chest you come across in that initial area when you first set foot on Pandora. Once you get the hacking tool go backtrack a bit to where the chest was and grab it.

A point blank shotgun blast to the rear of mechs will waste them in one or two shots.

Anything two+ levels above you will cut you to pieces super quick FYI
 
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King Dazzar

Member
Why did this have to be an FPS? If it was a cool 3rd person adventure I'd be in, but a reskinned Far Cry is just not what I'm interested in.
I love that its an FPS open world. But I'm always nervous when they start doing parkour stuff in first person. You do have the aerial stuff in 3rd person though, which I'd rather was first person.

Spent 3.5 hrs just looking at shit stoned…

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it is a very pretty game, like the Harry Potter game if your a fan of the source material it’s just fun to be in the world.
I'm sure many game worlds are great to be in when stoned though. Maybe if all the reviewers were stoned, then we'd have had higher scores. lol

Unfortunately I'm very boring these days. But I did ride a motorcycle on LSD once and thought the tarmac road had turned into grass. I was relieved to make it home!
 
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Chuck Berry

Gold Member
It’s definitely the most “chill” Far Cry type game. Like I can count on one hand in 25+ hours the amount of random RDA enemies I’ve encountered. There’s a certain zen feeling I get running and leaping through the forest from each glowy dot of interest to the next. Nothing close to GOTY material for me but it’s gorgeous and relaxing and an excellent podcast game.

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Dude the "highway" system with the giant trees and gotta-go-fast spores is brilliant!
And whatever it does to auto-stick you to vegetation and rocks is so fast and seamless! Now I want a non-VR FPS Assassin's Creed...
 

RPS37

Member
Alright, started playing this.

Probably the most useless character creator ever lol
Shit you’re not wrong. I spent quite a while trying to actually make my dude look unique and it seemed nothing was happening.
Why did this have to be an FPS? If it was a cool 3rd person adventure I'd be in, but a reskinned Far Cry is just not what I'm interested in.
Immersion.

also, am I literally the only one playing this on Xbox?
 

Nydius

Gold Member
Late to the thread and I didn't read all 9 pages so I suspect I won't be saying anything that hasn't already been said before. Alas...

This was one of the last games I was looking forward to this year. I had high hopes because it was being done by Massive and I thoroughly enjoyed Division and Division 2, and because supposedly Cameron, or at least some proxy for him, was involved in this to make sure it stayed true to the cinematic universe and art design. Plus, I figured it would probably be a mix between Far Cry Primal and Horizon Zero Dawn.

I've had the game since last week and I've put about 8 hours into it. I can't play more than 60-90 minutes before getting deathly bored and going off to do something else. People often deride open world games as "walking simulators" even when that description isn't warranted but in Avatar's case it's absolutely the most accurate description of the game. Easily 5-6 hours of my 8 hours played thus far have just been walking. Walking to waypoints. Walking to plants to gather. Walking to plants for health upgrades. Walking to quests that then make me walk 5 minutes to get to the next quest area -- which are, more often than not, braindead investigation areas that involve... a lot of walking around. And they clearly knew this was an issue because the ground is littered with those little agility flowers whose aura temporarily speeds up your pace.

Combat segments are few and far between and when you do run into them you quickly find out that the RDA have enabled God Mode hacks because the moment they spot you, they always know where you are and can move their mechanized suits like they equipped jet packs on them. I have never seen enemy AI flank so fast and so aggressively and be able to track you through mountains and water as effectively as the RDA does in Avatar FOP. Doesn't matter how much you invest in stealth skills or gear mods or how much you put into +RDA Damage. None of the AI factions in DIvision 1 or 2 were this insane.

Then there's gathering. Having to play a glorified game of Simon (the old tabletop electronic memory game) every time you want to pick a resource is annoying as fuck and slows the game down way too much. Especially when you get quests that literally depend on getting pristine items. Just let me pick the damned thing and randomly give it a quality level. I don't want to spend all this time fiddling with the analog stick and adaptive triggers because someone on the dev team felt they had to justify using them. Meanwhile, food you craft from the stuff you gather doesn't heal you when you're injured, only the particular berries you gather at river plants (can't remember the damn name) do that; food only replenishes your stamina, which you need to auto-regenerate health out of combat or to fast travel. The whole design is a mindnumbing clusterfuck.

When it comes to the state of gear and mods, I refuse to believe this is the same team that gave us Division and Division 2. This gear and crafting system is so utterly barebones that it's borderline embarrassing. And who in the fuck decided to make a loot game where you can't sell or dismantle the gear you no longer need or shitty gear you get as quest rewards? Only thing you can do is drop that stuff on the ground, waste your stash space, or clutter your inventory space by keeping it.

The only thing this game has going for it is visuals.
It's a tedious bore to actually play.
Turned out I was right that It was like Far Cry Primal and Horizon Zero Dawn -- except it took all the worst things from them.
 

GymWolf

Member
thats what I did. the game itself isnt that great but its a great game to push the fancy graphics cards. worth the $15. Even if you dont like it, i highly recommend playing through the story until you get to the first flying sequence. That whole sequence is legit next gen.
The mission during the thunderstorm was more impressive.

Flying is still pretty slow and the game has pop in, it's not perfect.
 
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GymWolf

Member
Reading the comment about the ia make me laught because except for some rare occasion they are pretty retarded and they can't keep up with you at all, if you change position instead of staying in a single place like a moron they are clueless.

The only exception being the absolute bullshit mech with rocket launcher that track you everywhere.

Division 2 this is not.

P.s. wild how people have different experiences with the ia.
 
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GymWolf

Member
Late to the thread and I didn't read all 9 pages so I suspect I won't be saying anything that hasn't already been said before. Alas...

This was one of the last games I was looking forward to this year. I had high hopes because it was being done by Massive and I thoroughly enjoyed Division and Division 2, and because supposedly Cameron, or at least some proxy for him, was involved in this to make sure it stayed true to the cinematic universe and art design. Plus, I figured it would probably be a mix between Far Cry Primal and Horizon Zero Dawn.

I've had the game since last week and I've put about 8 hours into it. I can't play more than 60-90 minutes before getting deathly bored and going off to do something else. People often deride open world games as "walking simulators" even when that description isn't warranted but in Avatar's case it's absolutely the most accurate description of the game. Easily 5-6 hours of my 8 hours played thus far have just been walking. Walking to waypoints. Walking to plants to gather. Walking to plants for health upgrades. Walking to quests that then make me walk 5 minutes to get to the next quest area -- which are, more often than not, braindead investigation areas that involve... a lot of walking around. And they clearly knew this was an issue because the ground is littered with those little agility flowers whose aura temporarily speeds up your pace.

Combat segments are few and far between and when you do run into them you quickly find out that the RDA have enabled God Mode hacks because the moment they spot you, they always know where you are and can move their mechanized suits like they equipped jet packs on them. I have never seen enemy AI flank so fast and so aggressively and be able to track you through mountains and water as effectively as the RDA does in Avatar FOP. Doesn't matter how much you invest in stealth skills or gear mods or how much you put into +RDA Damage. None of the AI factions in DIvision 1 or 2 were this insane.

Then there's gathering. Having to play a glorified game of Simon (the old tabletop electronic memory game) every time you want to pick a resource is annoying as fuck and slows the game down way too much. Especially when you get quests that literally depend on getting pristine items. Just let me pick the damned thing and randomly give it a quality level. I don't want to spend all this time fiddling with the analog stick and adaptive triggers because someone on the dev team felt they had to justify using them. Meanwhile, food you craft from the stuff you gather doesn't heal you when you're injured, only the particular berries you gather at river plants (can't remember the damn name) do that; food only replenishes your stamina, which you need to auto-regenerate health out of combat or to fast travel. The whole design is a mindnumbing clusterfuck.

When it comes to the state of gear and mods, I refuse to believe this is the same team that gave us Division and Division 2. This gear and crafting system is so utterly barebones that it's borderline embarrassing. And who in the fuck decided to make a loot game where you can't sell or dismantle the gear you no longer need or shitty gear you get as quest rewards? Only thing you can do is drop that stuff on the ground, waste your stash space, or clutter your inventory space by keeping it.

The only thing this game has going for it is visuals.
It's a tedious bore to actually play.
Turned out I was right that It was like Far Cry Primal and Horizon Zero Dawn -- except it took all the worst things from them.
It's aggressively mediocre.

Replay primal instead, the world is actually dangerous (especially on survival mode) and the animal ecosystem smash the ecosystem of avatar 10 to 1.
 

Ammogeddon

Member
I was enjoying it until a bug stopped me progressing the main campaign.

If you haven’t experienced it you’re lucky as it sounds like there are plenty with the same issue with The Missing Hunter mission.
 

Zuzu

Member


I've watched most of it. He's funny but I think he's being a bit extreme to say this is the worst game of 2023. Outside of the glitches and boring story and characters it seems that the biggest issue with the gameplay is that it's just generic and samey rather than bad per se (I hate the sound of the levelling system though).

Obviously it's subjective but arguably I'd say most people would find Redfall, Forspoken, Lords of the Fallen and maybe Immortals of Aveum worse than this game. Assassin's Creed Mirage seems just as much if not more generic than this game as well. But I might be wrong. I've only played around an hour of it so far.
 

John Marston

GAF's very own treasure goblin
I just reached Hometree so still early game.

Some stuff I want to share in case you haven't found out already:

- In the gameplay options put both hacking & lock on to automatic.
There are no penalties and we'll be doing that a lot.

-Just below put Gathering Complexity on Low Difficulty so you'll still get the bonuses.

I add a custom marker next to the quest I'm tracking so I can actually see the distance on the upper HUD compass.

I was carrying a lot of useless crap and since you can't salvage anything just donate it in the tribe pouch.

I also jumped from a ridiculously high floating rock into a 5 feet pond and took no damage but that just might be good luck 😆
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?


Alright, the more I play the game, the more I'm beginning to agree with the review.

Traversal is boring, the leveling up mechanics are terrible and the gunplay/combat is just not fun.

Having the flying mount helps with the traversal problem but it's still a worse game than any of the recent Far Cry games.

I think I'm gonna have more fun replaying FC6 when it lands on game pass than this.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Alright, the more I play the game, the more I'm beginning to agree with the review.

Traversal is boring, the leveling up mechanics are terrible and the gunplay/combat is just not fun.

Having the flying mount helps with the traversal problem but it's still a worse game than any of the recent Far Cry games.

I think I'm gonna have more fun replaying FC6 when it lands on game pass than this.
B…but it has graphics…..that will make the game automatically good….right?
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Just reached what I think is the second 'big region' of the world.

And they took away the flying mount and are making me ride a shitty slow horse thing.

Fuck.

I'm just going to mainline the story missions now. The side stuff is tedious as hell.


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Nydius

Gold Member
I'm just going to mainline the story missions now. The side stuff is tedious as hell.

I don't even know if I'll even bother doing that much. The story missions aren't much better than the side stuff. I played for a couple more hours this afternoon with the setting changes suggested by John Marston John Marston and while it did cut down some of the issues the game is still just a tedious slog from top to bottom. I can walk for minutes on end without feeling like there's any threat, without seeing a single RDA or hostile creature. Flying hasn't really helped, though it has made the fast travel penalty less of an issue.

Life's just too short to play crap games that waste my time. They pushed and marketed this game as an action game from an action movie franchise but the action in the game is almost non-existent. When it does happen, it's an unsatisfying mess. Might be great for people who want to just take in the visuals but if I wanted to play a game where I am on a lush, colorful, alien landscape and "zen out" looking at flora and fauna, I could just boot up No Man's Sky.
 
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John Marston

GAF's very own treasure goblin
Life's just too short to play crap games that waste my time.
When I cleared that first outpost my first thought went to Far Cry 6 which I quit not even halfway through because of formula fatigue.

But I'm still giving this a chance... For now 😊
 
Some of you should probably track down the 2009 game. You unlock airstrikes in like 30 minutes, get new weapons every five minutes and there's an RDA campaign dedicated to holocausting the entire flora, fauna and Na'vi population using mechs, boats, tanks and vehicles.
 

Zuzu

Member
This game really needs a 40fps mode on consoles. The motion blur isn’t great in 30fps and the image quality takes too much of a hit at 60fps performance mode.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Anyone else having an issue where any custom controller bindings you've changed get reset if you quit the game?

I modify the control scheme a lot to my liking but unless the game was on quick resume and if I had closed it, when I load it, the controls have been reset.

Sigh.
 

Methos#1975

Member
Anyone else having an issue where any custom controller bindings you've changed get reset if you quit the game?

I modify the control scheme a lot to my liking but unless the game was on quick resume and if I had closed it, when I load it, the controls have been reset.

Sigh.
Controller settings no, but my video and HDR settings constantly reset.
 
Sounds like a decent game, real looker. Prime candidate for a ps5 pro patch next year. Also around about the time I will be buying the gold edition for cheaps.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Alright, there's a skill later that lets you fast travel for 'free' without spending 20% of your energy.

That's something I guess.
 

GymWolf

Member
Just reached what I think is the second 'big region' of the world.

And they took away the flying mount and are making me ride a shitty slow horse thing.

Fuck.

I'm just going to mainline the story missions now. The side stuff is tedious as hell.


1oZfYom.jpg


Wh3el8I.jpg
You unlock the bird after a quest in the new region.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I'm now in what looks like the final region of the game, and there are some ridiculous tonal changes in the kind of game play missions and the world.

Not for the better lol.

Example:

This last area is almost entirely covered by poisonous gas on the ground level and your flying mount doesn't go near it, so in order to reach places, you need to find the nearest place where the ground is safe so you can safely land there, which can be a mile or more away, and then run all the way to the objective location
 
Male voice always sounds like he's having a panic attack, all Na'vi except the ancestor sound like retards and the FPS dialogues are worse than Guild Wars 2 lmao
I love Avatar and its lore but I can't handle this shit...

Isn't it strange how old-school the interface is? I'm pretty sure Prince of Persia 2008 used some of these icons.
 

Nydius

Gold Member
Male voice always sounds like he's having a panic attack, all Na'vi except the ancestor sound like retards and the FPS dialogues are worse than Guild Wars 2 lmao
I love Avatar and its lore but I can't handle this shit...

The female voice sounds like she's perpetually surprised, even when she's whispering.

But I'm right there with you on the last line. I loved the first Avatar movie, really liked the second... but this is just bad. I tried to put some more time in it and I simply can't. I read fan fiction on blogs after the first movie came out that was better written and more convincing than this. The only thing they really nailed was the visuals of the world itself. Everything else feels like a cheap knock-off.

It doesn't help that it wasn't that long ago that I finished playing the Robocop game which, while not great, did a fabulous job recreating the universe and making you feel like you were really in Old Detroit. I wish that same care had been taken here.
 
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GymWolf

Member
Male voice always sounds like he's having a panic attack, all Na'vi except the ancestor sound like retards and the FPS dialogues are worse than Guild Wars 2 lmao
I love Avatar and its lore but I can't handle this shit...

Isn't it strange how old-school the interface is? I'm pretty sure Prince of Persia 2008 used some of these icons.
Male voice sound like miles morales, he was lowering my testosterone level every time he opened his mouth.

The woo-hoo that he does sometimes was particularly annoying :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Shit you’re not wrong. I spent quite a while trying to actually make my dude look unique and it seemed nothing was happening.

Immersion.

also, am I literally the only one playing this on Xbox?

1st person is fine. But it seems to literally be a reskinned Far Cry, which is not very interesting.
 

RPS37

Member
Game is gorgeous but I’m really early in and I’m playing in Medium difficulty and getting my ass handed to me?
Do I get good or drop the difficulty?
 
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