Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora review – There’s little surprising in this game, but it’s one of the most beautiful settings I’ve ever visited, writes PETER HOSKIN

Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £69.99) 

Verdict: Have a blue Christmas

Rating:

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £49.99)

 Verdict: Ruin-of-the-mill

Rating:

Avatar: The Game — or, to allow it its official title, Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora — sure is like Avatar: The Movies. In both good and bad ways.

Let’s start with the latter. There’s very little that’s surprising in Frontiers Of Pandora, and much that’s derivative. Here, once again, are the overgrown hippy-dippy blue aliens — the Na’vi — of James Cameron’s cinematic universe rebelling against the rapacious greed of human corporations bent on . . . blah, blah, blah.

And it’s not just the cut-and-paste plot; the gameplay will be very familiar to anyone who’s ever played, say, one of the Far Cry titles. You — as a Na’vi raised by humankind — barrel around an expansive landscape in first-person, crafting weaponry, destroying outposts, making friends, that sort of thing.

But what about the good? The first thing that stands out from Frontiers Of Pandora — much like it does from the movies — is Pandora itself, this planet of rainforests, clear water and iridescent flowers. 

It’s not just one of the most beautiful settings I’ve ever visited in a game, it’s also one of the densest. Full of ups and downs and byways and plateaus and . . . incident.

Avatar : The Game — or, to allow it its official title, Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora — sure is like Avatar: The Movies. In both good and bad ways

And it’s not just the cut-and-paste plot; the gameplay will be very familiar to anyone who’s ever played, say, one of the Far Cry titles

It’s not just one of the most beautiful settings I’ve ever visited in a game, it’s also one of the densest

Then there’s the fact that, as Far Cry facsimiles go, this is a very good one, with its own spins on familiar material. I particularly like how it encourages you to think like a Na’vi — reading the environment to determine where you’re going — rather than just relying on the usual gaming aids and map markers.

In fact, by the time it gave me my own dino-bird to fly, I was starting to feel a little blue myself. I am of the Na’vi now. At one with nature and totally anti-capitalist.

Warhammer! This game of tiny, painstakingly painted armies and grand, painstakingly prepared strategies made the leap from tabletops to consoles years ago. Decades, even. There have been dozens – if not hundreds – of Warhammer video games in that time.

Except this one’s different. Sort of. This is a major release set in Warhammer’s newer Age of Sigmar setting – which explains at least some of the silly words in the title – and there have been few (if any) of those to date.

So instead of traditional fantasy knights and serfs, we’ve now got ‘roided-out, golden-armoured storm warriors carrying crossbows that work suspiciously like space guns. Raaaargh!

Warhammer: Instead of traditional fantasy knights and serfs, we’ve now got ‘roided-out, golden-armoured storm warriors carrying crossbows that work suspiciously like space guns

But, if you take away the surface trappings, Realms of Ruin is also pretty similar to other Warhammer games of yore. For those who played the Dawn of War series, set in the sci-fi Warhammer 40,000 universe, this it that all over again – only with clubs.

It’s the same clicking to direct your little warriors across 3D battlefields and against terrible enemies. It’s the same sort of narrative campaign, in which you gain more and more units to counter an escalating threat. The same options, more or less, for multiplayer gaming.

Realms of Ruin does most of this well. The landscapes are grimly beautiful. The voice acting behind the (mostly humourless) main characters is top drawer. There’s decent variety in the armies you can marshal, from those storm warriors to dastardly orcs.

But it’s also all so… standard. The sort of game that you’ve seen before, painted over to look like the Age of Sigmar. Warhammer? Warmallet, more like.

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