Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

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License-based games get a bad rap, and they by and large get it for good reason. For a while there, the only really great movie-based games were…well, there was Rare’s GoldenEye on the N64. To be fair, the Batman: Arkham series did a lot for licensed titles in general, and people really seem to dig Sony’s Spider-Man games a whole lot. If there’s less reason to dodge a licensed game these days it’s probably because there’s less of them in general.

Still, sometimes licensed games can even be pretty decent. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a new open-world adventure modeled after the similarly open-world action-adventures of Far Cry (both from Ubisoft, of course), keeps the dream of good licensed games alive.

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if you’re familiar with James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, you’re aware of the tension between the native Na’vi cat-people of the planet Pandora and the human interlopers out to exploit the land for its valuable Unobtainium ore. Unsurprisingly we’ve got some more of that here. In Frontiers of Pandora, we follow a customizable young Na’vi orphan taken by The Ambassador Program, or TAP, a human re-education project intended to produce Na’vi “ambassadors” with human behavioral traits to help bridge the gap between the two species.

We quickly discover, of course, that TAP’s intentions are a tiny bit more sinister than peaceful cooperation, and our Na’vi find themselves unexpectedly free. They’ll have to learn the ways of their people while helping the Pandoran resistance push back the despoiling Resources Development Administration and save the planet. You might even hear about the recent exploits of some favorite characters from the films if you’re paying attention.

One might not expect Avatar to be the best license for a first-person shooter, and they’d probably be right. It’s fortunate, then, that Frontiers of Pandora takes its main inspiration from Far Cry Primal rather than a more traditional FPS. In case you’ve forgotten, that was Far Cry’s brief excursion into the prehistoric world featuring a more primitive style and some unique gameplay twists. Frontiers mixes some of these ideas with more modern concepts and plenty of Avatar flavor to offer a surprisingly coherent action-adventure romp.

Movement, for instance, is key to the Na’vi lifestyle as depicted in the Avatar films. Connecting with the planet by navigating through the treetops and skies of Pandora is a huge theme throughout the series, and Frontiers spares no effort to nail this down. Your Na’vi is a natural climber, to the point where they feel a little “sticky” in how eagerly they’ll attach to precarious surfaces.

Before long you’ll be able to put this to effortless use clambering up and down from the ground to the canopy and vice-versa, adding in plant-based springs and air boosts along the way. This makes traversing the environment a delight and plays a big role in Frontiers’ guerilla-style combat, and the game is happy to encourage this style of play with upgrades and bonuses. Later, you’ll be able to fly around on a variety of mounts, even taking to the sky if you feel the need to catch some air. More than anything, the free-form style of movement gives Frontiers of Pandora its own style.

That’s key in keeping an open-world game like this feeling fresh. A lot of these objectives are things you’ve probably seen before, after all. You’ve got loot to find, sidequests to complete, it’s the usual sort of content packaged neatly in Avatar style. While I’m not particularly convinced by the oft-repeated idea that this style of game is getting old, there’s never any harm in spicing things up a bit. Aesthetics and gameplay can go a long way, as they do here.

Let’s not imply that this is a one o’ them trendy “cozy” games, though. There’s plenty of combat to go around in Frontiers of Pandora, and by and large it’s handled pretty well. You have access to a variety of both low-tech and high-tech weapons, with the latter packing an appropriate punch while the former tends to be a little better at stealth action. There’s something to be said for the sheer carnage you can unleash with even a basic SMG after getting used to the Na’vi longbow, but that doesn’t mean you won’t go back to the latter when you need discretion.

The ability to approach situations in your own style is a hallmark of the Far Cry games and that’s just as present in this pseudo-spin-off. Also, you can blow up mechs by shooting them in the exhaust ports with a bow and arrow. Bet Far Cry 6 doesn’t have that. Well, maybe New Dawn did.

Far Cry 6 also isn’t set on Pandora, and if the breathless reports from 2009 about depression caused by post-filmgoing Avatar fans having to return to the real world were any indication, that’s a place people would like to visit. Frontiers of Pandora certainly sells the place. Whether you’re playing on PC or a modern console, the amount of detail and flavor put into Pandora is a step above what you’d see from most open-world games. Likewise, the game leans into Avatar’s high-quality soundtrack and voice acting to offer an appropriately cinematic experience.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is one of those games that really demonstrates how far licensed media has come. Well, unless we’re talking about King Kong, but let’s not – let’s focus on games that take an established franchise and lean in to make something memorable. Fans of Cameron’s multi-billion dollar grossing series longing to return to Pandora finally have an easy (and sane) way of doing so with an engrossing adventure that’s bound to titillate their neural whips in all the right ways.