You won't always employ the stealthy method. When things work out to your advantage, however, stealth kills offer a certain amount of murderous pleasure, such as when you silently wade through water toward an enemy and pull him off a walkway and into a soggy grave.
Again, this leads to awkward repositioning as you try to focus on the enemy you wish to take down, and often fail to do either. You can hold the L button to lock on to a target, which keeps the camera focused on that soldier, but you can't choose your target manually if there is more than one enemy in range, the game again makes a decision on your behalf, locking on to one of them-quite often the one you don't want to approach. While an icon over his head indicates that a soldier is nearby, you may not be able to tell which direction he's facing, which might lead to a direct encounter you'd rather avoid. Not only do you have no minimap, but you can't press up against walls and peek around corners. The clumsy camera control leads to frustrating moments in which you must reposition yourself to take in your surroundings, and the camera occasionally pans down too far, hindering your view of the environment even more. By not giving you the tools you need, the game hamstrings your ability to employ stealth tactics, and undermines its own gameplay. But in Avatar, you can only snap the camera behind you, and there is no minimap.
For example, you should be able to survey an area, scout your enemies, and plan your attack. One of the most important facets of a stealth game is your ability to take in vital information and act appropriately. For example, when there are enemies nearby but you are hidden from view, the edges of the screen blur and you automatically crouch.
It's an interesting idea, because such changes to your stance represent one of the game's few attempts to communicate important information to you. You never crouch, walk, or hide of your own accord, but do so only when the game deems it appropriate. Tons of invisible walls and ledges further exacerbate the awkwardness, so expect to occasionally walk off a ledge and find yourself standing in midair.Ĭontextual controls aren't Avatar's only attempt to make decisions on your behalf. You might be crossing a branch when a soldier spots you from below, and then find yourself unable to shoot him with your bow, even though he is clearly visible and within range, and unable to leap from the vine due to Avatar's arbitrary rules of movement. You can sometimes leap down from ledges and the like without the appearance of a prompt, but there don't seem to be any consistent rules that dictate when you can and when you can't do so. When a particular move is allowed, a prompt appears and you may leap or scale as appropriate, but the prompt is finicky, so you must be within a small and very specific area to activate it. You can climb onto certain boxes and jump from one vine to the next, but only when the game wants you to. The simple act of moving around is easy to take for granted in most games, but Avatar makes basic movement a chore.
James cameron avatar the game gameplay pc psp#
However, the levels that follow and the fable that unfolds are weak and uninspired if you're looking forward to the Avatar film and hope to gain a sneak peek at its potential pleasures, the PSP game will only crush your enthusiasm. The story updates between levels end with the phrase "and so the warrior…," which is a nice framing device that makes you feel as though you should be reliving an ancient and exciting tale passed on through the ages.
The world and the Na'vi people are interesting, but the story is little but a soulless parable about the evils of imperialism and the innocence of its victims. Now, Rai'uk sneaks through the jungle, seeking artifacts stolen from his clan and exacting fearless vengeance. Humanity has tainted Pandora's once unspoiled beauty with its resource mining program, and a group of newcomers massacred Rai'uks peaceful village when he was just a youth. While a few of Avatar's levels mix up its formula, most of them involve sneaking through foliage-heavy jungle corridors and human military bases, which your own character, Rai'uk, refers to as "metal villages." The reason for such tribal-speak is simple: Rai'uk is a member of the Na'vi, a race of tall blue beings native to the moon called Pandora.