Taking Revenge on Dangerous Plants in Ubisoft’s Avatar
by Daniel FeitOSAKA — There weren’t many Western games on display at Games Japan Festa this year, and of those that were, nearly all had already been released in the United States. A notable exception was Avatar, the game based on the James Cameron film that is coming to theaters in December (it’s the one with the blue people).
While the film’s trailer has led to much derision on the internet and a recent episode of South Park, the Ubisoft game has been drawing some positive attention for its use of stereoscopic 3-D graphics. Unfortunately, the demo that I played on the PlayStation 3 was not in 3-D, so there was little to visually distinguish Avatar from other third-person shooters: Your character is yet another armored space marine, although since Cameron’s own Aliens practically invented that particular archetype, perhaps we should cut this game some slack.
At least the setting is a departure from the usual brown and gray levels that other shooters have done to death. Avatar opens in a rich alien jungle, full of colorful plants and animals.
Read the whole story here: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/11/avatar/
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