James Cameron's Avatar Review

Avatar the movie hit the world by storm, providing amazing graphics that helped to propel it to the highest grossing film of all time. Avatar follows some fairly cliche story elements, but the advanced technology stunned people into continual visits to the theater. Like the movie, the game falls a bit short in the story. Unlike the movie though, graphics on the iDevice version of Avatar do not make up for the missing story elements.

From a strict game play approach, Avatar follows along the great design that Gameloft employs in many of its titles in this genre. Avatar is built in the style of similar dual button adventure games, one stick being used for movement, one used for attack. There are additional buttons for jump, special abilities, and few additional needs. The controls are as spot on as similar games by Gameloft. Improvements have been made in interaction with the environment, adjustments to game play to avoid repetitiveness, and enough new content from previous games to justify a look.

The storyline follows the time before the movie, and how the first Avatars were introduced into the environment. In reality, it felt like a re-iteration of the movie on a less grand scale. The few story elements seemed rough around the edges, and didn't compel me to continue playing the game.

While the graphics on Avatar on the iDevice aren't as stellar as the movie, they certainly are impressive for the platform they are on. The environments are rich and detailed, the game play uses turning cameras and different perspectives, and all around it's a pretty game. It still doesn't make up for the complete lack of an interesting story though.

If you're looking for a good time killer with great game play but aren't really interested in story, I would say that Avatar is worth a look. You can check it out for $6.99.