- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora received an average rating of just 72/100 on Metacritic.
- The user reviews are much more positive, with an average score of 8.2/10 based on 319 reviews.
- This score is already better than most Ubisoft games from recent years.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was the last big game of 2023, bringing an end to the year on a positive note.
With a fully realized and beautiful open world set in the Avatar universe, Massive Entertainment’s work has received a lot of praise for groundbreaking visuals without compromising 60FPS on consoles.
Beyond the visuals, however, the game did not impress critics too much. While we gave it a score of 8/10, most reviews hovered around a score of 7/10. Fortunately, the user reviews are more positive, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is rated 8.2/10 on Metacritic.
Why it matters: The disconnect in ratings highlights that users and critics often value different things in their gaming experiences, leading to wildly different scores at times.
At the time of writing, the game has around 319 user reviews, and the average is extremely promising. 77% of the user reviews have been positive. 11% of the ratings are mixed, and only 12% of the feedback is negative.
This is quite surprising since the critics did not appear to enjoy the game much. In a stacked year like 2023, Avatar: Frontiers of Panodra was considered too average to stand out.
However, users have seemingly taken a liking to this release. It should be noted that the game’s user score is higher than mainline releases from Ubisoft in recent years. For instance, Assassin’s Creed Mirage has a user score of 7.4/10.
Whether it be Far Cry 6, The Crew Motorfest, or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, all recent Ubisoft games fall behind Massive Entertainment’s latest adaptation of Avatar. This disconnect between the critical and user reception is quite interesting, to say the least.
While Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora sticks close to the Far Cry formula, its open world alone adds a lot of personality to the game. Brought to life by ray-traced lighting, reactive flora and fauna, and an engaging parkour system, Massive Entertainment’s work has not gone unnoticed.
Even though the choice of a first-person perspective was initially controversial, it seems to have worked out in the end, adding to the immersion of the experience.
We believe the game would’ve performed even better with a more engaging marketing campaign.
While Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora launched just days before The Game Awards, there was next to no talk about this game. Perhaps a spot on the big stage at Geoff Keighley’s show would have helped the game’s marketing.
With James Cameron having an extensive plan for the future of this IP, more Avatar games from Massive Entertainment could show up. Since a solid groundwork has already been established, a sequel could separate the gaming adaptations from the Far Cry comparisons and help them come into their own.
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