Avatar is one of the biggest cinema releases of the last few years and hopes are high that the personal involvement of James Cameron himself can make the game tie-in something more than special.

The action is set on the moon world Pandora, where the RDA (a human mega-corporation) have set up various bases on the planet in order to mine Pandora's reserves of a valuable mineral called Unobtanium and are in conflict with the indigenous population, the 10-foot tall blue-skinned Na'Vi. The game itself is rather sparse in back-story, or any story at all. We aren’t told why humans are on Pandora - you choose a character model, fly in to reinforce the strained military forces and then jump straight into the action.

You are quickly introduced to the Avatar chambers but with no explanation as to what they are for, and you know they aren't used for infiltration as your Avatar speaks English, wears human clothes and the Na'vi know perfectly well who are not true Na'vi. This lack of story makes you feel just like the rookie you are playing as but the story never fleshes out or gets any deeper, and it does nothing to make you care about any of the characters. This lack of introduction is in complete contrast with the encyclopaedic nature of much of the rest of the game, which has reams of info about each and every type of flora and fauna to be found on Pandora, as well as explaining its other extraordinary geological features in great detail. Avatar: The Game is another one of those movie tie-ins that presumes you’ve seen the movie, and given the amount of publicity it’s unlikely you won’t at least be aware of some of the plot, but a bit more of an intro wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Pandora looks fabulous and really transports you to another world. Not only is the forest floor full of giant green ferns and massive trees it is also packed with all kinds of weird and wonderful plants and animals. Some are beautiful, like the flowers that look like purple cones which quickly sink into the ground as soon as you get near, and some are deadly, like the giant Venus humantrap or the acid-spitting plants. In one of the levels you walk into this 'spirit' area of the forest, where the contrast is turned down and the colours burn bright neon, during these times the balance between beautiful and melancholy is exampled perfectly. It even looks great as the story moves on and more of the forest is scarred with fires and great tracks demolished by giant RDA earthmovers and mining equipment.

As a Na'vi you specialise in close-combat, with a few clubs, sticks and swords at your disposal, as well as a few ranged weapons, and as a member of the RDA you play a third-person shooter, pillaging with machine guns, flamethrowers and grenade launchers. Despite appearing open-world the game is in fact very linear, often giving you only one mission to complete in a set way and following a set path, which is laid out plainly in front of you. Towards the end longevity is added by moving the points further apart and blocking off quick routes to objectives.

The missions themselves are simple and do not vary that much between the two story arcs - fetch this, destroy that, kill that guy... essentially playing very much like sub-missions from a real open-world game, with very little variation in what you can do. The missions are so lacking in imagination that early on in the Na'vi campaign you have to destroy a massive flying gunship attacking a village by climbing up and jumping on it three times! Missions are often repetitive to the extreme, and lack imagination.

For me, the human missions play a lot better as things feel a little tighter in the controls, and slightly less annoying in the cut-scenes (the “untrusted outsider gradually earning acceptance among the Na’vi” plotline grows thin quickly). Some of the guns feel like they lack a bit of weight, generally due to no real damage recognition or effects, but they are still fun to play about with. The land vehicles don't handle all that well (an all-terrain buggy, a gun truck, a kind-of tracked quad bike and an AMP mech-walker) when you get to use them but they are much more fun than the weird six-legged Direhorses you can ride as the Na'vi. You get to fly a couple of gunships as a human and a dragon-like creature called a Banshee as your avatar, but the weapons aren’t much fun to use (and the Banshees don’t have any) and they’re all quite difficult to fly accurately, and even harder to land.

The close combat controls for the Na'vi are sloppy and feel clunky and awkward. You’ll frequently get stuck on scenery even though you're supposed to be a nimble native hunter and all that. Hits sometimes don't register, you take an agonising amount of time to get up when knocked down (and can be shot all the time you’re downed) and you dismount a Direhorse as slowly as an arthritic granny. Even the cool animations of your character flipping around in the air are somewhat spoiled as there's only one and it doesn't map whatever weapon you're carrying, so as you flip your weapon disappears!

The AI on both sides offers no real challenge but is unpredictable - the humans will either ignore you until you get close enough to slash their moustaches off or will shoot from incredibly long range with near-perfect accuracy. The Na'vi will generally ‘teleport’ about like lemons, sometimes getting near enough to take a swipe but the Viperwolves and other animals can be easily defeated by a bit of strafing. There is no difficulty curve, just a few more enemies with bigger health bars and gun emplacements at the end.

The multiplayer game supports 2-16 players and 5 game modes (King of the Hill, Capture and Hold, Team Deathmatch, Final Battle and Capture the Flag) and even though you can customise weapon, armour and skills loadouts it suffers from all the faults the main game does, so is not great fun to play and is highly unlikely to keep players entertained for long. Included in the game is a small strategy mini-game called Conquest mode, which plays as a turn-based Risk-like strategy game where you fight for control of Pandora via a zoomed-out planetary view. There are three types of troops you can buy (soldier, heavy ground and air units) with money given to you as you progress in the main game. You then use these units to take over neighbouring territories until you control the entire Moon's surface. This essentially boils down to amassing ten thousand troops on a border and head butting each sector until you run out of troops. If you don't have enough money to buy ten thousand more you come back later and money will have magically appeared for you to do so (it’s linked to XP gained in the campaign mode). Apparently capturing certain sectors gives you increased attributes in the main game, but there's no way of telling, especially since the increases were 5% and the game had no substantial feeling of progression or improvement in the characters anyway. It’s obvious that the development time used on both the multiplayer game and the Conquest mode would have been much better spent polishing and fleshing out the main story mode.