Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora [XBSX|S, PC, PS5]

If a game reviews 70% and another 88% and sales follow the same trend, then the consensus is the later is better overall, even if you don't like it.
Does not mean you can't enjoy yourself the 70% game more, just you won't be in the majority.
 
Why always Ubisoft? Spiderman, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima. Days Gone, Zelda are all in the same boat as Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and co.
insomniac games has made 3 Spiderman games in the last 5 years which are all very similar. That's what I call generic.

Avatar is probably more exciting to play. For me it's like Crysis in some places. Finally Crysis again after so many years. In many gameplay parts it's so well realized that I hope that Crysis 4 can keep up with it.

Apart from plot, dialog, characters etc. the craftsmanship is quite good. It's a game which is just made for entertainment. That's what I would also say about the other mentioned games.
Because while those other games follow a stale template, their execution is much better. The only thing in Avatar that could be considered to have quite good craftsmanship is the visuals.
 
Is their execution really much better? To this day I remember the badly written and presented dialog from Horizon. Zelda is not exactly well made either.


If a game reviews 70% and another 88% and sales follow the same trend, then the consensus is the later is better overall, even if you don't like it.
Does not mean you can't enjoy yourself the 70% game more, just you won't be in the majority.
Mass does not mean good. The Avatar films are terrible but at the same time the most successful ones out there.
 
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Is their execution really much better? To this day I remember the badly written and presented dialog from Horizon. Zelda is not exactly well made either.


Mass does not mean good. The Avatar films are terrible but at the same time the most successful ones out there.
Yes, dramatically better. Ubisoft games have poor animation, voice acting, writing and story. There is a complete lack of intrinsic value in any of the gameplay elements since AC Unity. Combat is not fun at all. You don't do a single thing that is exciting in any Ubisoft open world game in almost a decade.
 
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Combat in The Division 2 is is very well thought out with it's multi-layered and versatile enemy AI and therefore better than in any of the other games mentioned. Combat in Avatar is very fluid and easy to control and based on the right template: Crysis 3.

If the synchronization is good I usually play the games in German. The voice acting in Ubisoft games is often better than in Sony games. For example the German voice acting in The Last of Us is badly made so I immediately switched it to English. The Division is much better in this regard.

I also don't see that Zelda (Game of the year contender) is supposed to be many times better than Avatar in every category except graphics. There is no logical justification for this.
 
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Is their execution really much better? To this day I remember the badly written and presented dialog from Horizon. Zelda is not exactly well made either.



Mass does not mean good. The Avatar films are terrible but at the same time the most successful ones out there.
you have the right to say you don't like something, but here you sound like "it's bad, the mass who like that is wrong" and "that game i don't like should have a lower score"
I mean i absolutely don't like football games (and football in general) but i've no problem if they score high in the charts. It's just not my thing.
 
Is their execution really much better? To this day I remember the badly written and presented dialog from Horizon. Zelda is not exactly well made either.



Mass does not mean good. The Avatar films are terrible but at the same time the most successful ones out there.

This seems pretty standard for videogame shit writing. I'd say 99% of games are this bad, they just don't have the graphical presentation to make it seem so obviously bad. When it's stylized characters with terrible dialog and voice acting, it doesn't come across as so much of a big deal. It's really unfortunate to me that a lot of games are full of stuff like this. I find it very hard to play narrative games that are more than 10 hours long, because they're inevitably bogged down with tons of filler like this.
 
And Horizon Dawn was famous for having very bad side quest dialog. When the game was successful, the first DLC Frozen Wilds improve quality of dialog a lot, same for HFW and Burning shores.

EDIT: Sony pay attention to budget of the game they made depending of the studio. Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima and Days Gone all have some cutscene of lower quality than Naughty Dog title or Sony Santa Monica title. When a studio and an ip prove to be successful they increase the budget. The new Ip of Naughty Dog and Sony Santa Monica will have big budget same for ghost of Tsushima 2 after success of the first episode...


Jason Rubin said:
Sony has been incredible to Naughty Dog, always giving them the assets that they need to compete. Most people don’t realize but quite often a game is won because a game got more budget. It’s bigger, it’s badder, it’s cooler because it got more budget… So, had it not been for that happening at any given time, Naughty Dog could have cratered, but Sony has been incredibly good to Naughty Dog.

And the best proof of this is Rockstar Games with Red Dead and the biggest AAA title GTA.
 
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It's an issue in all of these bloated, open world games. The better executed ones have sufficient high points that bring up the overall value well above the Ubisoft games.

Spiderman has traversal that is fun and actually looks cool. Set pieces are amazing and help to add excitement to the experience. Combat punches above its weight due to the variety of animations and them actually looking polished as opposed to a janky mess.

Horizon series combat also punches above its weight for similar reasons. Fighting giant, robot dinosaurs that move and animate super well is also far more interesting than yet another generic human who animates very poorly. Most aspects of the game are just much more polished than anything Ubisoft has put out.
 
There was a very interesting french article about how Ubi Soft makes game and the problem was they have a "central" division where they give direction to make every game respecting a template. The creative and game director don't have the final cut on the game they create.

For the bloated aspect it comes from a comment of Yves Guillemot son telling him there is not enough point of interest in one Ubi game and he believed him.

Multiples other studio execute better the open world template like CDProjekt, Rockstar, From Software, Nintendo, Guerrilla Games, Insomniac Games, Sucker Punch.

For wide linear title Capcom, From Software, ND, Sony Santa Monica.

For AAA rogue lite/Metroidvania games Respawn, Housemarque.

Soul's like are better made by From software...

Id software do great fps.

EDIT:
But most of the studios do third person game at least with Far Cry and Avatar Ubi soft continue to do FPS.
 
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Why always Ubisoft? Spiderman, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima. Days Gone, Zelda are all in the same boat as Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and co.
insomniac games has made 3 Spiderman games in the last 5 years which are all very similar. That's what I call generic.
The most common complaint about Ubisoft games, which is pretty much common to all Ubisoft open world games like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry , is that the game fills the map with hundreds, if not thousands of side activities which are not interesting and lack variation. None of the games you mentioned do this.

It's not that there is a map which depicts things to do, it's having a map which depicts a handful of dull and repetitive activities, repeated hundreds of times and calling that interesting content. Personally, I just ignore that. I'm not that far into Avatar yet but I know that liberating the bases is the same mechanic as Far Cry and many Assassin's Creed games, and Ubisoft get a lot of stick because the same publisher has re-deployed the same mechanics across multiple IPs for about over a decade.

That is why it's always Ubisoft criticised. For the record, I like Assassin's Creed, and many of the Far Cry games. Avatar feels bit like the Far Cry Primal sequel we never got. :no:
 
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it's having a map which depicts a handful of dull and repetitive activities, repeated hundreds of times and calling that interesting content.
I remember playing one game (not sure if it was an ubi game but it certainly followed the ubi formula) and I found something and got a message "you have collected 1 of 499 Taco's*" and I thought oh you can f**k right off
*Taco Totally Arbitrary Collectable Object - Thanks Anachronox
 
Why always Ubisoft? Spiderman, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima. Days Gone, Zelda are all in the same boat as Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and co.
insomniac games has made 3 Spiderman games in the last 5 years which are all very similar. That's what I call generic.

Avatar is probably more exciting to play. For me it's like Crysis in some places. Finally Crysis again after so many years. In many gameplay parts it's so well realized that I hope that Crysis 4 can keep up with it.

Apart from plot, dialog, characters etc. the craftsmanship is quite good. It's a game which is just made for entertainment. That's what I would also say about the other mentioned games.
I love me some Far Cry, I loved Origins and Odyssey, and I will buy Avatar, but I'm not sure you can compare those games to Spiderman or bloody ZELDA.
 
What nonsense. Kasandra travelling ancient Greece on a shagathon was pretty exciting.
I loved that game but it was too damn long. I've tried to finish to twice and gave up both times and I really, really love the setting and the world and the gameplay. But there is no way I'm playing one open world game for 80 hours when half of it is repeating the exact same things over and over. I would love a shorted-story mode.

The last Assassin's Creed game I finished was Unity - and I still love that game - and the Primal was the last Far Cry I completed. I've burned out 50-75% through on the other games (Odyssey, Valhalla, Far Cry 4, Far Cry 5) and the others in the series I've skipped entirely.

My impulse buy of Avatar was in part based on that the campaign is around 25 hours which is perfect for me.
 
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