Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Is Ubisoft’s Best User-Rated Game In Recent Years

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Abiyan

At Tech4gamers, I cover all sorts of gaming news. Whether it’s a leak of any upcoming game or an update, an announcement, or a rumour, I like to write about it all. Over the weekend, I sit and write features where I talk about games that I miss or want to see return.

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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.

Abiyan

[News Reporter]

Abiyan is on track to complete his Computer Science bachelor’s degree. His enthusiasm for writing and gaming motivates him to keep readers and gamers updated with the latest information from the industry. In his free time, Abiyan enjoys playing Dota 2 and Rocket League. Abiyan has also been cited in reputed websites such as Kitguru, Comicbook, GamingBible, Eurogamer and Gamingbolt.