Games based on movies tend to fall short, usually because game developers are given too little time and money to create anything special.
However, "James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game" appears to be getting much better treatment.
In fact, Cameron, director of "Titanic," told attendees at the Electronic Entertainment Expo earlier this month that the game is just part of a multimedia blitz that will hit America when the science-fiction movie "Avatar" arrives on screens Dec. 18. And he expects every part of it to be high quality.
"I didn’t want anything to do with ‘Avatar’ to suck," Cameron said.
The movie, game and upcoming books are set on the world of Pandora, whose inhospitable environment makes human mining activities very difficult. To sidestep this problem, the mining company creates "avatars" by combining the DNA of humans and Pandora’s residents, the 10-foot-tall Na’vi. Humans then link their minds to the "avatars" and conduct their operations. Of course, the blue-skinned Na’vi are threatened by this development, which leads to all the action.
Cameron started working on the game with Ubisoft more than two years ago and has approved the designs, its settings, equipment and characters.
A game demo at E3 showed off human soldiers, giant warriors, blue dragon-like beasts and a rich environment covered with lush vegetation.
It all looked and sounded very promising, but it will be a few months before we can tell whether "Avatar" has actually avoided the movie-game curse.
