Be Excellent To Each Other

For reasons I have not yet been able to identify I've been tempted by the game of the film of the Microsoft Mii-too for ages now even though it got a bit of a critical slagging. So last week I traded some stuff in at Gamestation and picked it up in the 2 for £20 offers and I can get £8 for it when I trade it back in so £2 isn't exactly much of a gamble.

It's really not that bad you know.

It uses the Dunia engine as seen in Far Cry 2 which when applied to the flora and fauna of Pandora makes for a truly fucking lush environment to muck about in so already it's a step up from the usual movie tie in shovelware but the actual gameplay itself warrants some praise. About half an hour in you have to make a choice between the humans and the Na'vi which isn't much of a choice really as they might as well say "Go with the kiddly fiddling puppy eviscerating scum buckets or the orphan loving noble down trodden Na'vi" and the campaign branches off accordingly for the rest of the game. I chose the Na'vi and the game starts proper then as a third person shooter but with a handy set of "skills" that you can use to enhance your combat abilities. Coming up to a bunch of (it has to be said moronically stupid) marines you can opt to sit back and pick them off with your bow but each shot requires you to build up the tension in the bow for maximum killage so you expose yourself to gunfire although no flanking - cos they is well fick. What you can do though is use your kinetic dash to pile in at full speed and slice the fuckers up or go invisible and sneak up then club them to death or summon some local wildlife to eat their faces off or stun them then slice up their prone bodies into human jam. You get the picture.

My particular favourite is the equivalent of quad damage which really does turn you into a lanky smurf blender of death. It takes a while to recharge as it is such a powerful attack but instead of just making you slightly more powerful it really does ramp up the damage to epic proportions.

The plot is utter shite and a means of making you trek about on a few too many fetch quests only you really don't give much of a shit about what's happening which isn't helped by the Na'vi all sounding like some kind of backwards tribal idiots and them not explaining what half of the gibberish means. If you haven't seen the film (and this came out before the film) it makes even less sense so they've made a right old fuck up there. Each level is somewhat open world and you can navigate it in whichever manner you want which is encouraged but too many times a task requires you to trek back over terrain you've already seen through respawning enemies which is annoying at times but does mean you can try different skills / strategies on the stupid humans you encounter on the way.

I'm at the final level and have had more fun with it than I had with Alan Wake which scores much higher on Metacritic. The human campaign may drag it down - I have yet to try that - but the Na'vi campaign alone is a decent 10 hours but currently I can see no reason why this got the pummelling it did.

Anyone else played it?

I tried it in HMV and thought it sucked utter balls.
The graphics were crap too.

Your eyes are broken;

Honestly didnt find it impressive. Maybe it was the level I was on. The character animation wasnt anything to write home about either.

The animation is ok if a little wooden. It's awful in the cut scenes (wave arms to the max when talking) but then I was too busy cringing at "Where am dat watty melon?" to focus properly.

Ooo cheers for that Mr T. I was thinking about buying this the other day. Think I will now. I only saw the film about two weeks back and man, what a film !