What is it? A Far Cry-like set in the world of James Cameron's Avatar Release date December 6, 2023 Expect to pay $60/£50 Developer Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft Shanghai, Ubisoft Düsseldorf Publisher Ubisoft Reviewed on Radeon RX 6600, Ryzen 7 7700x, 32GB DDR5 RAM Steam Deck TBA Link Official site
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora transcends its progenitor series Far Cry with an awe-inspiring presentation, a captivating world, and tense combat, but at present, it's buried under a mountain of technical trouble, and it could take months to unearth a genuinely great game with patches and driver support.
When it's working, navigating Pandora is a total joy: sprinting at mach five across the forest floor and parkouring across the serpentine tree roots that connect dense jungle brush to rock formations suspended in zero gravity. Avatar's psychedelic «Ecco the Dolphin color palette meets Starship Troopers industrial sci-fi» look is translated beautifully from film to game, and the skyboxes especially are some of the best I've ever seen. The sheer density and variety of reactive flora and fauna is stunning.
The audio is also a standout, with a score that dynamically shifts from ambient strings that accent the natural sounds of Pandora to pulsating drums and droning synths during combat. It's a soundscape that I expect will see a lot of success outside the game as it's already one of the most diverse and interesting ASMR sound palettes I've ever heard. When I say I intend to use Frontiers of Pandora to put me to sleep, I mean that in the best way possible.
For me, the gorgeous presentation has been substantially undercut by technical issues that accompany big multi-platform releases—frequent hitching, FPS drops (AMD Adrenaline says I'm getting 90, but it looks and feels a lot more like 45), and blurry FSR3 scaling, which Ubisoft originally attributed to a lack of a day one driver update. That driver update has come, though, and the issues haven't subsided.
My time with Avatar has been consistently impeded by a frustratingly common suite of game breaking bugs and performance issues: We're talking full on system crashes, consistently poor performance, and bizarre progress-erasing interface bugs (namely a perpetually grayed out «continue» button that only works when the game is deleted and subsequently reinstalled). For these reasons, getting sufficiently immersed in Frontiers of Pandora is extremely difficult. It's been my experience that post-launch, these issues have gotten worse, not better, even when using some of the flagship AMD hardware advertised in partnership with the game.
Faulty FSR3 implementation seems to be the culprit behind most crashes, but even with that disabled, walking into a Na'vi hometree or
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Lava Blaze Pro 5G Review: In a market largely influenced by Chinese smartphone giants, Indian consumers have become accustomed to seeing brands like Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Realme dominating the mid-range segment even as the South Korean major, Samsung, keeps spicing up the space with its amazing smartphones. However, amidst this landscape, Lava, a homegrown tech company, has been striving to carve out its space in this fiercely competitive arena. Introducing the Lava Blaze Pro 5G, their latest addition to the 5G segment in India, the company aims to challenge the established players in the sub Rs. 15000 smartphone market - the space that has the most competition.
So we haven’t done one of our “where is our review” posts in a while, because frankly, we generally get copies of AAA games on time. Although there have been bumps in the road every so often, most gaming publishers want people to try out their games early, from the press to content creators, to any number of other folks in this modern media landscape.
Horror as a mode or genre encompasses a vast range of styles and approaches from the quiet and creepy to the over-the-top splatterfest. As a self-confessed horror fan, I’m generally pretty open-minded when it comes to different iterations of the form. The one exception to this, however, is the seemingly ubiquitous ‘YouTube’ horror game which relies almost entirely on jump scares and is mostly pitched towards overly performative streamer reactions. That being said, there are some excellent games within this rough genre, with the Amnesia series and Alien: Isolation standing supreme so I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised by Evil Nun. In the end, what I got was perhaps the very definition of an empty streamer experience.
We review Ingenious, an abstract strategy game published by Thames and Kosmos. Ingenious is designed by Dr. Renier Knizia and is being reprinted after a long time out of print.
Suicide Squad’s “early access” period will start to go live around the world late Monday night on consoles (and 10am PT Tuesday on Steam), which means that’s when it’s officially out, practically speaking. Unfortunately, we won’t have a review of Rocksteady’s new game-as-a-service looter shooter for you right away, as codes have not been sent ahead of time – in fact, Warner Bros. Games informed IGN that it has declined to send us codes at all.
Frontier Developments, the British developer-publishers behind Elite Dangerous, Planet Zoo and Warhammer games including Warhammer 40,000 XCOM-a-like Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters and last year’s Age of Sigmar RTS Realms of Ruin, will host a new monthly developer showcase starting next week.
Planet Coaster studio Frontier Developments will host a new monthly showcase beginning next week, on 31st January at 6pm UK time, with updates on the what's next from the company.
The life of a guardsperson is not one filled with adventures and heroics. You’ll spend days outside, which might be lovely during the summer, but miserable when it’s cold and wet. You’ll also get to meet plenty of interesting people, but you’ll be scrutinising what they say and carry to decide if they should be let into town, often with complex and far-reaching consequences if you get it wrong.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth launches in just three days, but the reviews are live and glowing. Already, it has an average of 91 on Metacritic, and 90 on Opencritic, earning it a Mighty rating with 100 percent of critics recommending it at the time of writing.
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio reset its flagship series with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, an aptly named title that saw newcomer Ichiban Kasuga take the lead in RPG hero fashion. With Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, RGG returns to the role-playing formula, with one foot in the future and the other in the past.
The enduring popularity of the Where’s Wally books tells you one thing: people love to find things. That probably doesn’t extend to your keys, matching socks, your mobile phone, or a clean spoon, but Hidden Through Time 2: Myths and Magic poses an interesting question: what if it was a goblin’s spoon?
Oppo has been in the smartphone market for the longest time and has gained immense popularity in bringing budget and mid-range smartphones with targetted features that are mostly well-received. Over the years, the company has outdone itself in entering the market with new innovations including foldable smartphones with attractive designs and features. One of the flagship series that has gained popularity is the Oppo Reno series which is mostly known for its snappy camera performance, long-lasting battery and quite responsive performance. Recently the company launched the Oppo Reno 11 series which is the successor of the Oppo Reno 10 series.