Avatar: New dimension, familiar scenes

If you've £7K to spare on a 3D television, playing the upcoming videogame of the James Cameron movie will be quite the event this December. For everyone else though this could be just another third-person shooter.

There was a sense of genuine, and uncommon, excitement before entering the presentation for James Cameron's Avatar: The Game yesterday at a swish location in central London. Squeezed into a darkened room, perched on the edge of our seats with state-of-the-art 3D specs in place, the showcase to privileged journalists got underway.

Before us a gigantic flat-screen JVC TV displayed images of the kind you will not yet have seen. Nor will you, in fact, unless you have in the region of £6-7000 to spend on a new telly in time for the release of Avatar (for which you'll need to apply directly to JVC apparently). You need to know this before getting too excited at the prospect of experiencing at home what we're about to describe.

With Avatar, James Cameron returns to his familiar stomping ground of action-oriented science-fiction. Events take place on a fictitious planet called Pandora that we humans are hoping to colonise, with all the ethical baggage that comes with it. Cameron's movie tells the tale of a Pocahontas-style encounter between a man called Jake and planet Pandora native, via new-fangled body-snatching technology. Before all this can happen, however, there needs to be an invasion. This is where Ubisoft's videogame fills in the gaps... or rather riddles it with bullet holes.

The 3D effect is honestly astounding. Journalists ducked involuntarily as branches of trees leapt out of the screen while a military drop ship sped toward its destination. Drinking in the uncanny scene, resembling a tour of a Games Workshop diorama sprung to life, this short journey was filled with high expectation indeed.

Upon touch down, however, I must confess that my heart hit the ground also. Avatar on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is essentially a third-person shooter that will be forced to compete in the same league as Gears of War, Halo 3, Far Cry 2 (it uses the same graphics and physics engine) and, well, all of the usual suspects. James Cameron's Avatar: The Game does change the face of videogames, just not the soul.

Absolutely I was transfixed by the ground-breaking 3D theatre being staged on the next generation JVC display. The tale end of the drop ship almost poking me on the nose as it waggled left and right through the jungle canopy. Similarly the other vehicles, resembling jeeps and elaborate gun-laden dune buggies, had a bizarre plastic model-kit quality about them. I felt as though I could reach out into the lush forestation and pick them up, brushing my hand on surrounding foliage.

When human soldiers encounter a Hammerhead, a Pandoran behemoth that looks to be a cross between a rhino and hammerhead shark, its 3D form is breathtaking. This imposing creature looks absolutely like muscle and bone writhing inside bullet-proof skin and armoured plates. Firing rocket launchers into its hide, watching the smoke trail arc quite naturally into the distance, becomes hypnotic like a fireworks display.

Deeper into the jungle terrain the lighting becomes softer and darker, shades of blue instead of green, as tiny luminescent creatures dance in the air. Beneath your soldier's feet there are many fish swimming in shallow waters, all picked out convincingly in exquisite 3D. I tried to shoot them. You can't.

We're describing a graphics technology here, not a game. Apart from an Experience Point system that will lead to character upgrades, and the choice between human or Na'vi character to complete missions from Act Two onwards, Avatar could be almost any shooter albeit one hugely benefiting from a James Cameron created universe.

More importantly, the kind of technology required to show Avatar in this way is not commercially available until spring 2010. And even then it will be out of reach for most pockets, especially with everyone still surviving what's left of the recession.

Avatar, then: The best game you'll never see?