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With the movie’s release upon us, Ubisoft have delivered a most ambitious movie tie-in. And like the movie, James Cameron’s Avatar – The Game boasts a playable 3D mode, though for that you’ll need special hardware.

Most of us are going to be playing this in 2D but that might be no bad thing. Not many of us can handle a brain-frazzling, full-length 3D movie, let alone put in the kind of hours typical of a major PC game title. And anyway, as the game’s animation director, Brent George has pointed out, the 3D mode is just icing on the cake. So let’s focus on what kind of cake we have here.

The game doesn’t seek to recreate the film’s plot, which games, by their nature, rarely do well anyway. Instead, it takes the form of a prequel. The RDA Corporation is about to try to turn a profit, by exploiting the valuable natural resources of the planet Pandora, home of the indigenous Na'vi. You pick a side and the struggle begins.

The world of Pandora is lavishly detailed in a new outing for the Dunia Engine* that was first used in FarCry* 2. It is the ideal tool for bringing Pandora to life. The extraordinary scenery doesn’t just knock your socks off. It knocks you right off your feet. But beware of being captivated by the graphical beauty; almost every plant and animal presents a health hazard.

The game play is a combination of third person shooter and RPG. Leaning more on the former genre than the latter, it still gives you the option of customizing your character’s skills, weaponry and play style.

If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that Avatar is full of futuristic machinery and fantastic creatures and the game lets you drive or ride all of them. That alone has got to make it worth a replay or two.

You can’t pull off a title like this without committing to the latest programming techniques and technologies and this game delivers on that front, as Vincent Greco, Worldwide Production Technical Coordinator at Ubisoft explains:

“James Cameron’s Avatar – The Game transports the player into the rich and dynamic world of Pandora. The extremely high level of detail found throughout this expansive world has been made possible by optimising the code to take full advantage of multi-core processors such as the Intel® Core™ i7 Extreme and Intel Core i5. Avatar is the second title to be developed with Ubisoft’s versatile Dunia Engine*, which saw its debut in 2008 with Far Cry* 2. Intel’s powerful multi-core solutions enable Ubisoft’s talented development teams to use separate threads for the core of the game; AI, game logic, graphics rendering, and the Havok* physics system, to deliver a highly immersive experience.”

So there you have it.

Take a trip to Pandora