A few minutes into my Frontiers of Pandora demo session, a viperwolf interrupts my exploration of the overgrown ruins of an RDA colonial outpost. I kill it with an arrow as it snarls at me. I approach and press the harvest button, watching with confusion as my na'vi character kneels, offering a prolonged prayer of thanks to this fellow child of Eywa—the collective lifeforce of Pandora. As I'm mashing buttons, the rest of the viperwolf pack closes in. The nearest predator pounces.

I'm jarred out of my prayer animation and have to fumble off another arrow as the game's clumsy attempt at a somber moment evaporates. When I swap weapons the scene turns into outright parody: The big, blue hands that were just raised in reverence for the cycle of life now pull out a military-issue assault rifle and punctuate the absurdity by spraying rounds into the terrified pack of animals. My second kill is too damaged by gunfire to harvest. My na'vi, conspicuously, doesn't pray for that one.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora promises a firsthand Avatar experience delivered with a kind of breathless awe. After three hours, that promise already feels thin. Instead of awe, Frontiers of Pandora captures the feeling of someone tugging your sleeve to say, "Look, it's like in Avatar!" And then you feel guilty because they're watching to see whether you're excited, so you say, "Oh. Yeah, cool," before turning your attention back to all the Far Cry stuff that's happening.

If you're wondering just how Far Cry it is: It's pretty Far Cry.