If you've previously slept on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and have a PC Game Pass subscription, then now is the time to play 'Ubisoft's best open world game in years', as it is not just a highly polished and content-rich FPS that delivers buckets of intense action, but it is also the absolute best way to push your PC gaming rig to its limits.
Seriously, after downloading and installing the game myself, before then unlocking its PC-exclusive 'Unobtanium' max graphics mode, and following that up with a full-game reshade mod that makes its incredible graphics look even better, my jaw was left well and truly on the floor. This is one of those special games that just leaves you in wonder thanks to its incredible, boundary-pushing visuals.
And, honestly, that's really refreshing, as we simply don't get so many of those perspective-shifting games released anymore (thanks, weak and underpowered consoles!). Those games that seem to offer graphics from the future, but today, or unique new visuals that you've just never seen before. I'm thinking of games like the original Outcast (those pools of water!), or the legendary hardware crusher Crysis (my Nvidia 8800 GTX rig is on fire!), or even modern titles like Cyberpunk 2077. Games that, for years, have acted as a reference point for all other game graphics and system performance.
Another world
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, though, offers such incredible visuals and, crucially, a full suite of graphical menu options to adjust and toggle that, to me, it is now the perfect testbench game for a PC gaming rig. Until Crysis 4 arrives, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is the perfect heir to Crysis' legendary legacy as the ultimate PC gaming testbench title.
If you want to see what your system is made of, install Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and get tinkering. The vanilla game, out of the gate, already offers incredible visual fidelity, with a heavily upgraded and augmented version of Ubisoft's Snowdrop engine delivering, at times, genuinely photo-realistic visuals. But if you're prepared to do just a little tinkering, by unlocking the game's hidden Unobtanium max graphics mode (it's as simple as sticking a command line on the executable), and then reshading the game using Reshade, you'll be in PC gaming graphics heaven. Well, providing your rig is up to snuff, that is.
And, speaking candidly, you'll need a powerful system to reach 4K 60fps with Unobtanium and a custom reshade running. When the Unobtanium mode was revealed, the game's devs said that: "This preset is extremely difficult to run on currently available hardware and is meant to really stress future hardware to keep the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora PC Benchmark relevant for years to come." And, boy, let me tell you, they were right.
My rig is now a pretty dated RTX 3090 Ti, along with 32GB of DDR4 RAM and an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, and, with ray-tracing, Unobtanium mode, and a custom reshade activated (the reshade robs you of some fps), as well as me juicing up the 3090 Ti even more in MSI Afterburner by throwing an extra 140 Mhz on the core clock and 1000 Mhz on the memory clock, my framerate hovered around the 35-45 fps range at most times at a DLSS-upscaled 4K resolution.
So, yeah, while this game is demanding to run at max settings, I still think a lot of PC gamers will have a solid gaming experience. And hey, look, there are lots of things you can do to squeeze extra performance out of the game, too. There are plenty of optimised graphical settings guides out there to consult that can help you regain some frames.
Rock solid shooter
Finally, I'd just like to say that, despite our at-launch Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora review scoring the game poorly (mostly because of, funnily enough, technical issues), from my time with Frontiers of Pandora in 2026 this is a rock-solid FPS that, neatly, also now has a third-person mode, too, which turns it into an over-the-shoulder cover shooter at the push of a button.
While not included in the base PC Game Pass version of the game, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora also now has a series of expansions released, including the recently released From the Ashes major story expansion that introduces a new character and recalibrates the game even more into a straight-up action-shooter.
Basically, I think it is a good time to check out Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, as not only is it a solid shooter, but it is also a superb testbench for your PC. That's until Crysis 4 arrives, of course (come on, Crytek, get a shift on!).
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