I am not what you would call the average gamer, I am a 54 year old grandmother with three game loving grandsons, but I do like having a go on these games and often put one on when I have time on my own to while away an hour or so. There saying, the game has to be interesting with some sort of story and it also has to be quite easy for me to be able to do as I am not that good at repetitive button pressing and my lack of coordination and slow reflexes means things have to be going at a good pace for me.


I loved the film Avatar so when we were up our town the other day and in our local cash converter style shop and I spotted this ps3 game on the shelf I thought I would treat myself and see what it is like. It was only £7 to buy so I thought this was quite a good price for a ps3 game.


I started playing the game on my own, you can choose who you want to play as, there are quite a few different people you can be, either male or female soldiers or you can be a part of the na'vi which are the strange beings that live on Pandora where the story takes place. If you are a member of the na'vi then you fight against the RDA which is the army that are at the place trying to obtain some special rocks, (this bit of the story went a bit over my head but I think it is set before the film like a prequel, not sure what the rocks are to do with it all though). I decided to play as one of the RDA soldiers and chose a female character.


The game starts off with you just arriving there and you are given these missions to do which start off quite easy, just moving about and finding a person who you have to go and talk to and then they give you the next bit of the mission and so on. Each time you do a mission you get extra points and you can also earn things like better weapons, armour and skills. I found it a bit hard at first to work out what I was doing especially when the next mission that came up was to go and help someone out in the woods type of area outside the gates, then there were all these strange animals coming at you trying to kill you and you had to shoot them or die which meant you had to go back to the last checkpoint, in my case this was right back to base again. I found it quite hard to get the target to shoot the animal actually on the beast for long enough to be able to shoot it as it took quite a few bullets before it died. There were loads of them coming at you too, the other soldiers around you were helping out but you needed to kill some yourself to get your points bar to go up. You could earn some points by shooting certain plants around you too but you still needed to kill the beasts. I found that after playing it for a while and getting killed and starting again I gradually started to get the hang of it and managed to get through this level and carry on with the game.


All was going well and I was starting to enjoy the game but then I came across another level where you needed to fly one of their helicopters. This was another laughing matter as I could just about get the thing off the floor and I was crashing into the trees around and blowing up and having to start again. After about ten times of trying I gave up and the game went away until a few days after when one of my grandsons popped in after school and I showed his the game and he had a go and got me through the level in no time.


I have now carried on playing the game myself and am finding it really interesting and if I get to a bit where I just can't do it myself I just ring one of them up and they come and get me through. We have also had a few afternoons when they come round and play the game with me as they both seem to be enjoying it as well.


When we have finished the whole game we are going to start again and play as one of the na'vi as this would be a completely different experience as you get to use different kinds of weapons and have different special things you can do. I can see us having a lot of good play out of this game and even after I reckon it will be a favourite for them to put on when they come round and it will be something I can sit and play with them and have a go at. It does make them laugh when they see me trying to shoot something or move about in one of the vehicles without crashing.


All in all I think it was a good buy for my £7, not sure whether it would be good for those who are really into games but if you like the mission kind of games and like the film then may be worth a try, the scenery is really nice and as the RDA soldier you do get the chance now and then to play as your avatar which is quite an experience.