At first the player is allowed to choose the appearance of the character from a set of pre-defined faces. On the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC versions, the player is able to choose a side – to fight for the Na'vi or for the RDA – each offering different gameplay, weapon set, skill set, and environment.
As a soldier, the player is equipped with firearms such as assault rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, and flamethrowers. The soldier generally has to eliminate the enemies, which are fast and resilient and usually charging towards the player, from afar. Playing as an Avatar limits the player to only one Avatar-issued machine gun and various primitive weapons such as bows, crossbows and melee weapons. The Avatar player usually has to charge the enemies since ranged weapon are either weak (the machine gun), have slow rate of fire (bows and crossbows), or have limited ammunition; the human enemies are generally weak and the basic foot soldiers can die after getting hit once with one strike of a club. The environment reacts differently to the character: many plants will attack the soldier, while the Avatar can walk past said plants unharmed. A variety of vehicles or mounts are also available to each race.
If the player's health is reduced to 0, they can use a recovery that instantly recovers to full health. Recoveries can be acquired by gathering cell samples left behind by killed creatures (including humans or Na'vi) or plants, but only 5 recoveries can be carried at any one time (excluding the PS3 version, which has a limit of 10). Avatar players can collect Cell Samples more easily from many plants without having to "kill" them. If the player falls to their death, however, he cannot use recoveries and have to reload from a check point which is automatically saved. The game offers no way to manually save when playing the game (it is only saved when player reach certain points, completed an objective, or quit the game). A special case involves a separate checkpoint when the user decides which race to side with, which cannot be overwritten.
