Alex Baldwin takes a look at what could be the sneak hit of 2009 Christmas season.

James Cameron's: Avatar The Game look absolutely beautiful, especially the 3D version, but 99% of us won't see that one but what we will get is something well worth the wait, come see and read about the game here.

By now all the confusion should be cleared up – James Cameron’s Avatar is not related to the animated TV show. The movie based on the cartoon will be named The Last Airbender and comes out in 2010. You will not see a bald little kid throwing fire around when the Avatar movie is released on December 18.

Instead, James Cameron’s Avatar follows the invasion of humans onto the lush, tropical jungle planet of Pandora to mine a valuable resource. The only problem is, the planet’s 9 foot tall, blue-skinned natives (the Na’vi) aren’t too thrilled at being forced off their land. Hence we get to see lots of flashy epic battles as the two sides clash.

But what about the game? If you’re a jaded cynic like me you’ll have had zero expectations of the movie tie-in. The jerky, low-quality trailer on the Assassin’s Creed 2 disc did nothing to change my opinion.

So some bright spark at Ubisoft has released a demo on PC, and a good thing they did too. This could be one of the surprise hits of Christmas. All screenshots in this preview were taken directly from the demo (click images for larger shot).

XboxOZ360 via oxcgn.com »