Immortals of Aveum Review – Better Than You Think

A new development studio called Ascendant, based in California, was founded in 2018 and brought together very interesting game development veterans – from former Call of Duty creators (from the Sledgehammer studio) to key representatives of the original Telltale Games team. So it shouldn’t surprise us that after five years of painstaking development, their debut is a first-person shooter that includes a significant amount of movies and story scenes. But what may surprise you is the unique visual design of the entire game, where in the magical world of Aveum, instead of rifles, you “shoot” spells.

• Platform: PS5 (review) XSX|S, PC
• Publication date: 08/22/2023
• Manufacturer: Ascendant Studios (USA)
• Genre: FPS
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: No
• Download data: 110 GB
• Game time: 15+ hours
• Price: CZK 1,449 (Steam)

Real fantasy war

The fantasy world of Aveum is permeated with all sorts of magical natural phenomena, and people are born in it, gifted with the possession of one of the three types of magic. Amulets here find their use in everyday work and life, but of course also as a weapon of war. However, the struggle for these resources plunged the entire world into a destructive endless war, which also created a giant chasm, dubbed “The Wound”. Unfortunately, the more people use magic, the more the abyss widens and deepens, as if biting off part of the planet. The parallel with the abuse of natural resources is obvious here, but the game certainly won’t stick it under your nose, because the story tries to be, first of all, a fun ride, full of touching moments and a stream of funny sayings, somehow in the style of modern Marvel films.

Your character and protagonist is Jak, a young man who grew up on the streets of the city of Seren, “hanging” over the aforementioned abyss. Although the first few minutes of the game are about moving through the streets of this city and may remind you of Dishonored, after the invasion of the enemy army, a tragedy occurs that deprives Jack of his loved ones and at the same time allows him to discover an unexpected thing. the ability to control all three “colors” of magic. He is subsequently recruited into an army of battle mages and begins training to become one of the Immortals, an elite military unit. As a result, he gradually gets close enough to the heart of the endless war to find out exactly who is behind it, what exactly he is trying to achieve, and whether there is any chance of stopping it all.

A fun ride in the style of modern Marvel movies.

Depending on what kind of player (and even viewer) you are, it can be quite easy for you to find that the characters and story will be what will keep you in this game until the end. Not that it was some dizzyingly original story, or that its intentionally poignant moments were all that impressive. However, the writers have done a great job of making all the characters almost non-stop modern sarcastic funny, and this constant banter gives them tremendous energy if that style of humor suits you. In addition, the game features high-quality “performance capture”, i.e. capture of movements and facial expressions during voice recording, making all characters look truly alive, and their constant strumming stands out without compromise. If you are also interested in the local world, its history and secrets, you, of course, will also want to get to the bottom of the whole mystery of the progressive destruction of the world.

honest shooter

While it may not look like it in screenshots or gameplay examples, the game controls like a (very) fast shooter. Your three “colors” of magic more or less include a trio: submachine gun, shotgun, and rifle. During combat, you change these weapons mainly depending on how far away or how many enemies are from you. In doing so, you supplement magical shooting with area spells, such as a small earthquake. As you progress through the game, you gradually level up your skill tree, which will inevitably result in one color of magic/weapon type becoming more favored and improved over others. In addition to all this, you will also find and upgrade various bracelets that further change the exact shape and firepower of a given spell.

The game controls like a (very) fast shooter.

Although at first I was skeptical about the idea of ​​a magic shooter, but as soon as I got my hands on it, I was quite surprised at how interesting the mechanics and controls turned out to be. This is one case in which it would definitely be beneficial for a game to release a playable demo, as the images and videos don’t have a chance to convey the feel to you. For younger players, I will write this: in the best moments of fierce battles with many enemies on some square of the game, you will have the feeling that you accidentally turned on Doom Eternal. For older players, I will write differently: finally, someone made a modern Hexen, with a suitable modern setting. Most of the game is really very rich and exciting, but there are also a few disappointing moments when, for example, due to an excess of special effects, it is not possible to properly see the enemy.

By the way, it’s quite possible that this is what you heard about this game the most – either because the developers initially boasted about the new console orientation and a huge amount of special effects when it was announced, or because after the release it became obvious how much brutally the game had to upscale the low resolution to run smoothly. As a result, my experience with the PS5 version of the game was equally mixed. On the one hand, it’s undeniable that the game is absolutely surreal in places, whether it’s epic battles between giant war machines and flying fleets, or a constellation of particle effects. On the other hand, more or less all the time you play, you feel that the image is somehow “weirdly grainy”, which is probably due to strong upscaling. But what is important, especially for a shooter, is that the game runs very smoothly all the time.