Immortals of Aveum Review

The best way of describing Immortals of Aveum is that it's to New Doom what Heretic was to old Doom.

It's crazy how a traditional single player FPS game that is not an indie game but instead a AAA game can even come out in today's gaming industry. While Immortals has some issues, it's a blast to play and worth trying out to people enjoy arena horde shooting of FPS games like New Doom, Serious Sam and Painkiller.

I'll start with the story and while it isn't anything to write home about especially with the amount of third person non skippable cutscenes there are, it's decent overall. The protagonist and by extension the dialogue can be a little too joke heavy and quippy for my tastes, I don't think it gets super obnoxious especially the furthur you get into the game. The characters and their interactions did start to slowly grow on me the more the story went on. I also think the voice acting and direction as well as the solid character animations do a good job at selling me on the material. Rook and Thaddeus are my favorite and the most well acted characters in the story since they play off the other characters pretty well. The protagonist Jak and Devyn could get on the nerves of some but I found them tolerable enough mainly because while they still get quippy, they do slowly start to get more serious.

I do think the setting and the world building itself is quite interesting since I am coming to enjoy fantasy stories now. The whole concept of using magic while also damaging the world around them and I have a soft spot for stories that take place during a war and to Immortals' credit, the story and characters especially for a "first" entry in a series does have a lot more going on than say something like the first Halo and Gears of War's stories do since you learn more about the story and world in Immortals than you ever do than in above mentioned games.

Some of the twists and turns I saw coming and the writers could've done a much better job at misdirecting me but overall the story is decent especially for that in a shooter.

The gameplay however is where Immortals shines and the best way of describing it is that what if New Doom, Infamous, and Heretic all had a had a baby, you'd get Immortals of Aveum.

You have the immense enemy waves, and platforming of something like Doom Eternal, flashy and over the top action and particle effects as well as special moves you can perform like in Infamous Second Son and the fantasy setting and have real world gun analogs for magic spells like in Heretic and Infamous.

The spells you get all feel satisfying and powerful to use and they do a good job at giving a great feedback for the carnage the player will be doing in battle.

You will also be actively switching between your sniper, shotgun and smg powers actively like you are switching weapons actively in Doom Eternal but not nearly as much as the latter game since Immortals isn't as strict on which spell/weapon is weak to which enemy like Eternal is. You still need to use certain powers a lot like shield, blink and the 3 base powers and the tremors attack, all though there is a lot of useless ones like the special attacks outside of earthquake tremors to destroy shields, shield and occasionally blink will get some use but other powers like lash during combat, the slo down power, and the red laser barely get enough use, and I wonder if this would fixed on hard mode but the game has no chapter select or cutscene skip as of now so me going back is unlikely.

When it comes to moment to moment FPS combat Immortals gets it down really well and is worth playing for that alone despite some issues. I did wish there was a radial menu on consoles to switch between the 3 powers.

The game also has platforming and puzzles and to the game's credit is handled decently, never gets in the way and does a good job at breaking up the pace plus it gives abilites that are useless in combat like lash and slow down some geniune use. I also like how this is one of the few FPS games where you have a gliding power and the game makes some solid use out of it with some decent platforming challenges. They aren't remarkable since there isn't much platforming along with combat or moments where you have to handle two obsticles at once. It's generally, "here's a platforming level and then here is an action level". 

The game does reuse assets a lot, you will be going through the same levels, fighting the same enemies and bosses many times and it can add to the repetition but the combat and moment to moment gameplay was so enjoyable that I can look past this.

Another questionable issue is the RPG additions but I mostly looked past this since I always got enough loot to get high powered attacks and get different and more interesting attacks, questionable since I prefer FPS games without them but nothing intrusive.

Overall, Immortals is easily one of if not the most underrated games of the year and is highly worth checking out if you want a AAA FPS game that is not an indie game. This is quality FPS combat.