Immortals Of Aveum Review (PS5) – I’m a big fan of any company creating a new IP in a crowded genre and trying to innovate tired traditions. Immortals of Aveum is one such game. Take the fast-paced first-person shooting of DOOM and introduce magic as your primary weapon.
It’s a fun combination that I enjoyed even if, at times, your magic just seems like a weapon skin to your assault rifle.
Immortals Of Aveum Review (PS5) – Adding Some Magic To Your First-Person Shooter
A Story That Can’t Keep Up With The Great Performances
Immortals of Aveum tells the story of Jak, an orphan living in a slum city in a world ravaged by the Everwar, a war for control of all magic in the world. Jak’s town is attacked by the forces of Sandrakk, the game’s antagonist.
Seeing the destruction caused by Sandrakk’s forces, a magical power awakens in Jak, and he goes on a rampage, devastating Sandrakk’s forces. Before he loses control, he’s saved by General Kirkan, played by the phenomenal Gina Torres.
She takes Jak under her wing and trains him to be an Immortal to help take down the forces of Sandrakk before he can gain control of all the magic in the world. I’ll be the first to say the game’s story isn’t spectacular, and it even takes cues from greats like Lord of The Rings. But it isn’t all bad. Its saving grace is the excellent performance from the entire cast.
Jak’s team comprises of other Immortals that bring a great spark to his character. Zendara is one such character that doesn’t take any lip from Jak and always leads to great conversations between the two, especially when they go on missions together.
Entertaining Combat That Provides Plenty Of Freedom
Looking at Immortals of Aveum, it’s easy to say it’s a Call Of Duty shooter with magic, but I found it more comparable to DOOM. The run-and-gun arcade gameplay is fun and addictive. I loved mixing up my magic spells to give me an advantage in particular situations, and traversal during combat opens up some delightful combination of attacks you can pull off.
Jak has access to three different magic types. Green, Blue, and Red. Green magic allows him to shoot rapid magic bolts like an assault rifle. Blue is more of your single-shot magic and is used for more precision attacks. Red is destructive and acts like a shotgun and sometimes a grenade launcher.
Each one is a must to master and utilize. Enemies come with their magic colors. Jak is unique in using each of the three types of magic. But most people in the Aveum world can only utilize one magical color.
During combat, you’ll encounter enemies that are presented with a specific color hue and attacks they pull off against you. Though you don’t need to match your magic color to them to fight them, it provides extra damage against these enemies.
Blue enemies will mostly take up long-distance positions and snipe at you. Some will even have shields around them, which, using blue magic, helps take those shields down.
Switching Up Magic Weapons And Combining Mana Spells Is A Visual Treat
Learning to swap between the three stances is a must in the latter half of the game when you take on mobs of enemies with various abilities and skills. You unlock other abilities that add to your arsenal and open up new gameplay variants.
You’ll gain a leash trinket that you can use to grapple enemies and pull them closer to you. Another trinket is a laser medallion that can deflect incoming magic attacks and even overload them when enemies cast spells, causing an explosion and canceling their attack. You can even shoot green-goo at enemies that slow them down and make them move in slow motion.
All this blends together nicely in battles, allowing you to pull off some astonishing feats. All that and more once you begin using high-level spells. These spells unlock as you find magic shrines and, in some cases, complete shrine challenges. These spells use up your mana, but their power is devastating.
These magic attacks allow for some great combinations. My favorite is pulling enemies together into a vortex and smashing the ground, creating a pillar of rocks to shoot up and remove all the enemies trapped in the whirlpool.
For those who survive, I use a torrent attack that shoots out a barrage of homing attacks that create explosive damage against anything they hit.
Plenty Of Secrets And Treasure To Discover
Though combat is fun, the exploration and puzzle-solving could be just as great. The only thing holding it back is the lackluster rewards you acquire. Puzzles are fun to solve, and many of the game’s puzzles are inaccessible until you acquire the tools to solve these puzzles, which leaves plenty of backtracking to previous locations and searching for hidden treasure chests.
Using your trinkets, you can access hidden locations with your leash, allowing you to grapple up points and cross large caverns and streams. Other puzzles utilize your slow-motion gel. Shooting a gem opens up a cage that quickly classes after opening, forcing you to quickly shoot out your gel to slow the cage from closing to grab the treasure chest inside.
There are over a hundred chests to find in the game and acquire. Most chests will provide Gold and Essence to upgrade your abilities and weapons, while others offer equipment like new weapons.
The loot system isn’t that great and could benefit from being a little more meaningful. Most of it doesn’t change much to your approach, increasing your armor or making specific colored magic more powerful.
Uninspired Upgrade And Loot System
You gain experience from defeating enemies, and leveling up gives you skill points to use between your three colored magic. I found this system a little too simple, which is excellent for this type of game, but it forces you to unlock abilities and skill upgrades you may not want.
If you never use the Leash in combat, why am I forced to buy upgrades for the Leash just to unlock abilities that increase my blue magic damage? It’s a question I asked myself a few times.
There is even a gear-level system, but it serves no purpose. I went through most of the game with a weapon rated a nine when I could have used a weapon rated a thirty. But outside of the higher attack stat, none of it mattered.
The world does provide some issues. I ran into a few bugs that had me stuck between objects on numerous occasions, which became a serious issue during combat. The other problem is the multitude of collision boxes in the game.
I found myself missing a lot of attacks and having a hard time solving some puzzles because the collision boxes on objects were so wide I was shooting at invisible walls.
Immortals Of Aveum Can Be Gorgeous At Times And Hideous At Others
Visually, the world can be pretty stunning and, at times, hideously ugly. It’s a very mixed bag. Character models and animations are fantastic, with excellent motion capture and facial animations. When you go outside, something feels off. The lighting is either too bright or too dark.
Even the slider that the game has doesn’t help as much as I would have hoped it would to improve that.
The game’s soundtrack, on the other hand, isn’t that memorable. The ambient music that plays feels like it’s on a five-second loop, and the combat music feels one beat away from turning into gangster rap, which would take you away from the type of experience this game is trying to provide. These aren’t things that happen constantly, but enough that it’s very noticeable.
Thankfully, everyone’s performance was excellent. I loved listening to all the banter and conversations the characters had with each other. Gina Torres steals the show and has a looming presence throughout the game. Darren Barnet also provides an entertaining, sarcastic, and, at times, emotional Jak.
Immortals of Aveum isn’t a perfect game, but it does some fun and exciting things for a new IP. I liked the idea of magic replacing guns, even though some primary attacks feel like using guns. It’s a combination of using unique trinkets and powerful magic attacks that makes it a fun game to play.
Though its visuals are very hit-and-miss, the excellent voice work and motion capture more than make up for it.
Immortals of Aveum is now available on PlayStation 5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.