There are no guns allowed in Immortals of Aveum, but they seem to be there in spirit. Published by EA Originals, the upcoming debut title from Ascendant Studios joins a small niche of magic-centered “first-person spell-shooters,” calling back to the likes of Heretic, HeXen and maybe even 2014’s lesser-known Lichdom: Battlemage. The action largely centers on arena combat against enemies from a safe spell-casting distance, with some light platforming and basic puzzle-solving to round things out. Steeped in original lore and an attractive high-tech/fantasy backdrop, the world of Aveum is a multi-continent landscape of various kingdoms locked in the “Everwar,” a deadlocked conflict between the battlemages of two unified factions.
EA invited Screen Rant to try out a preview slice of Immortals of Aveum and explore its decayed war-torn locales from the vantage of Jak (Darren Barnett), an Immortal trainee upstart who ticks a lot of boxes from the cookie-cutter “chosen one” trope. As a “Triarch,” Jak is uniquely privileged to learn all three of Aveum’s primary magic types: Force, Chaos, and Life, presented as blue, red, and green spells, respectively. Curiously, our demo primarily titled these categories by colors rather than their formal names but, regardless, they loosely function as rifles, shotguns, and homing machine guns.
It’s an effective shorthand, for better and for worse, to align with the superpowered boomer shooter they are built around. As implied by its previous trailers, Immortals of Aveum eschews guns for spells equipped to Jak’s right hand as “sigils,” magic-infused gauntlets that wield one color at a given time. Flipping through equipped sigils is synonymous with swapping between guns in a typical FPS, and they even need to be essentially “reloaded” between “clips.”
Action feels occasionally reminiscent of Doom: Eternal in its brightest moments, in that aggressive play is prioritized and the player remains largely outnumbered. Our Immortals of Aveum preview centered on targeting frequently spawning enemies, courting cooldowns, swapping sigils for increased damage, and looking for secrets off the beaten path during downtime.
Unfortunately, it makes for a routine experience which deflates some novelty from the premise, but also kept the action feeling pleasantly familiar. A tutorial area has General Kirkan (a motion-captured Gina Rodriguez) train Jak in the particulars of combat and exchange exposition as the smartass protagonist quips fly freely. Most enemies fire shots from a distance while melee varieties rush the player, and righthanded spells do the bulk of the damage while the left hand activates utilities like a shield, stun laser, and magical whip.
2023-05-31 12:00:04
Post from screenrant.com