Immortals Of Aveum review – it’s no kind of magic

Immortals Of Aveum – the terrible name doesn’t help (Picture: EA)

Call Of Duty veterans swap bullets for spells in this fantasy first person shooter, that aims to be EA’s next big action blockbuster.

At a time when original IP is increasingly hard to come by, Immortals Of Aveum stands out as a big budget risk. The last notable example was perhaps Forspoken (or maybe fellow EA game Wild Hearts), an ill-fated action adventure which was plagued with concerns even in the run-up to release. A similar sense of trepidation has hung over Immortals, but the talent behind it did seem to give some cause for optimism – with Dead Space director and Call of Duty veteran Bret Robbins at the helm.

Immortals of Aveum was originally devised as a fantasy spin on Activision’s juggernaut shooter, before it expanded to encompass other inspirations during development. The final product pulls from a wide range of inspirations, including 2018’s God Of War, Bioshock Infinite and, tonally, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. By drawing from some of the most polished games in recent memory, however, Immortals of Aveum, in many ways, feels like it’s overshot – with its shortcomings even more glaring in their shadow.

The game starts out with its Marvel inspirations on its sleeve. You play as young sorcerer Jak, who is reluctantly enlisted into an elite order of battlemages, called the Immortals, following an attack on his hometown during the escalating Everwar – a battle to control magic across the land of Aveum. As Jak is thrusted into the conflict, he soon discovers both sides are hiding secrets connected to the war’s origins and his own role within it.

Jak himself, played by Darren Barnet from Netflix series Never Have I Ever, is pitched as the quip-tastic, cocky protagonist pulled into a conflict way above his station. Imagine Star-Lord, only younger and twice as cringeworthy. A degree of his lameness feels intentional, judging by the weary responses from other characters, but the script rarely gives him anything beyond forced, grating humour as a personality trait. Instead of a well-rounded underdog you want to root for, Jak feels like an instrument designed to puncture the tedious lore dumps.

The straight-laced characters fare better, notably Gina Torres as Jak’s mentor General Kirkan, who lends the story some of the gravitas the script fails to provide. The narrative tries to marry the tone of a breezy summer blockbuster with dense lore building akin to The Lord Of The Rings, but it isn’t witty or compelling enough to satisfy either camp.

What binds Immortals together is the combat. Your main arsenal revolves around three types of magic: blue, green, and red. These essentially act as different guns, with blue magic emulating a powerful pistol, green acting as a machinegun with homing bullets, while red is a short-range blast equivalent to a shotgun. There’s an element of customisation to each sigil, with different upgradeable weapons offering slight variations in stats or shooting style. A Javelin sigil, for example, turns your blue magic into something closer to a long-range rifle.

These are supported by other abilities you unlock. One of the first is a Bulletstorm-style lash to pull enemies closer, while green blob limpets can be thrown to slow down speedy foes. Furies, meanwhile, are powerful spells tied to a mana gauge, ranging from a flurry of homing bullets, an earthquake ripple to spike through shields, or a blastwave to eviscerate nearby enemies. Unlike many action games, Immortals of Aveum hands out the majority of these powers within the opening hours, giving you a taste of the full breadth of its combat early on.

As such, you’ll quickly develop a preference for certain magic over others – which you can upgrade in the surprisingly flexible skill tree. This is divided between the three magic types, so you can focus on one style of sigil, or ability, over others, whether boosting damage across all blue magic or, for example, specific upgrades to the lash. The game does encourage you to use all the magic types, with specific enemies weak to certain coloured spells, but it is lenient in allowing you to prioritise the secondary abilities you find most useful.

While enemy variety does dry up in the final quarter, as a combat experience, Immortals of Aveum is robust, flashy, and occasionally thrilling. The standout sequence, sadly spoiled in a recent trailer, is an urgent rush to the control room of a giant humanoid ship while under attack from other enemies. It’s a bombastic spectacle reminiscent of peak Call Of Duty. An all-too rare moment in the 15-hour campaign, where the chaotic combat and cinematic ambitions only occasionally mesh together.

Immortals Of Aveum finds its footing when it’s locked into premeditated set pieces. Throughout the world, there’s optional Shroudfane portals which house tailored challenges, such as difficult combat runs or, occasionally, some platforming using your abilities. These scenarios are often more interesting than the main campaign, offering spinning platform assault courses or souped-up bosses on tricky layouts. In these encounters, when Immortals is primarily focused on its mechanics, the potential of its toolset is pushed to its exciting limits.

Too often though, Immortals of Aveum desperately strives to be 2018’s God Of War instead. Like the latter, the game is structured around semi open-world biomes connected via portals, with minor Metroidvania elements to open shortcuts and secret areas. The comparisons go further, with minor puzzles involving coloured targets to uncover gold chests, similar menu design, and an equivalent of the optional Valkyrie boss challenges for post-game enthusiasts.

Immortals Of Aveum – the magic is lacking (Picture: EA)

It’s easy to see why they’d choose to adopt the same formula, but the comparison only highlights the game’s flaws. In its quieter moments, God Of War relied on its character interactions and excellent writing to carry the momentum – a department where Immortals Of Aveum feels like a relic from the low-end Xbox 360 era. The world of Aveum doesn’t invite the curiosity of return visits either, with disappointing bland and generic art design for its various biomes.

As you’d expect, running on Unreal Engine 5, Immortals of Aveum can be impressive in its fidelity – especially in the flourishes of its particle effects. It’s jarring though, how often it comes off as cheap in other areas of its presentation. The impact of pivotal cut scenes is often undercut by stiff facial animation, or bizarrely abrupt direction – where big emotional beats are breezed over unceremoniously to an unintentionally comical degree. It severely impacts any stakes the story attempts to build, taking the wind out of its narrative from the outset.

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It’s noticeable in the gameplay too. One recurring boss simply drops through the floor when it’s killed, which we assumed was a glitch until it happened on every subsequent encounter. A day one patch promises to iron out some performance issues, notably when there’s an overwhelming amount of particle effects on-screen, but it’s unlikely to make Immortals feel like a cohesive, polished experience which hasn’t cut corners.

Immortals Of Aveum is an interesting hodgepodge of influences which, on the surface, has all the necessary components to make a formidable action game, yet they rarely coalesce into anything that rises above pale imitation. The enjoyably chaotic combat might be enough to carry some through the adventure’s predictable beats, but in 2023, this derivative gaming blockbuster casts a disjointed, forgettable spell.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £69.99
Publisher: EA
Developer: Ascendant Studios
Release Date: 22nd August 2023
Age Rating: 16

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Call Of Duty veterans swap bullets for spells in this fantasy first person shooter, that aims to be EA’s next big action blockbuster.