I love first person shooter games. I always have It will definitely happen. And especially I love single player first person shooters. Mixing a compelling narrative with some great set pieces and fun replayable gameplay feels powerful in a way, and I’m all-in. Also, I love what feels fresh and new, but it’s hard to come by in this expensive-to-build, risk-averse genre. That’s why I was intrigued to play Immortals of Aveum for a few hours. That Mad Libs-like name doesn’t involve guns at all, contrary to the great idea we haven’t seen in an FPS in a while. By now you should already know that magic takes its place. This is a clever choice he made to bring depth and variety to the three magic types, and the result so far is a game that has me smiling the entire time I play it.
I said “mostly” because, well, let me put Aveum’s major shortcomings out of the way for now. Because the dialogue and the main character are not good. You play as Jack, a cheeky newcomer who has developed a rare ability in this world to wield all three of his magic: red, blue, and green. Neither Jack nor the words that come out of his mouth match the tone of this fantasy world at all. Perhaps this was done on purpose to avoid becoming a “Yet Another Fantasy Game”, but it just doesn’t work. I’m not looking forward to an entire campaign’s worth of awkward conversations between Jack and his superiors in Ever War with the Bad Guys.
Luckily, that shortcoming seems to be largely compensated for by Aveum’s strengths: combat and visuals. Start with the former. Indeed, tricolor magic spell combat sometimes mirrors traditional firearms. For example, green magic spells are functionally almost identical to miniguns and take a little longer to spin, but the way you combine them and upgrade them will make you feel stronger in every fight. Perhaps use a ranged attack like a green magic machine gun that slightly aims at the target to hit some enemies from medium range, then switch to shooting like a blue magic sniper to shoot others from a distance. You may pick off an enemy. I enjoyed making good use of the bullet-like whip to keep enemies in check from afar, then blowing them up with a red magic shotgun-like attack. Frequent mini-boss fights (and regular big health bar boss fights!) required heavy use of a handful of separate mana bar powered Fury Ultra attacks. My favorite of these sends a shockwave underground and a waterfall of sharp rocks jutting out from the ground when it reaches its intended target. I mean, there’s a real opportunity here to show off your skills, and a really great game for strategy-minded action game players (like our Mitchell Saltzman) to do much better than what you’re seeing here. I see you making a battle montage.
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Matching the magic system’s impressive combo capabilities is Aveum’s Unreal Engine 5-powered graphics. As far as I know, Aveum will be his first major Unreal Engine 5 game releasing for his Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and PC on July 20th. Simply put, great. From the in-engine cutscenes that show off the amazing detail on the characters’ faces, to the epic environments that unfold in combat, Aveum definitely looks like a game that wouldn’t have been possible without the new console. Studio head and games director Brett Robbins (his career includes Dead Space and Sledgehammer’s Call of Duty games) said that on consoles he could run at 60 fps. admitted to me. The pacing of Aveum’s first-person combat.
As a gamer over 40, Immortals of Aveum reminds me of something close and dear to my heart. Heretic and Hexen, Raven Software’s classic fantasy first-person shooters. Granted, it’s a mental connection at best, but I feel like I haven’t seen magic and first-person shooter blended so well since the ’90s classic. I’m not optimistic that the full context of Jack’s story will make Jack’s and anyone else’s conversations in this game even more bearable when we get our hands on the full version, but we’re sure it’s fueled by magic. I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to enjoy these battles without getting bored. I was hooked until the end.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of Previews, IGN’s weekly Xbox Show and podcast unlockedas well as monthly (ish) interview programs, No IGN filter. He’s from North Jersey, so it’s a “Taylor ham” not a “pork roll”. Discuss with him on Twitter. @DMC_Ryan.
