Immortals of Aveum is a promising debut that doesn’t quite ascend to excellence

You’re playing a Call of Duty level, and then a dragon flies overhead.

That was the thought that led Ascendant Studios CEO Bret Robbins towards Immortals of Aveum. Robbins, a veteran of directing Call of Duty campaigns, seeks to bring the action and bombast, tied with the tight gameplay of the series, to the fantasy genre with Immortals of Aveum.

And while there are some rough edges and dialogue that will grate on plenty, there’s a high-octane Hollywood blockbuster of a campaign to be found in Immortals of Aveum and gameplay that’s as fun, if not more, than any contemporary first-person adventure.

Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter wherein you play as Jak, a street orphan who we meet as he’s attempting to pickpocket a member of the upper class from the rafters of a theatre. However, following a tragedy, it’s revealed that Jak is blessed with the ability to wield three types of magic.

This discovery leads Jak on the path to becoming an Immortal, an elite member of a magical resistance bent on taking down Sandrakk, a tyrant that’s pillaged the world of Aveum in an attempt to wield absolute power.

Buy Immortals of Aveum

Immortals of Aveum (Xbox)

£14.99$15.73$19.99

Immortals of Aveum (PS5)

£13.32$16.99$22.54

The game’s narrative is well-established, and it’s actually fairly light-handed when it comes to the sheer amount of lore that it could throw at you if it wanted. It sets up an entire magical world, the stakes, and the characters well, and doesn’t spend too much time taking control away from you.

There’s a grandiose feeling to the game’s story, which begins with a huge HBO-style intro that tries to frame Ascendant’s fantasy epic as a prestige narrative. The tone of the game feels somewhat incongruous with that, as does the love-it-or-hate-it quippy dialogue.

In a trend that appears to be utterly unavoidable in any type of media, Immortals of Aveum is full to the brim of Marvel-esque one-liners and characters designed to be the “funny one.” Your mileage will vary depending on your tolerance for that kind of banter, but it drained on us rather quickly.

Immortals of Aveum is full to the brim of Marvel-esque one-liners and characters designed to be the “funny one.” Your mileage will vary depending on your tolerance for that kind of banter, but it drained on us rather quickly.

However, the game’s performances are worth highlighting, even if the dialogue runs out of the road far before the game’s credits arrive. Jak (Darren Barnet) is a likeable enough protagonist, and Barnet’s performance does a good job of conveying the personal journey that Jak goes through.

Narrative-wise, we liked the world of Aveum more than the game’s story itself. The narrative is fine, but the twists and turns that it takes are telegraphed enough that anyone that’s paying even the slightest attention will be able to guess them.

We’d have loved to have seen more of Jak’s life before the game’s opening mission as the city that’s set up is an interesting one, and the game’s environment design makes us want to read every billboard and poster. We loved listening in on the conversations between soldiers, the small chunks of lore that are found all over the world.

When you get to grips with the game’s combat, there’s an almost Doom-like rhythm to encounters. You’re whipping enemies towards you and blasting them away with your shotgun magic, you’re strafing away and catching a few stragglers with your sniper magic, and you’re picking off health from the tanks that are pursuing you with your SMG magic. There are, of course, in-game names for all of these things, but it’s incredible how quickly we found ourselves assessing combat situations in these terms.

The cadence at which you’re getting new abilities and augmenting to your old ones is pitch perfect, to the point where every time we were just about bored with what weapons we were using, we’d encounter a new enemy that required a different strategy, and thus, the game would give us a new power. There are also upgrade paths for all three weapons, which we found ourselves filling out rather quickly as we found ourselves levelling up constantly.

It helps that Aveum is very readable. All the combat encounters are found in arenas that very much feel like a good Call of Duty level. It’s a lot of walking through a fairly linear space, then opening up into a battle arena where the fun begins.

While at first glance, it might seem like the enemies would be difficult to assess to the LED explosions that are happening with every single shot you fire, but weaknesses and resistances are well telegraphed to the player. Aveum is great at making you feel extremely powerful. It’s at its worst whenever you need to slow down or heal.

As is probably expected from a game with the DNA of Call of Duty, there are plenty of big set pieces that absolutely shine, but there’s also a fair amount of nonlinearity throughout the game’s levels. There are some Metroidvania-esque secrets that encourage some exploration, and while nothing that we went back for ended up being mind-blowing, the levels themselves are beautiful, and we’re glad for any reason to go back through them.

Buy Immortals of Aveum

Immortals of Aveum (Xbox)

£14.99$15.73$19.99

Immortals of Aveum (PS5)

£13.32$16.99$22.54

We’re really keen to play Immortals of Aveum 2. There’s plenty in this first attempt to like, and we think the gameplay is rock solid, but with a second go at some of the slightly stagnant mission design, and tiresome dialogue, EA could have something really strong.

Aveum itself is a compelling place to explore and it looks gorgeous. It is an excellent thing that EA is willing to try something new in the AAA space again and calls to mind the era wherein Mirror’s Edge, Skate, and Dead Space flourished.

What Ascendant needs now is the platform to continue to refine what it has here: the excellent combat, and refine some of the things that don’t work as well this time around, crucially the dialogue, and we could easily see ourselves excited to return for more adventures in Aveum.