I love first-person shooters. Always have. Always will. And in particular I love single-player first-person shooters. Mix a compelling narrative in with some great set pieces and repeatable fun gameplay that makes me feel powerful in some way and I’m all-in. I also love something that feels fresh and new, which is harder to come by in this expensive-to-build, risk-averse genre. That’s why I was intrigued to spend a few hours playing Immortals of Aveum, whose Mad Libs-sounding name belies a great idea I haven’t seen in an FPS in a while: it has zero guns in it. By now you’ve already seen that magic takes its place. It’s a smart choice that allows plenty of depth and variety between its three magic types, and the result thus far is a game that mostly had me smiling the entire time I played.
I say “mostly” because, well, let me get Aveum’s big blemish out of the way now: its dialogue and main character are not good. You play as Jak, a generic cocky rookie who has developed the rare ability in this universe to wield all three types of magic: red, blue, and green. Neither Jak nor the words that come out of his mouth match the tone of this fantasy universe at all. Maybe this was on purpose to try and avoid being Yet Another Fantasy Game, but it just doesn’t work. I’m not looking forward to an entire campaign’s worth of Jak’s cringey dialogue with his superior officers in their Everwar against The Bad Guy.
Fortunately, that downside seems to be drastically outweighed by the good stuff in Aveum: namely, its combat and its visuals. I’ll start with the former. While it’s true that the tri-color magic-spell combat at times mirrors a traditional firearm – like the green-magic spell that is functionally all but identical to a minigun that even takes a moment to spin up – the ways they can be combined and upgraded really allows you to feel powerful in every battle. Maybe you use your green-magic’s machine gun-like ranged attack that homes in on its target slightly to go at some enemies from mid-range before switching to your blue-magic sniper-like shots to pick off other foes from afar. I had fun putting my Bulletstorm-like lash to good use to rein in enemies from afar before blasting them with my red-magic shotgun-esque attack. Frequent mini-boss fights (and regular big-health-bar boss fights!) called for liberal use of my handful of Fury ultra attacks, powered by a separate Mana bar. My favorite of these sends out an underground shockwave that sends a cascade of sharp rocks jutting out of the ground when it reaches its intended target. In short, there’s some real opportunity to show off your skills here, and I can see strategy-minded action-game players (like our own Mitchell Saltzman) making some really great combat montages – much better than what you’re seeing here.
Matching the magic system’s impressive combo capabilities are Aveum’s Unreal Engine 5-powered graphics.
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Matching the magic system’s impressive combo capabilities are Aveum’s Unreal Engine 5-powered graphics. To the best of my knowledge, Aveum will be the first major Unreal Engine 5 game to release when it drops on July 20 for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. Simply put, it’s gorgeous. From the in-engine cutscenes that show off really incredible detail in the characters’ faces to the spectacular environments you'll battle in, Aveum definitely looks like a game that would not have been possible without the new consoles. Studio head and game director Bret Robbins (whose resume includes Dead Space as well as Sledgehammer’s Call of Duty games) confirmed to me that it will run at 60fps on consoles, which is not just a plus, but more or less a must given the fast pace of Aveum’s first-person combat.
As an over-40 gamer, Immortals of Aveum does remind me of something near and dear to my heart: Raven Software’s long-ago fantasy first-person shooters Heretic and Hexen. It’s a spiritual connection at best, certainly, but I feel like I haven’t seen magic and first-person shooting blended this well since those ‘90s classics. I’m not optimistic that the full context of Jak’s story will make his or anyone else’s dialogue in this game any more bearable when I get my hands on the full version, but I’m quite confident that the magic-fueled combat will keep me hooked until the end.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
