Immortals Of Aveum preview – a magical take on Call Of Duty

GameCentral goes hands-on with the new first person fantasy shooter from the director of Dead Space and Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

Despite its aggressively bland name, it’s hard not to root for Immortals Of Aveum. The new IP is the first game from Ascendant Studios, which was founded by Bret Robbins, who previously worked as the creative director on various Call Of Duty campaigns under Sledgehammer and the original Dead Space. In an age when blockbuster games are largely devoid of originality, there’s something admirable about a studio taking a big budget, risky swing from the get-go.

As featured in the latest PlayStation showcase, Immortals Of Aveum is a first person shooter where you fire magic instead of bullets. Imagine the elaborate hand animations of Ghostwire: Tokyo but fired up on Call Of Duty sauce, where the movement is slick, the particle effects a constant firework show, and where the primary focus is delivering cinematic spectacle.

The developers acknowledge that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a reference point for the game and you can tell that instantly from the Avengers-inspired title sequence. That influence bleeds through to the aesthetic and narrative tone, where lead character Jak (played by Darren Barnet) cracks wise to punctuate the operatic lore dumps, while enemy designs are mostly non-descript goons with very little individual style or personality.

The Marvel inspiration, from the three hours we played, hangs particularly heavy on the world and narrative. In the opening cinematic, you’re introduced to the Everwar conflict on Aveum, where factions have been fighting to control magic for over a millennium. A young, reluctant Jak is enlisted to join an elite group of battlemages, named the Immortals, in the hopes of ending the conflict. He does so under the supervision of General Kirkan (Gina Torres), who suggests that Jak’s power could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

During our interview, Robbins highlighted the story as an element that will surprise players with its twists and turns, but there’s little in the initial setup to inspire more than a glazed eye-roll. The actors sell the material well, especially Torres as the steely, authoritative general, but it’s a lot of earnest bombast and fantastical jargon devoid of emotional connection – more Eternals than Avengers.

Thankfully, when you’re handed control, the blockbuster ambitions of Immortals start to click into place. Beyond the tutorial, the first level is the kind of gung-ho opening you’d associate with a Call Of Duty campaign, as you dramatically open towering doors to a battleground vista within crumbled ruins, as a dragon swoops through the shower of bullet sorcery. You’re guided through clusters of enemies as impressive Unreal Engine 5-powered destruction rains down, culminating in a fun boss showdown with the Howler dragon inside an enclosed arena.

What’s surprising about Immortals is how involved the combat is. You start with three basic attack spells divided by colour: blue magic is the equivalent of a strong pistol; red is a powerful short-ranged blast akin to a shotgun; while green emulates a weaker, long-ranged machinegun. There’s also Augment magic which are essentially abilities, like Blink which acts as a dodge and a shield and protects from attacks at the cost of movement speed.

So far, so predictable. The real fun is in the Control magic abilities. The first you’re given is a lash to pull enemies towards you, reminiscent of Bulletstorm’s whip. It’s not quite as flexible as its inspiration, but it’s still enormously satisfying to rip enemies from high ledges and the smash them with close-range blasts. In a later level, you’re given access to limpet blobs to slow down fast grunts, and Disrupt, which fires a laser beam to stun enemies in place.

You’re encouraged to swap between magical abilities on the fly, to contend with the occasionally overwhelming battle encounters. Powerful Fury spells, which drain a mana bar, are designed to provide breathing room from the chaos or take down specific enemy types. The first Fury spell you unlock ruptures the ground to wipe out shielded foes, but others eviscerate those in close vicinity or launch a wave of homing shots which pelt those nearby.

The number of spells at your disposal (including the powerful Dominions spell, which shoots a combined beam of all your coloured magic) can make fights a panicked wrestle with the various toggles – but this might be a by-product of being thrown into a later level in the preview. Even when it’s frenetic, the combat is slick, flashy and fun to experiment with, fulfilling the superhero power fantasy with a toolset that’s more flexible than the average shooter.

While the opening section suggests the breakneck linearity of Call Of Duty, the later level we played, set in a tropical landscape, are closer to something like modern God of War. There’re also locked gateways you can’t access and optional pathways with treasure chests to uncover, which almost suggest a Metroidvania style structure.

You can spend the various currencies at a forge, where you can buy and upgrade new gear for Jak which affects the spells you cast – for example, turning blue magic into a charged spear or red magic into an explosive bomb. It’s a promising sign of the variety to come, with various skill trees for each magic type allowing for a breadth of customisation.

Given how enjoyable the combat is, it’s a shame the impressively crisp visuals are supported by forgettable art design. From the areas shown, the fantasy world depicted in Immortals is disappointingly generic. Colossus-style enemies are blocky brutes which sadly bring Knack to mind, while the level architecture feels charmless and hollow beneath the fidelity. It feels like a fantasy world designed to attract a mass audience, where any weirder quirks have been sanded off.

Whether the story and world rise to match the tight combat is the main question hanging over Immortals Of Aveum. There’s a compelling and mechanically dense shooter here, but with the promise of a 25-hour single player experience, how Jak’s story lands could be what makes or breaks the magic.

Formats: PC (previewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5

Price: £69.99

Publisher: EA

Developer: Ascendant Studios

Release Date: 20th July 2023

Age Rating: 16