An FPS that replaces traditional guns with spells that, er, feel mostly like traditional guns, Immortals of Aveum should be commended for trying something new. Ish. And nothing else new at all. But once you get over that not-insignificant hurdle, there’s a decent magical shooter here. One that lets you fire some very pretty particle effects, a fine substitute for boring old bullets.
You’ve got three coloured slots for your ‘sigils’ (i.e. your guns). Red for close-combat, green for rapid-fire, and blue for distant shots. The game gives you new sigils frequently so it shouldn’t take long to find something you like. I relied on a joyous minigun-aping green sigil for most of the game. There’s more magical stuff here too, like blue spells that can be charged up into throwable javelins. That one can be a nightmare to pull off in the heat of battle, but oh-so worth it when it does connect.
Yes, Immortals nails the important bit. These spells are fun to fire. They have a nice sense of impact, especially against human foes who go flying, cursing at you in fantasy gibberish. When everyone’s casting various flavours of death at you and you’re countering with every trick you have, battles quickly descend into an angry firework display. It can be a struggle to figure out what’s going on but I enjoyed that struggle. It gave the shooting a fun sense of chaos, all the more satisfying when I somehow emerged from it alive.
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Full credit for those miraculous escapes go to my ‘furies’, powers that draw from a finite mana pool. There’s a fury that shatters shields, one that hurtles you across the arena for a vicious punch, and a personal favourite that blasts all enemies around you. There’s something wonderfully petulant about getting surrounded because you’ve gotten yourself bottlenecked and then slamming a fury to turn the tables. It’s generous with health and mana crystals too, encouraging you to use those powers. Navigating fights is smooth, with a double-jump from the start and later the ability to hover. I loved floating down from on high, machine-gunning like a homicidal Doctor Strange. There’s a stun move that, when timed just right, makes enemies magic attacks backfire on them. I got a lot of smug satisfaction out of that one too.
