Been playing Immortals of Aveum (2023) for a couple days. I am pleasantly surprised by how gorgeous it looks - as is often the case I'm amazed by the visual design talent working in games today and they make good use of Unreal 5. The gameplay itself I'm still a bit mixed on.
This is the second game I've played recently, after Evil West, that has strong God of War vibes in the game flow, which is fine but just makes me want to play God of War without some innovation. But Aveum at least seems to be more of a pastiche of many games than Evil West.
Aveum feels a lot like Destiny in the core FPS loop, complete with floaty-jump mechanics, but has a more varied magic setup. There's some real complexity and thought in the combat, that is much better than Evil West, which I liked but felt was "muddy".
Aveum is not a classic like God of War but I think it deserved a lot better than it got. The artistry that went into the environments alone make it worth the tour - it's on Game Pass and PS Plus, more than worth it if you can get it on one of those.
One thing I do have to add about this one, though, is that the writing feels like it got crunched. The overall plot arc is nonsensical when its not just a pastiche of Marvel movies, and the characters have no depth and no sense of being in a fantasy world as opposed to a high school in Cali.
