"Fast, fluid, chaotic combat." That was one of the key details to take away from the pitch offered up by Ascendant Studios. During one’s recent trip to EA’s offices to try out a vertical slice of their upcoming "magic-shooter" Immortals of Aveum, I couldn’t help but latch onto the notion of a developer uttering the word "chaos" as a plus. An intention to attract and appease, rather than that of dissuasion, admirable it is from the get-go for any studio to at least try and make such a word hold positive connotations. And to be fair, Immortals of Aveum does have a flair of the chaotic bookmarking plenty, if not most, of its magic-fuelled combat encounters. Anyone who’s played, maybe even casually viewed, an id Software-branded shooter particularly may feel better served when it comes to the pacing, design and general style of execution Immortals is going for here. A predominantly linear progression of story beats, broken up by momentary arena set-pieces. Finished off with a helping of confident one-liner or off-tangent spiel from main protagonist, Jak.

In fact -- being a hot-button topic in the cultural zeitgeist it would seem -- that’s probably the best place to start when it comes to describing how Immortals' writing is conveyed. A discussion that's spurred on when you learn (another detail provided by way of the pre-hands on presentation) Ascendant bills this as a meshing of Lord of the Rings…and the MCU. If "chaotic" wasn't enough of a brow-raiser, a studio outright drawing comparisons to those latter three letters may similarly raise all the red flags one can get their hands on. And sure, there’s the odd occasion during one’s play-time where that fear feels ready to materialize. Ready being the crucial word here -- in the game’s defense, Immortals still intends to present its world as one of serious stakes. Stakes that may allude towards grand, sweeping world-building, but based on the vertical slice played suggests Ascendant's gaze, much like its first-person perspective, is knowingly scaled back to suit.

The main premise then: an all-powerful threat and our plucky band of titular heroes, though confident and eager to win, not getting too ahead of themselves. It’s not quite "so let me get this straight" levels of ironic cynicism. And even if Jak himself comes across as the kind of character who similarly feels positioned one or two steps away from that level of eye-rolling snark, Immortals makes sure to keep such distance when it comes to the dialogue. A sign of the times that such a thing can be construed as a positive? Perhaps, but Immortals from early signs doesn’t look like it’s falling into the same trap of mistaking such disconnecting character traits as some mandatory, box-ticking selling point.

Furthermore, it's an aspect that thankfully plays second fiddle to the core gameplay of Immortals. And while not entirely invulnerable (if you’re not paying sufficient-enough attention, that health bar of yours will rapidly be eaten away in no time at all), this is still a game that wants you to put yourself front-and-center of danger. Your abilities as a trifecta (as explained in-game: someone able wield all three classes of magic) are high impact and it’s up to one’s knowledge on what magic works at what time and in combination with the layout of the arena in question to deal with the threat present. But consider you still remain that of a more glass cannon-like character and less some silent-if-deadly killing machine. Naturally then, the range of verticality, platforms to hop to and fro from and lack of blatant cover means that Immortals is going for a kind of combat system where agility is as much an offense as raw fire-power is. All while reminding you that the game isn’t entirely afraid to show off its own excess of visuals and particle effects.

Be this some boastful demonstrating of Unreal Engine’s 5.1 incarnation -- standing as the first game to run on said iteration -- or simply a love for everything flashy, Immortals of Aveum does on more than one occasion fall the wrong side of such investment. Technical prowess quickly devolving to excess to the point it becomes obtrusive when all you want to do is accurately pick out the last remaining stragglers. Which is a shame because as far as core mechanics goes, Immortals isn’t unmanageable. A game that needn’t require pin-point accuracy; the game offering a charitable window when it comes to lassoing in a distant enemy or even aiming in general. So when the game does unfortunately overstep the mark with colorful explosions and such, it's the point you begin to question if Immortals of Aveum is putting either its mechanics or its presentation to the forefront. Less a case of style over substance and moreso that the former is overruling the latter.

In Immortal’s defense, there's substance to the way the game is built and not just in terms of its combat. For one, the way in which optional chests and helpful pick-ups are tucked away is worth the highlight. How alternate routes and momentary puzzles to solve are positioned in such a way they can be easily missed. How Immortals sneakily trains your eye to follow the main path by default and little else. But pause for a moment, curiously see what lies behind that bend or over that ledge and lo and behold, another secret to discover. Easy it might’ve been to blatantly present a split path, Immortals decides against such obvious alternates, instead encouraging its players to at least inquire whether combing over the area in question will reap some manner of a reward.

That player-led decision-making goes doubly so -- and crucially, serves its place in combat on top -- when it comes to crafting and upgrading your sigil device, in fine-tuning the properties of your three main classes of magic. Specifically, finding that ideal balance between damage output and "ammunition" count. As in any traditional shooter, one must weigh the pros and cons of each. And while each magic type has its base ammo pools and damage type -- blue the intermediate single-shot, red the close-range but beefier shotgun equivalent and green likened to an SMG-esque output -- the question is whether or not to min-max any of these properties. Do you, for example, limit red magic to just a single but powerful shot? Keeping in mind that your magic attacks require a "reload" of sorts. It’s a more compelling and involved form of progression over that of a skill tree, of which Immortals happily obliges. As it does gear score and items to equip on your person. Even if, in both cases, the acquisition of some better stat or increase to one’s skills by a factor of, say 5%, seldom feels that much of a significant change in the heat of battle. 

But the crucial thing is that choice still does exist here. Both in tailoring one’s offensive priorities but also, as noted, in just how thorough one wants to be with the world in hunting down valuable upgrade currency. Because it’s Immortals' gameplay, so far as its primary systems, that just might be enough to stave off its biggest concerns so far. Namely the delivery of its set-pieces and more worryingly, its technical performance. As much as the team may have assured such things would be ironed out, it’s important to lay out the experience had. Not least when it turns out the PC build used for this hands-on boasted the likes of an AMD 7900XT -- for Nvidia folk, that's equivalent to an RTX 4080 -- and Immortals still struggled to hit a stable 60FPS. Were it simply down to such things like rendering of dense foliage, it might’ve felt minor. Unfortunately during the final third of play, Immortals’ frame-rate devolves from minor inconvenience to worrisome trait. And in combat especially -- when a mix of erratic enemy movement and a screen crammed to bursting with particle effects -- it can all seem like the game’s ambitions outweigh its execution. Curious then to see how such a delivery will be scaled for consoles -- especially for a system like the Series S -- let alone the many different build set-ups across PC.

Does this then bode ill for how Immortals will end up being perceived? Short-term, possibly; it will be interesting to see how the general PC performance will look. Not least during a year that has already been riddled with one too many questionable PC ports. Long-term, though? Immortals finds its stride when all the pieces are in place. When one can find that preferred flow and rhythm. A rhythm that doesn’t necessarily equate to some invincible power-fantasy fueled by magic and swift movement. The glass cannon premise does mean skill, proficiency in one’s load-outs and making sure to balance the plethora of associated cool-downs, remains critical to survival.

Thus taken at face value, Immortals of Aveum does offer enough of a genuine sense of excitement and intrigue in figuring out its arena-scale combat puzzles. Even if these very encounters aren’t immune to the occasional over-indulgence in special effects and slightly-worrisome technical performance. The narrative may not exactly boast the most engaging or original of prospects, but if nothing else, seeing where exactly Ascendant pitch its storytelling on a tonal scale will be its most interesting detail to follow. Overall, it’s a debut outing from a studio who’ve clearly done their homework when it comes to creating a first-person sandbox with bite. And when it hits, it undoubtedly gets its magic hooks in deep. But as that old saying goes, the question is whether or not Immortals of Aveum has, via its aesthetic and all-round presentation, bitten off more than it can chew. In a little under two months -- July 20th to be exact —--we’ll have our answer.