Dead on arrival.

Dear god, this game had a budget of $125 million. Immortals of Aveum is one of countless misfires in the gaming industry that makes me wonder if anyone with access to as much money as this has any idea what they're doing with all of it. You can see the underlying mentality of use-it-or-lose-it with regards to the budget — celebrity cast lists, particle effects so dense that you can't see through them, Unreal Engine 5 tech demo scenery — and how little it actually goes towards making a game that's fun to play or a world that's interesting to engage with. I was certain that this was a small-scale AA game that EA was publishing simply to make a little cash on the side; finding out that this is one of the most expensive games ever made just confuses me. It's a complete and utter squandering of basically everything that it had going for it. We're witnessing a gaming failson being created in real time. It's like Victor Frankenstein made a monster that emptied the family bank account on a timeshare scheme.

This might be the most poorly written piece of media I’ve ever sat through. I’m extending this beyond only video games. Immortals of Aveum is written the way that people who don’t like Marvel movies think Marvel movies are written. There is no moment that cannot go un-quipped, no revelation nor death so important as to prevent every nearby character from rolling their eyes and cracking a joke about it. This refusal to hold anything as sacred can work — most comedies pull this off just fine — but this game exists in that 2000s-era Adam Sandler dramedy hellsphere where, despite the fact that none of the characters are taking this seriously, it’s clear that the viewer is expected to. Immortals of Aveum wants to be a story about wildly differing people coming together in the face of adversity, a story about betrayal, a story about racism, about ancient world-ending prophecies and secret orders desperate to keep the balance. It also has a character say, verbatim, “he’s right behind me, isn’t he?”. He is, in fact, right behind them. Holy fuck. Michael Kirkbride is the lead writer.

Speaking of, every character is such a potty mouth. I know that’s the most Melvin thing imaginable to complain about, but it really does clash with everything that’s set up here. This feels like a PG-13 movie. The best comparison is that it’s an adaptation of a young adult novel that doesn’t actually exist, but it’s not a good adaptation, and the YA novel in question was written like Divergent instead of Hunger Games. This is some bootleg bootleg garbage. This is stepped-on Noughts and Crosses. Characters in this universe ought to be saying “crap” or some made-up fantasy curse like “stars and bolts!” instead of shouting “fuck” every other sentence. Everything and everyone is so flat that you can only reasonably conclude that it was written to appeal to children, but the constant swearing reminds you that they actually intended this for adults. The ESRB gave this an M rating, and I think it’s almost exclusively because of the strong language. There’s barely any blood — hell, barely any actual violence beyond shooting little flashes of magic at people. Harry Potter is more hardcore even in its earliest parts, when the cast is made up of fourth graders fighting ogres in the school bathroom. Michael Kirkbride is the lead writer.

I want to take a moment to complain about Devyn, who might be the most annoying character I’ve ever seen. I cannot fucking stand Devyn. He even spells his name like an asshole. They very clearly want you to be annoyed by Devyn — he’s a Claptrap figure of sorts, placed here by a cruel and uncaring god solely to torment you with his quips — and this is probably the greatest triumph that the writing can manage. In a world where nobody is the straight man and everybody seems desperate to be the one who gets to say something “funny” next, Devyn stands out for his ability to fuck up every single conversation by inserting himself directly into the middle of all of them. Some character will start complaining about the Immortals being isolationists who only care about themselves, and Devyn will cut them off to go on a John Oliver-esque rant for a straight minute to mock them. The player character sets up an uneasy alliance with a member of a discriminated race, and Devyn hops on the holo-orb to joke about how much he hates the entire filthy lot of them. The player character starts telling a story and Devyn fucking burps like a cartoon character to cut him off. God, fuck him. I’d say that I hope he dies, but the game actually pulls through and obliges me. The lead villain blows a hole through his chest like Piccolo and we’re expected not to instantly start rooting for him. People mourn Devyn. He’s the first name that our heroes drop when they give the villain the “and this is revenge for...” speech once he’s defeated. Michael Kirkbride is the lead writer.

Devyn is really only as annoying as he is because his actor is as annoying as he is. This is a common thread throughout the entire cast; all of the actors here are performing like this is their first time in front of a camera. Hell, I thought it was. Turns out that the entire cast is comprised of actual fucking screen actors who do this shit for a living, and none of them seem to have a clue what they’re doing. This is doubtless a directing problem — Gina Torres is delivering a career-low performance, far beneath even the worst projects she’s done elsewhere — and it seems like Ascendant believed they could just hire professional actors and tell them to "start acting" as their only point of reference for what they ought to be doing. Charles Halford as Rook crushes it, though, and I have to wonder if it’s solely because his character doesn’t look like a human being. They were apparently doing some weird hybrid face-scan/mocap setup where the actors would have their faces scanned while they were doing voiceover in a booth, and then their heads would get pasted onto the bodies of whoever was doing the mocap. There are scenes clearly intended for big emotions, or that expect the actors to at least raise their voices a little — when they see their friends die, when they give speeches on the battlefield — and they just can't seem to muster them for this. Everyone just talks. Nobody in Aveum has ever heard of an outside voice.

I've gone this long without mentioning the gameplay because it's about as much of an afterthought as this paragraph. You get three types of magic, creatively named Red, Blue, and Green, and Blue magic is so ridiculously good that you only use the other colors when the game forces you to. Blue magic is a semi-automatic rifle that gets a stacking percent damage bonus on critical hits, which are guaranteed on headshots and weak spots. It has virtually zero recoil, infinite range, hitscan, and does obscene damage obscenely quickly. Red magic is a slow shotgun that deals a solid chunk of damage but has low DPS, and Green magic is a projectile-based submachine gun with some homing capabilities that serves mostly as a shitty shotgun that misses more often than it hits. Since all of your basic magic has infinite ammo, there's little reason to do anything other than keep your Blue magic in your hand and spam bolts at enemies so far away that they're using their low LOD models. Consider binding your fire button to the scroll wheel to spare your index finger from a repetitive stress injury.

What I do like, however, is that there's actually some emphasis on platforming and exploration. While this isn't an especially interesting world to poke through, there are all sorts of goodies scattered throughout, and they're all more or less worth collecting. Grabbing lore notes will always reward you with XP even if you don't read them, and actually getting to them can be fun. You've got a double jump to start out with, which is already a plus, and you'll eventually graduate to a hookshot and a glide that you can use to get basically anywhere you want to be. Chaining air dashes and hookshots with your glides to get across a massive pit with a treasure chest at the end of it might be one of those gameplay systems that's inherently rewarding. Even though most of what you'll get for doing these mini challenges amounts to little more than a lump sum of XP or a buff to some of your damage numbers, it's the act of platforming around where the tiny kernel of fun is hidden.

There's really not much to say about Immortals of Aveum besides the fact that, were it not for being the worst-written thing I've ever seen in my fucking life, I would have completely forgotten about it in the two weeks it's taken me to type this out. I'd almost say that it's worth playing if only to see how ridiculously bad the characters are, but you're better off watching someone else play it on YouTube at that point, and you'd be watching it for way too long to get a laugh out of it. At least bad movies usually have the courtesy of ending in two hours, not eight. Part of the problem with "so bad it's good" games are the amount of time that they demand you invest in them, and then you've gotta reckon with the fact that you're putting in work for something that isn't going to be worth it. I don't regret playing Immortals of Aveum. That's faint praise, but it's all the praise I can give it. The studio isn't going to exist by this time next year. It's hardly worth thinking about beyond the thoughts I've already had. People probably won't even remember that this existed, and what a sad thought that is. Try not to think about what they could have done with that money instead.

What are we, some kind of Immortals of Aveum?

Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga is a delusion, for me. You would immediately say: "how can this be?" Since I assign the game 4 stars. Well, the high quality of the production, which I remark using the stars, should not be confused with the emotions and sensations the game left on me. Let's start by saying that Hellblade 1 is one of the best games I have ever played, mainly for the ability of mixing together the creepy and realistic representation of mental illness and psychosis, and the construction of a hopeful story set in the viking age, all mutated by a game design constantly in contraposition with the player. A genius idea inspired by the work of authors like Hideo Kojima and Yoko Taro, the first who tried to actively involve the fanbase granting every little detail and every strange frustration a narrative sense of great prestige. If Hellblade 2 would have followed the same path, creating this sort of dark fantasy journey so personal to appear as a powerful hymn of hope, I would have loved it. But, instead, Hellblade 2 proposes an all-in in the technical achievement granting the narrative a larger yet disturbing breath. Inside Hellblade 2 we don't find this love for the Nordic world as the previous chapter showed, but the incredible technical department worked so hard to show Senua and the other characters at the maximum expression of their performance inside a photorealistic setting. Hellblade 2 is, in this sense, a new reference for technical feature in videogames, and I really wanted the same attention for the contents the game shows. Hellblade 2 tries in every way to explore furthermore the condition lived by the protagonist, talking about it in a so rational way to provoke pure terror in whoever plays the title. Instead of ancient myths and gods of hell, we find here gigantic creature with rotting bodies, sacrifices in which the attention is put on every flap of meat and a research for the past in which all the evolution seems turned into a worse treatment of the past of Senua, a creepier one for sure. This is a shame, really, because the choreographed fights with swords and powers, associated with the traditional rune puzzles of the franchise, were a strong bond with a past Hellblade 2 has completely forgotten.

Gameplay: 4
Game Design: 5
Technical Feature: 5
Narrative: 3,5
Protagonists: 5
Villains: 5
Multiplayer: Absent
Score and Music: 5
Artistic Feature: 3,5
Atmosphere: 5
Emotional Impact: 0,5

Final Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Venía esperando hacía rato este juego. Voy a tratar de reseñarlo sin hacer una opinión también del primero, pero es difícil porque la comparación es inevitable. Hay algo que salta enseguida al analizar este juego y es que es que lo verdaderamente increíble que es a nivel audiovisual (y lo es, muchísimo), no va acompañado de lo mismo a nivel gameplay. Sigue abajo en detalle.
Lo dicho, el aspecto audiovisual es inmejorable. No solo a nivel realismo en tiempo real, que de por sí es asomobroso, sino lo hermoso que se ve todo compuesto, más allá del realismo fotográfico. Las secuencias más oníricas tienen unos juegos de luces y sombras, de partículas, de colores que son espectaculares. Lo mismo ocurre en momentos de gameplay. Me gustó especialmente la secuencia con lluvia en la aldea cercana a la playa, una locura cómo se veía todo con la lluvia, los relámpagos reflejados en las gotas cayendo, todo en tiempo real, increíble. El sonido lo mismo, no solo las voces de Senua, sino todo el sonido acompaña en la experiencia.
Ahora, el juego no busca ofrecer un gameplay que se destaque, eso está claro. Pero el problema es que el gameplay no solo no se destaca, sino que es muy pero muy limitado y, sinceramente, aporta muy poco. Algunos combates con las mismas mecánicas que en el primero (lo cual me sigue gustando el estilo simple) y con unas animaciones buenísimas; algunos puzzles similares a los del primero, con algún pequeño agregado, y listo. Después, mucho caminar o avanzar en entornos predefinidos. A ver, es un juego cinemático, pero llega el punto en el que se olvida que es un juego. Y es poco y nada lo que te da para hacer. El hecho de que todo esté tan integrado que no sabés cuándo estás jugando y cuándo estás solo mirando, termina siendo un problema. Hay secuencias enteras de varios minutos de duración en las que solo tenés que mantener el joystick para avanzar y ver o escuchar, nada más. Ni siquiera dirigir. Eso hace que en algún momento te cuestiones si no sería mejor ver una película de esto y listo. Porque, si así fuese, sería un películón, volviendo a lo hermoso y bien hecho y compuesto que se ve y oye todo. En este sentido siento que el primero, ofreciendo prácticamente las mismas mecánicas que esta entrega, estaba mucho más equilibrado. No se dejaba de sentir como un videojuego, a pesar del foco narrativo.
La historia es otro de los focos de este juego. Me gustó, por supuesto que la psicosis de Senua sigue siendo de principal importancia. Me gusta cómo a lo largo del juego vamos viendo los altibajos de ella respecto a esto. También me gustó cómo las voces no son siempre “malas” con ella sino que son caóticas, la apoyan, la maltratan, la cuestionan, la alientan, todo de un segundo para el otro. Sí me pasó que el ritmo de la historia se sintió raro. Si bien el final estuvo bien, a mí me parecieron mucho más climáticos como final los otros “boses” en lugar del último. Pero tampoco desentona con lo que está contando haber terminado así y ahí. La adición de los demás personajes no estuvo mal, aunque extrañé un poco la aventura en solitario como fue en el primero.
Las actuaciones, sobre todo de Melina Juergens como Senua obviamente, son realmente buenas. Ella se destaca pero los demás que la acompañan está muy pero muy bien también.
Como conclusión, me pareció un buen juego. Una continuación correcta del primero, pero que no está a la altura. Creo que el primero está mucho más equilibrado y ofrece una experiencia mucho más completa.
En fin, aunque me parece una pavada llamarlo “una demo técnica” como andan diciendo, puedo entender por qué lo dicen. Porque aunque la historia es importante, nada se destaca como para acompañar a la enorme destreza técnica que demuestra el juego. Entonces se puede terminar sintiendo como que la historia y gameplay solo están ahí para poder demostrar de lo que son capaces de hacer a nivel gráficos y renderizados en tiempo real.

After the fifth crash I think I'm done with this. 12 hours and I can't say I've come out enjoying any of it. Still a fucking technical mess a year from release, the performance absolutely hinders enjoyment of this. But it's not just that, I also don't think it's fun, like at all. Combat is at its best 1 on 1 or small groups of 2-3, but once you have to fight more than two enemies in melee it falls apart, as enemies will use unblockable attacks one after another. It results in severe difficulty spikes where most encounters are a breeze until these points in which case it just becomes frustrating.

I also think exploration in this game is terrible, there are so many places blocked off until you get later abilities that you waste time trying to explore the planets. I get that they don't want you to get completely sidetracked, and they want to leave some areas for later, but it just completely dampened any interest in exploring. It's artificial. I didn't find this hidden area because I was looking carefully, I found it because I looked at my map and it was either green or red, telling me if I was allowed to explore there or not. I get that this is part of the genre it's going for, but it's the execution of it that ruins it. Instead of, oh, I should remember to come back here when I get an upgrade, it's let me check my map every 15 seconds. And then it crashes.

I just never found it fun. It never gave me the chance. Any time I would start to gaze at the beautiful environments the game would start tanking frames on a whim. Or I'd get hit with some annoying ass combat encounter. Or I'd walk into another area only to see my map filled with red objects. Or it would crash again. Yeah I don't need to play any more of this. And I don't think anyone should spend money on this broken trash either.