I had never heard of Immortals of Aveum until it dropped on Playstation Plus. I decided to check it out based on a quick trailer. The idea of a mage based FPS did sound like fun and for AAA budget and it being free why wouldn't I at least try it.

Immortals while not spectacular was decent fun for a good bit. The only real drab elements for me was that for one the game was too long for my liking and quickly lost it's luster halfway through with most the game elements already at your disposal and the story I found to be very dull. I appreciate the attempt of making a massive fantasy world for what is essentially a FPS shooter but I found the world and logic a bit too fantastical and overly complex to really get into. While there is a good bit of lore and story building all throughout, the plot is rather simple and straight forward. It just didn't hold my attention. I really don't have much to say about it except for "meh" honestly.

As for the gameplay you have three different colored kind of magics that you can use at any time. Blue magic which is a more precise straight forward shot, Red Magic that explodes in a wide space and Green Magic that shoots many small projectiles in a single path. While that may sound limiting, I really didn't find it to be that in practice. You can switch between them at anytime like a gun in any other FPS. You constantly find new bangles that change the properities of your magic that change their stats such as damage, range, and number of shots. You can really choose which style you want and roll with it. The game does a pretty good job at rolling out gold, upgrades and secrets and really encourage exploration. You can pretty much back travel to any point at any time and find something that will help you solve an old puzzle or get further in an area. Theres a good number of side activities that you can do and I never felt like I was required to do them but if I wanted to I could.

One of the things I really like about Immortals of Aveum is that the magic does feel really good to use. Yes at the end of the day they do kind of feel like guns but the visual and audio design of the magic attacks looks and feels good. The constant particle effects from both player and enemy can really light up the screen and be a visual wonder. However having said that the other side of the coin though is that, that same splender and visual noises does dillute your view of what is happening all around you. I have never played a game as much as Aveum that I really can't tell what is hitting me or what I'm taking damage from. There are so many times that I just see my health drop from 100% to 10% in a blink of an eye. Thankfully you can heal instantly and heals are plentiful but so many encounters that I have lost or took damage from felt so cheap and confusing as I didn't even know why it was happening. I'm taking it up to visual clutter but I'd be lying if I felt like some enemies just hit fast, quiet and hard and I just don't notice it. Enemies usually go down very easily or can be quite tanky. Some enemies I feel like I shoot like 50 times before they are taken down. The combat felt unbalanced.

Immortals of Aveum really was a middle of the road game for me. Held my interest in wanting to finish it but by the halfway mark I was ready for it to be over. It's fine just not spectacular.

Watching some people react to this game's pretty simple and inoffensive message of "when you're isolated and on the brink, a small connection from another human can help begin healing" with "it's illegal to tell stories about mental illness that don't end with the illness 100% cured but also if you do cure the illness that's cheap but suggesting that there's no moment where you're 'cured' you just grow and become better at dealing with it is ALSO evil. And suggesting that small things might help depression is evil and ableist and also suggesting that getting help is good is also evil and ableist. And also displaying mental illness as being debilitating is bad but also displaying it as being minor amounts to shooting mentally ill people in the head. And also it's misogynistic to suggest mentally ill people, some of whom are women, can be helped or even saved by human connection" makes me SO excited for how today's media landscape is going to absorb, flatten and wreck the themes of games that actually HAVE deeply nuanced, complicated things to say about mental illnesses and healing from them.

Like, say, Silent Hill 2.

ANYWAY! I thought it was fine, great in some parts and weak in others. It's VERY on the nose about its theme — but people are still missing it, so whatcha gonna do. The reaction from people with 0 media literacy is frankly more interesting to me than the game itself. STILL, I enjoyed it well enough and I think a lot of the disdain it's getting has more to do with the way that modern Silent Hill fans have decided that anything new is inherently bad and cheap and will never live up to some imagined past of perfection than the actual game itself, which is, at WORST, mid and anvilicious.

I can finally call Destiny 2 a good game.

Not because of its incredible narrative, or its dense, intricate world-building. Not for its fun and creative sandbox or its satisfying gunplay. Not for its graphics, art, or sound design.

No, I can finally call Destiny 2 a good game because it has fishing in it.

Women want me.
Cabal fear me.
Fallen fear me.
Vex fear me.
Drifter wants me.
Scorn fear me.
Taken fear me.
Fish fear me.