Six minutes of Immortals Of Aveum's Doctor Strange-style magic shooting

Immortals Of Aveum has a magic bracelet and quip-laden cutscenes and if you saw a clip of its reveal trailer out of context, you could easily mistake it for Forspoken. This is a first-person shooter with a boy protagonist called Jack (sorry, Jak) from a former Call Of Duty and Dead Space fella, though, and a new "gameplay first look" trailer does more to distinguish itself.

I think it's difficult to make ethereal, pew-pew magic stream attacks feel impactful, because they lack the bass sounds and quick impact of, say, a shotgun. This issue with Jak's Doctor Strange attacks is exacerbated by all of Aveum's enemies being seeming bullet sponges. Or magic sponges, I guess? That was one of Alice B's concerns when she was shown Immortals Of Aveum by developers Ascendant Studios:

In practise it's more run-and-gun like Wolfenstein than a COD cover shooter, but it even has the dark screen overlay when you're hurt like a modern FPS. Enemies vary in size from itty bitty guys, to mace-swinging giants that look like fan art of "what if your toaster was a knight?", to actual dragons in big set pieces. They require the use of different spells and tactics to do the most damage - although honestly, the boss fights we were shown looked suspiciously like they could be slogging damage-sponge jobs, so put that in the time will tell column.

What's compelling to me about Immortals Of Aveum at this stage is simply that it's a big, flashy, singleplayer first-person shooter. There's not too many of those around and if I can blast at some dragons and grapple around and ignore the story, it might be fun.

Immortals Of Aveum will launch on July 20th.