Immortals of Aveum Is a First-Person Shooter Without Guns

ign.com:

Any fan of first-person shooters has handled a wide variety of digital weaponry in their gaming career. We’ve fired historical weapons while storming the beaches of Normandy, shot modern guns in modern warfare, and used futuristic blasters in sci-fi shooters. One thing we don’t often do in FPSes, though, is cast spells. That will change with Immortals of Aveum, a magic shooter that replaces mechanical weapons with magical abilities. In a recent hands-off preview, I got a look at this upcoming shooter, and I’m intrigued to see more.

Pitched as a “single-player, story-driven, magic shooter,” Immortals of Aveum appears to live up to that tagline, based on what I saw. The combat shares many ideas with the military shooters we know and love. You can cast spells that act as long-range rifles, shotguns, grenades, and the like. But since it’s magic that fuels your capabilities, you also have access to additional moves you won’t find in traditional shooters.

For instance, the Lash spell lets you pull distant enemies close using what looks like a rope made of blue plasma. Then you can cast the Shatter spell to slam them with a wall of spikes. If you’re feeling overwhelmed in combat, you can use a Blink spell to teleport out of harm’s way. It all happens quickly, and you can chain together your attacks and abilities in combos.

If you’re taking damage, you can cast a shield spell for extra protection, but that slows your movement speed. When enemies use shields, you can break through them by unloading a barrage of magic of the same color. There’s blue, red, and green magic in Aveum, and each one represents a particular category of spells. All told, you can learn and upgrade 25 spells during the course of the campaign, and work through