I lock onto enemies with a click of the right stick. I like the contrast, but it also feels like the design team hasn’t really picked a lane.Ĭombat feels good, mostly because it feels like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, especially the frenzied battle moments that feel like Dark Souls. The cartoonish smoke contrasts with the realistic rendering. To the best of my recollection, just about every time I kill a (realistically rendered) enemy, they fly off in a playful arc, leaving behind a puffy trail of gray smoke, rendered in flatly shaded, cartoony fashion. Sometimes this game tries to be both stylized and realistic simultaneously. That’s great for showing off intricate gear like the armor and weapons I find and equip, but it’s also a weird contrast with many other (and I’d argue, more visually pleasing) parts of the game. Up close, though, the game’s world gets decidedly less whimsical, and Ubisoft Quebec renders Fenyx’s immediate surroundings more realistically. It implies a sense of whimsy, even when I planned out my route through the bleak industrial landscape of The Forgelands, a barren, desaturated wasteland of hardpan where I spent nearly all of my time. Rather than aim for accuracy, it’s rendered quite literally in broad brush strokes. The map - a top-down camera that pans over a 3D landscape, exactly like it does in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey - is the best example of this. There were moments when I stared into the far distance and Immortals Fenyx Rising’s painterly art style charmed its way right into the corners of my mouth, and I’d feel myself smile at the pastel beauty. The landscape of Immortals Fenyx Rising gets prettier the farther it gets from the camera Image: Ubisoft Quebec/Ubisoft Immortals Fenyx Rising makes a great first impression, but could it sustain that sense of wonder? I also like to tell everyone who’ll listen that graphics might make a decent game better at the margins, but they can’t make a good game great. The painterly look of Immortals Fenyx Rising is often my favorite part. Based on footage Ubisoft later provided of something called Aphrodite’s Beauty Chair, which looks suspiciously like a whimsical character creator where you can customize the full model as well as voice and hairstyle, Immortals Fenyx Rising includes models of men, an option that would, like so many things, mirror its cousin Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. I spent the last year-plus thinking of the character shown in the original trailer as Ubisoft’s Kid Icarus, but I was surprised to find that my demo’s pre-made version of Fenyx was a woman. Immortals Fenyx Rising has them, but without so many options. It exists somewhere in the middle of Odyssey and Breath of the Wild, trying to blend the best of both. Turns out the title makes more sense in context, since you and I will play as the titular Fenyx, the lowly mortal savior who battles through the supernatural onslaught of ancient Greece.Īnd that brings us to the rest of the game, which I have little choice but to describe as exactly the kind of game you get when the people at Ubisoft Quebec who created the exquisite Assassin’s Creed Odyssey make a new game also set in ancient Greece but now less realistic and instead heavily inspired by The Legend Zelda - and not just Breath of the Wild. And if that title was indicative of the rumored change in direction, then what did that say about the rest of the game? It’s not as good as Gods & Monsters, right? As my friend and colleague Russ Frushtick said, it sounds like a free-to-play mobile game. And then, last week, for the better part of three hours, I wrapped my hands around a controller and played Immortals Fenyx Rising.įirst up, a dollop of Midwestern apology for what could sound like snark: The first time I heard the name Immortals Fenyx Rising, I thought it was a joke. Rumors of a nebulous change in direction and title appeared, but there was nothing official. We’ve seen even less, unless you count leaked purportedly leaked footage. 25, 2020 release but was quietly delayed. The game was originally slated for a Feb. It was a highlight of E3 2019 (a before times public gathering of thousands - imagine that!), during which Ubisoft surprise premiered a trailer for a game that looked like its take on Breath of the Wild. Immortals Fenyx Rising is one of those games, too. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was one of those games. Sometimes, I like a game because it’s familiar, because it’s more or less what I expected, because it’s a comfortable quilt of things I’ve seen and enjoyed before. The game formerly known as Gods & Monsters, recently renamed Immortals Fenyx Rising, is not one of those games. Sometimes, I like a game because it’s unique, because it’s innovative, because it’s unexpected.
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