REVIEW - Immortals Fenyx Rising Is Wholesome But Derivative
Quit dinking around, Slip!
By Jonathan Garrett
22/12/20
Reviewed on Xbox Series X.
Review copy provided by Ubisoft.
Immortals Fenyx Rising is another example of a Ubisoft title receiving a mid development cycle rebrand or refresh; Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell both underwent similar revamps. The former “Gods and Monsters” has risen like a Phoenix (sorry) to form a visually crisp but nevertheless unremarkable open world adventure that fails to nail the basics.
Ubisoft Quebec’s commitment to story is evident from the off, embracing familiar mythological characters and embedding the world with recognisable touchstones to established fiction. The voice acting is spirited and fully indulges the camp and extravagance one would expect from such a title, but the writing and direction totally misses the mark. Narration is constantly overused, providing unnecessary description for action already being presented on screen without adding any further insight for the player. One of the biggest missteps is the script, with painfully overwritten dialogue that sounds like it was ripped from a Saturday morning cartoon.
Lets not forget: they’re not shooting for the Lego Star Wars crowd here. Immortals is a PEGI 12 in the UK, putting this firmly in Breath of the Wild territory. Unfortunately, the comparisons don’t stop there. Stuff like the dynamic climbing works well enough, but the nature of traversal, graphical style, and light RPG elements feel less like a homage and more akin to a straight copy and paste.
The combat also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. While you do access a broader palette of options as you progress, it’s still frustratingly one note. Coupled with some ropey animations when transitioning between attacks or moving through terrain, and facial animation that really doesn’t look the part, and it’s not looking too positive on many fronts.
Thankfully, one saving grace is that playing on Series X does feel like a well optimized experience; load times are almost non existent, and the brighter colour palette really pops in HDR. Draw distance too is extremely impressive, with far off points of interest easily grabbing your attention and encouraging a quick glide.
It’s a shame then that so much of Immortals Fenyx Rising is merely OK. It’s an unimaginative adventure that pales in comparison to its contemporaries.
Looks like Fenyx brought a sword to a tree stump… fight… I’ll show myself out.
WORTH IT?
At the bottom of every game review, we ask the question: Worth it? And the answer is either “Yeah!” or “Nah”, followed by a comment that sums up how we feel. In order to provide more information, we also have “And” or “But”, which follows up our rating with further clarification, additional context for a game we love, or perhaps a redeeming quality for a game we didn’t like.
NAH.
Immortals Fenyx Rising doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself from other similar titles to justify a recommendation.
BUT
It has been well optimised for the latest console platforms, and there’s a certain charm to its hokeyness
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
