Toadman Interactive released their game Immortal: Unchained which boasts being the first third-person shooter action-RPG game. Their twist on the Souls genre has brought a lot of attention and a lot of expectation to the game. Pretty safe to say, gamers were not prepared for what they would be walking in to upon the official release.
Immortal: Unchained has a pretty broad plot. Your character must stop the end of the world. The catch? You are a living weapon, which is awesome and useful. Throughout the journey across the world, others that you meet will have pieces of your story since you have no memory of your past. Everyone has their own journey to follow however so it’s up to the player to focus in on what to believe.
The developers had a good idea when creating the game. To take a favorite genre (the Dark Souls genre) and add something new and try to build on things that are already good. Immortal: Unchained combines melee combat with the addition of weapons such as guns. Stamina bars, quick dodges and a maze-like adventure through different places put us right at home, but in a sci-fi world with cyborgs. The weapons (which there are a lot) give players the ability to change their strategy many times and gives a potential edge against enemies. Along with this spin on a classic, the level design looks great. The fundamentals are where things could have improved however.
Even with the best of ideas, things tend to fail. Not everything is going to go right all of the time. For the game specifically, there are problems that make the journey a lot harder than it has to be. Hardcore gamers will understand this. The camera has issues. It’s incredibly hard to plan a strategy when the camera changes angles right after targeting an enemy, or when trying to launch a grenade down a hall. With the ability to lock on to a target, and the target’s various body parts, there is no reason why shots should be missed. In most cases, sticking to a melee system works better. Also, unseen traps in the environment feel unfair. Players didn’t even get trained to look for these various pop-up death nuisances.
Arguably, any problems with the game could be blamed on operator error, but the mesh of melee and guns just isn’t working as hand in hand as we would have liked. The new twist on the style is much appreciated but the game just feels unbalanced at best.
6/10
Available on: PS4, PC and XboxOne
