If films like Heat and Sexy Beast are anything to go by, when you’re in the professional heist business, retirement does not come easily. There’s always that one last job you get called in to tie up some loose ends, rekindling greed and the drive to plan elaborate robbery schemes within you. With the old gang rounded up, Payday 3 now takes us to the bustling streets of New York City, several years after our reign of terror in Washington DC, masked-up and prepared for new challenges in a present-day environment of mass surveillance gadgets, cryptocurrency, the deep web, and more.

Having spent a few hours in the internal playtest, followed by the ongoing closed beta, I must say that I’m truly impressed with how streamlined this sequel is shaping up to be.

The test version only came with one location, the SCB Bank, which is carrying an unusually big amount of cash in its vault, awaiting transport. In what feels like a familiar callback to the Payday 2 days, this is your standard bank heist mission, sticking to the four-player co-op shooter formula, that has you bring a personalised loadout of weapons and high-tech gadgets to ease your cashout.

Your approach can heavily vary between sneaking in and out without triggering any alarms, or you could take the loud route and blast in with guns blazing, striking fear into the hearts of the civilians. My experience with Payday 3 was a mix of both, starting by meticulously lockpicking my way through the backdoors to eventually culminating in an all-out assault, where my team was surrounded by cops from every angle.

Interestingly though, there’s a bit more freedom in stealth segments, where previously, simply being spotted in restricted areas would set the alarms off. But here, you can trespass in private staff areas or behind counters without wearing a mask and the guards would politely escort you to the nearest public area without ruining your stealth attempt. You only get one slip-up, though.

Not to mention, it’s a more realistic depiction of how security would react in a given situation. What I did find perplexing, however, was how you could freely walk up to windows in the lobby of the bank and press a button to close the shutters without raising suspicion.

While this would prevent passersby from being able to peer inside the building and watch my team take everyone hostage, its inclusion feels very off-putting — almost as if it was an oversight from developer Starbreeze Studios. Hopefully, it’s addressed in a sensible manner, closer to launch. Regardless, it’s a massive step up from Payday 2, where you mostly just avoided detection and intimidated security.

You can do more with your mask off

Well, what was I doing back there, you ask? Scouting, mostly. Keeping track of important rooms and cameras, and quietly sneaking behind guards to pickpocket keycards that would grant access to the main security control room. This allowed me to hack into and disable the security system without too much hassle — such actions are all tied to a single button press, ‘F’.

Stealth is still extremely difficult to pull off though, especially once you put on heist masks to conceal your identity, whereupon being spotted, witnesses would immediately report your presence. However, I did feel a bit pressured into wearing a mask, because there were certain basic mechanics, such as vaulting over surfaces, that Payday 3 kept locked behind the mode.

Without a mask, you cannot climb through windows nor can you brandish a pistol. That said, it’s still quite insane how far you can progress in the game with masks off — as opposed to Payday 2 — so with the remaining time, I’d just run around the block to look for any potential escape routes that wouldn’t draw attention.

Once you put on a mask, you can’t take it off anymore, immediately raising the stakes for the heist, as you’re finally allowed to partake in more nefarious activities. Now equipped with guns, your squad can walk around intimidating civilians into submission and tying them up, check corners for cameras and shoot them down, and snap security guards’ necks for no disruptions.

I’d recommend investing in a silencer for your pistol ASAP, in order to avoid creating a ruckus, but the most important toolkit in your arsenal would be to remain alert at all times. Dropping guards triggers a small alarm on their radio/ walkie-talkie, which if left unanswered, raises suspicion among the security team. Other times, an unattended civilian might escape and pull an alarm, throwing a wet blanket over your perfect plan. Things could easily go sideways once the mask is on, so it’s best to have a team you could always rely on.

Once you put on a mask, you can’t take it off anymore until the heist session ends

Such nail-biting sequences are peppered throughout Payday 3, though they can be severely eased by evenly dividing tasks among you. There’s a lot more flexibility in how you approach missions, such as sifting through documents for clues on how to open the vault, intuitively following red cables to shut down power to the gates, or grabbing an executive to scan their retina on the bank’s high-tech lock system.

Of course, none of this would’ve been possible without numerous failed attempts, where my team and I almost immediately set off alarms, causing the police to come barging in. That’s the beauty of Payday 3 — there’s always something new to learn through repeated tries, making it more rewarding for the experienced players.

Now, you might be wondering how the early games in Payday 3 would work for newer players. Well, usually super loud, because you have zero clue of what’s going on or how things work. So, you’ll end up drawing all kinds of unwanted attention, shooting every guard in sight, and grabbing civilians as body shields to help with negotiation, before getting bored soon enough that you let go of them and shoot them in the back of the head. Guilty as charged. I mean, no witnesses if everyone’s dead, right?

Speaking of going loud, the bank heist mission has you breaking into the vault from the floor above in an aggressive fashion, where you collect bags of thermite, pile them up, and ignite them to gradually breach through the fortified wall. Of course, there are bells and sirens going crazy all around, which just adds to the tension as more cops start storming into the place.

There is some method to this madness though, as adding too much thermite to increase the rate of breaching causes the water sprinklers to turn on, effectively reducing the flames and sending you on an errand run to turn it off.

Improved combat, more unpredictability

The combat is a strong highlight in Payday 3, throwing increasingly challenging enemies at you, which gets pretty overwhelming, even with human teammates. While it might seem too daunting and overly difficult for some, the heat level perfectly ties with the premise, where you’re trying to steal a truckload’s worth of cash — it’s a pretty serious crime you’re committing here.

You should get punished for making careless moves like not checking corners or standing out in the open and tanking bullets Tropic Thunder style. Taking the fight to the streets with bags of cash strapped to our shoulders is where I had the most fun, mimicking the chaos from the iconic LA shootout scene in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995).

Taking the fight to the streets is where I had the most fun, mimicking the chaos from Michael Mann’s Heat (1995)

As you await your getaway vehicle and run back in to grab more cash, you engage in an all-out battle with hordes of different police types, including far-away snipers who’ve got their laser sights trained on you. I’ll admit, they appear a lot more scary than they actually are — in the sense that the snipers are very slow to react to movement.

So, you’ll generally have an easy time dealing with them, as long as you keep sliding around the map. Don’t completely ignore them though, as a single shot from them will instantly deplete your armour, leaving your body exposed to direct hits.

Whatever tactics you had planned at the start of a heist session are completely thrown out of the window at this stage, leaving you to rely on any armour or medic bags you brought along. In merely 10 to 15 minutes since the alarms sounded off, the tone of the game will have changed entirely to a modern-day warzone, with special enemies like the Grenadier who will chuck highly damaging poison bombs, which not only blur our vision but prevents us from sprinting until we step out of the gas.

The near-indestructible Bulldozer also returns, armed with powerful firearms and occasionally charging headfirst into you. It’s best to have all four teammates focus on this behemoth at once since trying to take him down solo would result in guaranteed death or quick depletion of resources.

The Heavy SWAT team also consists of a brutish riot shield user, who would bash and stun you if you get too close. I found it super beneficial to just hurl a grenade behind them, causing them to turn around and expose their bodies to my onslaught. Another powerful unit relies on stun guns as well, though none of them seemed to be affected by the difficulty modifiers. All difficulty increments — at least in the Payday 3 closed beta — were based solely on security measures, such as indestructible cameras and a lead guard. This ensured that the enemies you faced in combat had the same health pool across the board, without turning them into mundane bullet sponges.

You can pick skills to create a personalised build, or synergise them with teammates for better success rates

All of this is bolstered by a robust skill tree, opening room for you to experiment with various builds, whereby performing certain stealth or assault-based actions, you’ll gain bonuses in terms of movement speed, inflicted damage, faster reload speeds, and more. For instance, investing skill points into Tank stats grants defence-oriented perks such as effective armour, while favouring Hacking lets you take remote control of security cameras.

You could also double down on stealth abilities to perform faster takedowns and lockpicks or gain ‘Rush’ buffs to escape into hiding quickly. In addition to working toward a setup specifically tailored for you, one could also synergise them with teammates to see which ones offer better success rates.

Just like Payday 2, cash earned from heists can be spent on new weapons and their respective attachments such as scopes, muzzles, and grips to help with heavy recoil. All changes to guns’ stats are neatly shown via a graph, and they can all be personalised with cosmetic mods like paint jobs, stickers, and charms.

This forms the core gameplay loop of Payday 3, though for now, I have no idea how the larger story ties into this — after all, we reunited after years to identify and crush an undisclosed ‘new threat.’

It was cool to see Robert De Niro’s mask from Heat in Payday 3

Further, you could customise your characters’ appearance with new suits, gloves, and a medley of creepy-looking masks, including the white, perforated hockey one that Robert De Niro wore in Heat! Not to mention, all armour and protective gear is worn underneath your suit, so you don’t need to worry about making a bad impression.

Final thoughts

Having only played one heist level, Payday 3 comes across as a remarkable evolution from its predecessor’s ethos, focusing on mechanical depth through a myriad of new high-tech toys to mess around with.

The emphasis on stealth opens room for creativity, giving you the incentive to scout locations more freely and tick past an array of meticulous objectives, before donning the mask and going berserk. I also think it’s an excellent choice for this threequel to be set in a contemporary timeline, given the game is designed to grow over time with a regular flow of post-launch content, so it should hopefully feel timeless.

The post Payday 3 Closed Beta Impressions: Rounding Up the Old Gang for Stealthy Business appeared first on Review Products.

Baldur’s Gate III was published to enthusiastic acclaim about two weeks before Immortals of Aveum, EA’s new first-person spell-shooter action game. With its richly rewarding quests, solid gaming mechanisms, and evocative characters and narratives, the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG from Larian Studios became a worldwide sensation, attracting over 800,000 continuous players on Steam. The Forgotten Realms provides the setting for hundreds of hours of fascinating gameplay in Baldur’s Gate III, a game that is a strong contender for Game of the Year.

A massive space RPG from Bethesda called Starfield debuted two weeks after Immortals with the promise of a thousand planets. Starfield, the studio’s first new intellectual property in 25 years, lets you live out your space fantasies with unlimited exploration, precise gunplay, and starship construction.

According to studio director Todd Howard, it’s like Skyrim in space: fly anywhere, do anything. Like Baldur’s Gate, Starfield—possibly the biggest Xbox exclusive in a decade—requires hundreds of hours to appreciate its joys fully. It promises to take readers on an enthralling voyage through the wonders of space and time, examining ideas of existence and being and the profundity of human endeavor—the pursuit of knowledge.

Immortals of Aveum, a game with modest goals that let you discharge colored magic spells from your fingers in a pew-pew fashion, sits between these two enormous, genre-defining titles. That’s it. Immortals do not aim to completely immerse you in its world or provide complex gameplay mechanisms, but that is okay.

This is because it allows for fun, which is one thing that video games should always offer. The two games that bookend Immortals’ release are far more ambitious and expansive than Immortals. You don’t have to put in a lot of time; you don’t even have to commit.

Different from its two competitors, it definitely won’t be in the running for Game of the Year. However, the basic plot of Immortals, its sincere and downright ridiculous parody of contemporary superhero movies, and its condensed, 25-hour campaign provide precisely what the game promises – nothing more, nothing less.

Call of Duty meets Dr. Strange

Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter without the use of firearms. It is the debut title from Ascendant Studios and is distributed by EA Originals. You fire color-coded magic spells here, like what you might anticipate if Dr. Strange and Call of Duty met.

The action visually resembles Ghostwire Tokyo from 2022, although it unfolds differently. This year, magic has been making a comeback (with different degrees of success) thanks to Forspoken and Hogwarts Legacy, and Immortals also prominently utilizes the arcane. The game’s primarily linear single-player campaign features narrow levels with some branching paths for exploration.

The gameplay elements that pace out the spell-shooting action are of a modest but robust variety. Each level includes straightforward yet fun platforming features and riddles that slow down the movement.

There is a passable plot that unfolds much like a subpar DC film. The game’s arena-style shooting segments, where you use a variety of magic spells and rush and jump like a bunny on caffeine, are undoubtedly its best features.

Jak, a simple street thief in Seren’s shantytown, is how you will travel through the Aveuman regions. Unbeknownst to him, he possesses a potent and uncommon magic in his veins. As Jak endures a personal tragedy and enlists as a soldier in the Everwar, a 2,000-year conflict spanning Aveum’s five kingdoms, you follow his journey.

We watch his journey unfold as he establishes himself as a warrior on the front lines and rises to the rank of Immortal, a group of elite magicians who direct the war effort and guard Lucium, one of Aveum’s five kingdoms. In all honesty, it can be challenging to keep up with the information deluge at first.

To establish the world of Aveum, the blazing struggle, the parties participating, their motivations, and the ancient artifacts and secrets that threaten to change the Everwar’s course and, in turn, the fate of the lands, the game throws a basketful of half-cooked and well-known magical history at you.

Aveum’s universe is powered by magic

I wouldn’t blame you if you felt like you were swimming in jargon. It’s a lot to take in: the Shrouded Realm, the Wound, the Pentacade, Laylines, Fonts, Binding Stones, and Shrineforges. Thankfully, you may disregard the deep end and navigate the understandable information’s shallow waters by keeping things straightforward.

You are a battlemage engaged in an unending conflict where the distinction between good and evil is frequently hazy. It follows a well-known hero’s journey in line with most successful superhero movies, where humor breaks up the action and suspense at every turn. There isn’t much novel about the story, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. You are caught off guard by a few of the road’s curves and twists.

In the Everwar, Jak is joined by a colorful assortment of Immortal companions. Jak’s mentor and the person who took him in after his life in Seren broke apart was Kirkan, the commander of the Immortals.

She is unyielding and furious, plays her cards close to her chest, and frequently gives Jak’s inquiries regarding the Everwar painfully evasive responses. Jak’s field commander, Zendara, is focused on the next task and has little time for friendly banter.

On the other hand, Devyn is chatty and outgoing, acting as a welcoming presence among the menacing Immortals. Additionally, he brings laughs, throwing jokes whenever the opportunity arises with the assurance of a clown, even if some fall flat.

In the Everwar, the Immortals command Lucium’s army against Sandrakk’s soldiers, a despot who seeks to rule over the wellspring of all magic in Aveum. The characters in the game are the usual suspects you’d expect to show up in a phase five MCU film, but they manage to have an excellent natural chemistry together. This results from consistently strong voice acting, even in weak material.

Jak’s mentor, Kirkan, is in charge of the Immortals

As I’ve already noted, Immortals frequently resembles a genre-worn superhero movie, hitting well-worn narrative beats and action set pieces. The writing in the game often employs humor as a crutch, much like the films it aims to mimic, yet it never turns the line into being overly earnest. The volume and abruptness of jokes frequently lower the stakes and reduce narrative suspense. Still, they occasionally mirror the situation’s overall silliness, never being afraid to embrace the absurd.

New characters are continually presented; you can always count on them to be ominous and terrifying. But when you meet them, they come across as quick-witted idiots a la Joss Whedon, and you can’t help but chuckle.

For instance, to find the volcanic lair of the man you’re looking for, you must first infiltrate a horrific underworld and then go via a trail that is burning with lava and ash while fending off swarms of adversaries. When you first meet him, you expect him to be fierce, but instead, he seems mildly angry that you broke into his bachelor pad, corrects you when you call his parlor a porch and then offers you coffee.

Whistles and magic

Immortals of Aveum makes a lot of effort to be a movie, but its best parts are the video game-like elements. Bret Robbins, a seasoned executive who oversaw the development of the original Dead Space and multiple Call of Duty missions, is the head of Ascendant Studios.

Immortals, who, if you exclude the magic, is essentially a first-person shooter, benefit from his experience. The ancient power of the blue, green, and red colors sustains Aveum’s universe. Each branch of magic that a Magni can use, but Jak is a Triarch Magni who possesses a rare mastery over all three colors of magic.

Sigils, which in the game serve as magical versions of guns, are used to control each branch of magic. Red magic has the short-range, heavy damage, and more minor clip characteristics of shotguns. Blue magic can be used in place of a sniper rifle or other precision weapon for long-range warfare.

Fully automatic rifles or submachine guns with large clip sizes, ideal for taking on foes at medium range, are represented by green magic. However, the rapid-firing green Sigils have more recoil and spray, which affects your accuracy. When you munch through the clip, each Sigil has a predetermined reload time that can be shortened later through skill upgrades.

In the equip menu, sigils can be changed

Most adversaries in Aveum are also color-coded, necessitating the use of the proper magic kind to reduce their health bars. Juggling the various Sigils and switching between your magic colors (with a quick press of the triangle button on PlayStation’s Dualsense controller) become necessary and, thankfully, stay enjoyable as each fight throws a motley horde of enemies at you.

Each magic color is accompanied by a Totem that casts a control spell that aids you in navigating the environment, controlling adversaries during combat, and solving puzzles in addition to these attack-focused striking spells connected to your Sigils. Your left hand is connected to Totems, and your right hand has Sigils.

The Lash spell, essentially a magical whip that draws distant adversaries closer to you in combat and enables you to grip on to anchor points in the environment during exploration, is channeled by Blue Totems, or Chains. Limpets, fluid blobs that slow down moving targets, whether an adversary or an object, are found in Green Totems or Vials. Red Totems, also known as Lenses, project fiery scarlet disrupt spell beams that interrupt opposing magic strikes and leave the enemy stunned.

Your spellbook also contains augments, such as a shield to shelter you from approaching fire and the powers to blink and hover, which help dodge opponent assaults and move about platforms.

The mix of attack, control, and augment spells in Immortals is excellent; they all work well with one another and never overwhelm the player or become cumbersome. When your Dominion meter is complete, you can also perform an ultimate attack that releases a potent beam of magic that combines all three magic colors and delivers terrible damage.

Combat between immortals can be hallucinogenic and chaotic

Immortals’ fighting is limited to arena-style fights that are split amid twisting exploratory passages. There is a good variety of threats here, but eventually, you will primarily be shooting at recognizable adversaries. In addition, each chapter has brand-new boss fights that, while essentially simple, offer a refreshing change from the game’s normal gameplay.

While spell shooting functions like firing with guns in any other shooter, the experience isn’t quite the same. It falls short of feeling as tight and sophisticated as the gunplay in Call of Duty and needs more impact and feedback on guns. Additionally, the combat never becomes particularly difficult, and each encounter area has a plentiful supply of healing and mana crystals that refill your HP and magic bars. Immortals are easy on Normal, but I’d suggest the Hard mode if you want to work for your rewards.

Immortals of Aveum, thankfully, encourages a decent amount of exploring and rewards intrepid players with equipment and currency. It functions similarly to side trips in God of War or Jedi: Fallen Order, which has branching side pathways frequently imprisoned in mostly linear hub areas. The routes widen as you learn new skills and spells, opening up new worlds to discover, items to uncover, and foes to face.

Although these hub worlds are far smaller than God of War’s, you may always return to an area you’ve already visited and discover something new. Each level also has Shroudfanes, optional tasks that involve boss fights, and separate platforming sections, both of which can be challenging but offer high-value rewards.

There is a skill tree for each of the three branches of magic and the standard equipment and upgrading system. These are straightforward and functional rather than delving deeply, as in an RPG, which works in Immortals’ favor.

Performances and Visuals

One of the first significant games created with Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite geometry and ray-traced Lumen lighting is Immortals of Aveum, and it shows. Immortals can appear gorgeous under the proper lighting. This applies to both characters and settings. Character faces are expressive, expressing subtle variations in mood and expression.

The game’s campaign transports you across various outdoor areas and shifting landscapes. The game’s golden lighting makes open plains, icy cliffs, thick foliage, and desert places attractive. However, the art of Immortals feels copied and needs a distinct, new identity.

The PS5’s performance is also negatively impacted by the glossy graphics. There isn’t a way to alter the graphic settings or switch between performance and quality modes. On the other hand, Immortals aims for a 4K output at 60 frames per second.

Although it mostly hits its framerate goals, performance suffers in regions with bustling traffic and intense combat. You can observe that texture quality and image resolution were sacrificed on the altar of framerate because the visual quality is still erratic. Future updates may address some of the problems.

At the time of this writing, a third update is available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, and it promises to enhance upscaling for improved image fidelity on consoles and several other improvements.

Verdict

Nowadays, good single-player shooter campaigns take a lot of work to come by, especially with games like Call of Duty and Battlefield focusing more on their wildly successful multiplayer modes. Another disappearing species is the brief, charming single-player campaign free of battle passes, lootboxes, and microtransactions.

In addition, Immortals of Aveum comes out complete and in decent condition at a time when companies rush to release broken games. Despite its shortcomings, it has the right intentions at heart. It is simple to complete because of its unpolished but enjoyable spell-shooting action and surprisingly well-executed level design.

Although its summer blockbuster plot is nothing new, it manages to charm you with its sincere good looks. And although though it has a fair share of loose screws and dents, the machine’s various working cogs fit together logically to create it.

Games these days demand time and focus, almost like homework, which is why Immortals of Aveum is released at such a time. They require that you virtually put your life on hold to live a different, more fulfilling life in the enormous virtual playgrounds they provide.

This is not a complaint since I fondly recall the period when Red Dead Redemption 2 was released, and I gave up everything to live as an outlaw on the American frontier for roughly three months. In all honesty, no other medium can match video games’ transforming and teleporting potential.

However, only some games have to be a multi-course meal. They are delicious when eaten as a snack. Immortals are the bite-sized biscuit you need now, even though it won’t leave a particularly distinctive taste on your tongue. Immortals of Aveum captures the medium’s bygone simplicity and shallowness, which may be just as significant at a time when ambitious video games display the enormous depth they can give.

Pros

• fun spell-shooting battles
• A challenging single-player campaign
• Exploration and platforming done well
• likable individuals
• No bugs, no microtransactions
• striking images

Cons

• generic lousy guy and plot
• overpowering and excessive lore
• style of derivative art
• performing poorly

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