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Before kids had TikTok, Fortnite, and sexting, they had cartoons on Saturday mornings. He-Man, Thundercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – a pantheon of bubblegum classics that still have their fingerprints throughout today’s pop culture.
It’s no wonder, then, that the generation that grew up with them now finds themselves creating video games that harness a similar vein: Ubisoft’s Immortals Fenyx Rising, released this week on PS5, Xbox Series X, and just about every console out there, must. as for the Masters of the Universe, at least in terms of spirit, as for Plato and Homer.
Immortals Fenyx Rising puts you in the sandals of the titular Fenyx, a ‘nobody’ soldier who washes up on the mythical Greek shores. Since the raging titan Typhon is an old nuisance and threatens the authority of the Greek gods (and the fate of the world itself, of course), Fenyx must rise from zero to hero.
The stakes are high, then, but Immortals Fenyx Rising never takes itself too seriously. ‘Fun’ games always raise questions here at TechRadar – it’s not easy to make a game accessible and fun with rigid game avatars.
But the dueling storytellers Prometheus and Zeus (the former serious and inspiring, the latter pompous and arrogant) argue over the details of the story, actively changing the game around Fenyx. Was it 6 foot or 15 foot Cyclops? We’re going with 15, as the monocular monster scales to fit the recitations of the gods.
Immortals takes a silly and nice approach to everything. Where some games paint in pastel tones, or aim for photographic realism, Immortals is like a game designed with the energy of your more vibrant marker sketches. That vivacious, iconoclastic version of these established figures, like the best cartoons, dares to be bolder, dumber. What’s cooler than a mutant turtle? We know it’s a mutant ninja turtle, ask Michelangelo. So what’s grosser than a gorgon? How about a fat, worm-like gorgon that shoots lasers? If we can’t have the swooping eagle from Assassin’s Creed, how about a Looney Tunes-style panic flail misjudged from a great height?
The legend of Desmond
Within hours of Immortals Fenix Rising I realized that if there are two game series I’ve invested more time in than any other, it is the Zelda and Assassins’ Creed series. Ocarina, Breath of the Wild, The Minish Cap, and a couple of others have given me a fairly comprehensive overview of Nintendo’s adventures, while I’ve played (if not completed) every Assassin’s Creed game that Ubisoft has released since original in 2007.
Immortals naturally owes its main existence to the Assassin’s Creed series (developed by the same team behind the adult Greek adventure Odyssey). And there’s no denying the obvious influence of Breath of the Wild here. From the fact that every surface you climb is tempered by a resistance bar, to the powers Fenyx takes on that allows them to do things like lift heavy stone objects with striking magnetic ease, the systems here aren’t that much inspired by Zelda, but practically raised. wholesale of them.
But it’s a bit easier to digest, given that Ubisoft’s stamp on the open world formula was also stolen by Breath of the Wild, right down to the views revealed by maps from the Creed and Far Cry series.
Immortals Fenyx Rising feels like a Playmobil version of Assassin’s Creed, and that’s just great. After finishing an 80-hour game of Assassin’s Creed Origins (still excellent), this colorful cartoon prank has a lightness and humor that is very endearing, and a conciseness that is appreciated in the realm of open world titles every more and more swollen. I can’t wait for the inevitable spinoff animated series.
