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The RPS Advent Calendar 2020, December 9thGet you to the Greek
Get you to the Greek
This is the RPS Advent Calendar, in which we reveal one of our favourite PC games of 2020 on each day. Headback to the calendarto open another door.
If you want to open day nine of the RPS advent calendar, you’re going to need to light some fires first. Maybe push down some giant buttons, too.
It’sImmortals Fenyx Rising!
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Alice Bee:For a while there I was having trouble figuring out whoImmortals Fenyx Risingwas aimed at, because while I had initially thought it was aimed at kids, it became clear that the combat, puzzles, and overall vibe was maybe a bit too complex in places. But equally, this cartoony, joyful, adventure-romp couldn’t be aimed at adults, could it?
So I’ll say it: Immortals is great. My best friend in it is a phoenix that I can turn into like, a flying lizard, or a bright green parrot. My horse in it is a big blue unicorn. In one mission I had to fight a legendarily angry rooster. There’s a joke about Charon “saving up to buy a bridge”. Come on!
Nobody gets mad at you for liking it too much or not enough, it has enjoyable takes on loads of Greek mythology, and it’s funny. My only hope is that I get other games in the same series that adapt myths from around the world.
Ollie:Maybe it’s just that December is the perfect time for me to get sucked into a large, polished singleplayer adventure game. Last year, it wasStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Every time I finished the story in that game, I’d start again in that same session. The same was - and still is - true for Immortals Fenyx Rising.
It really boiled down to two things. The first is that combat was startlingly satisfying. With a few skill upgrades under my belt, I was pulling off crazy gratifying feats like pulling a harpy down to my level and bashing it in the head with a giant axe; then fluidly moving to perfectly block a Cyclops’s backhand attack, slowing down time enough to wind up a colossal attack with a hammer five times my size, and let it smash against the Cyclops’s chin, sending it flying away into the distance.
Everything felt far punchier than I’d expected. There was a definite moment in my first fight with a bear on the prologue island (which nearly wiped the floor with me, I might add), after which I was just thinking, “Oh.Oh. Yeah, I’m gonna enjoy this.”
It’s not a playstyle I’d suggest for everyone, but for me it matched the satisfaction of cleaning up a level inViscera Cleanup Detail. Fenyx Rising is one of very few games I’ve bothered to 100%, and I’m probably still going to play it again when I’m finished.
