Developer/publisher Ubisoft (Quebec) 

Format Luna, PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, Xbox Series (tested) 

Release Out now

Zelda meets Hades? Not quite. Yet while it owes plenty to Nintendo’s astonishing sandbox, Ubisoft Quebec’s game of gods and monsters is as much breath of fresh air as Breath Of The Wild. Between that title, its magpie spirit, some odd control quirks and oldfashioned puzzle design, Immortals Fenyx Rising often feels like a scrappy but likeable throwback to the PS2 era. Its world is overstuffed and its systems occasionally undercooked, but it’s thrown together in a way that gives it a plucky underdog vibe (inasmuch as an openworld game made by hundreds of staff from one of the industry’s biggest publishers can be described as such). Still, in a genre dominated by long-running series with extensive backstory, it’s a treat to play an adventure that demands no prior knowledge. You could brush up on your Greek mythology – though if you’ve played a certain Roguelike lately, that’s all the required reading you’ll need. Yet Hades proves a thorn in Immortals’ side: their proximity makes comparisons inevitable, and the latter is competing with a game whose gods are betterwritten (and better-looking). It’s not that Immortals’ script is bad, its irreverent humour landing plenty of hits among the swings and misses – which is entirely in keeping with the eager-to-please approach of everything else. But goodness, does it love the sound of its own voice. Wherever you travel, your journey is soundtracked by the booming tones of narrator Prometheus – the straight man of its central comedy double-act – with Zeus interjecting, if only to snicker at something vaguely suggestive. The decision to have everyone speak in cod-Greek accents, meanwhile, saps the humour from some exchanges, while others could use a trim. That said, we’ll take single entendres about Hephaistos’s hammer over po-faced sermonising about honour any day.