Ultrakill Review

 

A Dance of Bots and Blood-An Ultrakill Early Access Review

I had viewed Ultrakill for the first time some months ago, remembered having a great time, but had to play some other games in the meantime and forgot about it. For this week, I decided to come back (the game is currently on the greed update) and see all that this game had to offer. 

Ultra-Dopamine-Rush

To me, Ultrakill is the absolute best way to reinterpret the "boomer shooter" genre of doom in the modern age. It's obscenely smooth, coupled with a perfect smash of difficulty options for every player, especially those who seek to master its mechanics-mechanics of which push you to master them in meaningful ways. 

In Ultrakill you'll frantically switch around you arsenal, each weapon of which has multiple secondary firing mechanisms to swap between, as you destroy wave after wave of enemy and boss alike. At any one moment of Ultrakill you'll be monitoring how many shots you have left of special bullets before recharge, what weapon you are using, your enemies attack patterns, and the environment around you to survive. 

The visuals further the dopamine rush, as enemies spray blood everywhere and guns have a satisfying hit pause when you land a shot. The graphics hit that sweet spot of nostalgic PS1 era 3D graphics upscaled to the point where they aren't to garish. An advantage of keeping the style simple is that enemies pop out the background and you never feel like you don't know where you got hit from, a must in these types of single-player shooters.  

A Mass of Mechanics Without the Mess

There are so many separate levels to this game, and yet all of them are so accessible that you can really sink your teeth into them. Also, Ultrakill respects you enough to allow the player to experiment with them instead of telling them all their intricacies. To explain this, I want to showcase some of my favorites here:

Blood-Every enemy, outside of a few later on, bleed when shot. To encourage an aggressive yet risky playstyle, you heal when you are in range of the blood of shot enemies. It is an intricate dance, when you take damage, of evading enemy shots and yet getting close enough to soak in their blood to heal. It's such a smart way of making the player be more aggressive, and stopping anyone from simply camping behind cover and not engaging. 

The Combo System-When in combat situations you'll notice a very pronounced Devil May Cry combo meter tick up until the skirmish ends. It will track almost everything you do, and getting to the apex of the meter is some of the most satisfying gameplay I've ever experienced. It's another way the game is passively encouraging aggressive combat from a player, rewarding technically difficult maneuvers and shots with a higher score and combo result. This is intertwined with a rating you get after beating a level, with S tier clears requiring tight precision and speed. 

The Coin-Fairly early on you'll gain access to an upgrade to the starter pistol that let's you throw out a coin, that you can then shoot that ricochets into any enemy near you into a headshot. What this accomplishes is a way to engage with enemies while running away from them and not facing them. You can dodge away in a circle, throw out the coin, shoot it, and then watch it slam into enemies behind you. Also, and the devs don't tell you this and simply leave it to you to experiment, after you throw out the coin you can switch weapons and see their bullets get ricocheted into enemies (mainly a huge blast from a railgun you get later on). The raw depth found in this one alternate fire has as much application and use as 20 mechanics I've seen from other games, and that is the beauty of Ultrakill. 

Secrets-Ultrakill has a huge sense of discovery and hidden little areas in its largely linear set of levels (even in the non completed set we see in early access). Tons of hidden bosses, crazy set pieces you'll only find by searching for them, and easter eggs that emulate that sense of discovery in those old doom games. The game at this point is somewhere around 1/3 finished in terms of campaign levels, yet there is well over 20 hours of content to explore through for those who really desire it. 

Verdict

I won't be making a final score as this remains in early access without a completed campaign, but I am so deeply engrossed with what is going on with Ultrakill that I can't help but recommend it. I'd say wait for a bit more updates if you aren't as interested or skillful at fps games to delve into its levels, but if you are there should be no doubt that Ultrakill is worth your time.