It's hard for me to fall in love with a game before I've played it. ULTRAKILL was an exception; I got algorithmically recommended and subsequently suckered in to a twenty-minute YouTube video on the mechanics of one of the weapon types (HerbMessiah's Coin Mechanics) and knew that I couldn't not play the game after that. Chewed through the demo that night and bought the game the next morning.
This arena shooter manages to slowly drip-feed the player its complexities, introducing enemies and weapons to fight them with, all the while slowly ramping up the combat rhythm. Air movement might feel floaty and unresponsive at first, a stark contrast to options on the ground, but dashes, slams, and wall bounces complement the controls beautifully, letting you fly all over the game's varied arenas and setpieces. The game is designed around rapid weapon-switching, granting you a full arsenal, each weapon punchy and full of nuance. At peak intensity (and peak fun) you will be rapid-fire switching between weapons dishing out hails of bullets while dodging and weaving enemy projectiles like a particularly lethal fly on cocaine.
The community has picked apart the weapons and movement to quite an insane degree, and at the higher levels the game is surgically taken apart in that particular way only dedicated speedrunners do, complete with dedicated lingo for some of the more complex tech. Some degree of canonization exists, with the developers tweaking, refining, and rewarding some of the system's interactions into fun advanced techniques. I fully expect the game's "VERY HARD" difficulties, not yet available and presumably under development, to expect nothing less of total mastery from the player in at least some of these areas.
At time of review, only Act 1 and 2 are out. I have not gone back and achieved the highest ranks (nor their associated "rewards", no spoilers ;3) across all levels, though I had started to. Although originally starting on the game's recommended difficulty (just called "STANDARD"), I found myself moving up to "VIOLENT" after going through the first couple of levels, the game seemly having done its job of inducing the desire for difficulty into me. While I don't expect to be slabraildeadcoining God Herself in "ULTRAKILL MUST DIE", I do greatly look forward to completing the finished version of the game when it comes out.
This arena shooter manages to slowly drip-feed the player its complexities, introducing enemies and weapons to fight them with, all the while slowly ramping up the combat rhythm. Air movement might feel floaty and unresponsive at first, a stark contrast to options on the ground, but dashes, slams, and wall bounces complement the controls beautifully, letting you fly all over the game's varied arenas and setpieces. The game is designed around rapid weapon-switching, granting you a full arsenal, each weapon punchy and full of nuance. At peak intensity (and peak fun) you will be rapid-fire switching between weapons dishing out hails of bullets while dodging and weaving enemy projectiles like a particularly lethal fly on cocaine.
The community has picked apart the weapons and movement to quite an insane degree, and at the higher levels the game is surgically taken apart in that particular way only dedicated speedrunners do, complete with dedicated lingo for some of the more complex tech. Some degree of canonization exists, with the developers tweaking, refining, and rewarding some of the system's interactions into fun advanced techniques. I fully expect the game's "VERY HARD" difficulties, not yet available and presumably under development, to expect nothing less of total mastery from the player in at least some of these areas.
At time of review, only Act 1 and 2 are out. I have not gone back and achieved the highest ranks (nor their associated "rewards", no spoilers ;3) across all levels, though I had started to. Although originally starting on the game's recommended difficulty (just called "STANDARD"), I found myself moving up to "VIOLENT" after going through the first couple of levels, the game seemly having done its job of inducing the desire for difficulty into me. While I don't expect to be slabraildeadcoining God Herself in "ULTRAKILL MUST DIE", I do greatly look forward to completing the finished version of the game when it comes out.