INFINITE HYPERDEATH, NEVERENDING MEGAMURDER, A SHIT-TON OF ULTRAUNALIVE
ULTRAKILL. I mean, it's in the name. ULTRAKILL is a fast-paced FPS game created by Arsi "Hakita" Patala and published by New Blood Interactive. If you don't know what New Blood Interactive is, you better start getting used to it, I'll be talking about them a lot in future reviews. These crazy people pick up crazy boomer-shooter/old-school type games and independant developers, meme the hell out of them, and release them to a big and dedicated audience. The games they publish are so good it's criminal. Back to ULTRAKILL. The project started development around January 2018 as a simple FPS project in Unity, and over the years it has recieved a major amount of updates and devlogs that make the game really make people get what they expect from a game called ULTRAKILL, and my god, after all these updates, it delivers.
In ULTRAKILL, you play as V1, a blood-fueled killer machine who ventures into the layers of Hell for blood after humanity goes extinct, or, in other words, "MANKIND IS DEAD, BLOOD IS FUEL, HELL IS FULL". The gameplay pairs with this story really well. There are ZERO health pickups in the game. The only way to regain health is to go up to enemies and shoot all the blood out of them. When playing the game for the first time, this'll seem like a worthless gimmick that makes it piss hard and unfair, but when you start playing the game more, it becomes automatic. Whenever you see a lower tier enemy, you'll start foaming from the mouth because of the potential blood explosion that you can run right through and instantly get all of your health replenished in an instant.
A giant explosion of sweet, sweet, BLOOD! (Source: Steam Page)
The arsenal given to you is amazing. The weapons in the game don't have ammo, all of them can be fired forever, which might encourage just using the strongest weapons and nothing else, but the weapon balance is done so well that you want to use all the weapons. During Act 1 of the game, you are given 4 main weapons throughout. The first weapon given to you is technically your arm. This is a basic melee weapon that can be used at any point in the game for any reason, although there are upgrades for your arm that you get throughout the game. The first gun you get is at the very beginning of the game in a playable cutscene, the Revolver. Now, if you decide to watch any lets plays of the game, I beg you to play the demo of the game first and get through the intro cutscene. When booting up the game and getting put in this world a badass killing machine fueled by blood, it really makes you FEEL like a badass killing machine. It is an amazing introduction to the game that I cannot express with words, you just gotta play it for yourself. Anyways, back to the weapon. The Revolver like a basic pistol in the Doom series of games. Something that you really can't go wrong with. There is a twist, however. Each weapon in the game has alternate variations that alter the way they function. These functions are separated into colors, with the main function being blue, and the alternate variations being green, red, and yellow, however a lot of the red and yellow variations haven't been implemented yet. The main function of the revolver is a strong, laser piercer shot that can destroy glass and pierce through multiple enemies. The green variation is the Marksman Revolver, which, when clicking Alt-Fire, you throw a coin into the air, and with good timing, you can shoot it and it will automatically ricoshet your pistol shot to the nearest enemy weakpoint*. This seems like a gimmick at first, but when mastering the skill, it becomes a crucial part of the game moving forward. *There is a LOT of strategy and meta to the coins so it's not as simple as "nearest enemy weakpoint". HerbMessiah has an amazing guide about coin mechanics here.
The coin mechanic. The beauty of that shine... (Source: HerbMessiah)
OH. MY. GOD. The movement. If you've played Blood, think of that game's movement, but way more bouncy and energetic. In the game, you have a couple different ways to move around the game world. You have regular running, jumping, dashing, groundpounding, and walljumping. During the game, you are always running at full sprint. Your jump is also buffed too. You get double jumps. That is all. Another thing you have is a stamina bar. When dashing or doing a strong groundpound, your stamina bar will go down. You have 3 sections on the stamina bar. Dashing negates one, and performing a strong groundpound negates 2. Your walljumps are also limited, you only have 3 walljumps before you have to touch the ground to replenish them, which forces you to combine your basic movement and things like explosive weapons in order to move around. On top of that, the community has made a lot of videos about different ways that you can use the movement to your advantage, with videos like HerbMessiah's movement tech video. All of the techniques work so well together that it makes it fun to play without it being way too bouncy and hard to control. It's fast and snappy but it's easy to master because it's so responsive and controllable. Like Blood, it's movement that people can't really describe how it feels to play. That segues into...
I want to say SO MUCH MORE of this game, but I can't really say a lot without spoiling the entire thing for people who haven't played it! It's an AMAZING game full of content. It's got a whole 2 acts (each containing three, 4 level chapters) and a 4 level long prologue that takes place before the main acts, plus an endless mode, PLUS secret levels, PLUS a sandbox mode. The game is a masterpiece in the boomer-shooter category. There's a reason that it's one of the highest rated games on Steam EVER. Seriously! The game is an amazing experience for people who are new to the boomer-shooter category and for long-time veterans of the scene, and it's a great time for people who are a fan of FPS games in general. If you don't have 20 dollars (just rechecked, the price went up because of the release of the new act, oopies), play the demo at devilmayquake.com and if you like the game, support the devs by buying the game, because it is 100% worth it. Do it!! Do it!!!!!!
