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About 4 years ago, I first discovered DOOM 2016, a modernized experience of the classic 8bit DOOM franchise where, well everyone knows, you fight demons throughout Hell and Mars to save the world. This was where I discovered my love for single player FPS shooters, leading me to buying DOOM Eternal and continuing my obsession with the Fast-Paced First-Person shooter genre. However, something seemed missing with DOOM; it was action packed, had tons of content, and an amazing soundtrack, but after a while it got stale. That was when I had discovered ULTRAKILL, which, at first glance just seemed just like some random indie shooter that I would get bored of, only until I started looking more into it and realized what it really was: retro DOOM with 10 times the high octane.
ULTRAKILL is a video game where you play as a characterless, silent robot named V1 that pillages through the various layers of Hell based on Dante’s Inferno. The gameplay is extremely fast paced, for reference, in DOOM 2016, DOOMGUY travels supposedly at a speed of around 57mph, in ULTRAKILL, you can jump up to the skybox and run so fast you can traverse the longer levels of the game within seconds at full speed. This speed is crucial to the nature of the game, where you battle a variety of enemies, husks, demons, other robots and even Heaven’s angels. Each enemy type has their own niches and each enemy within them are unique to each other, ranging from the measly robot drones that fly around and kamikaze when destroyed, to Hideos Mass, a demon so utterly large it cant move and serves as artillery in the small confines of the levels, the variety in enemies is fulfilling. My favorite experiences in the game are the CyberGrind, where you can play an endless mode fighting all types of enemies in some form of simulation, it has great music and a constantly changing terrain which keeps the gameplay fresh every run, and also the boss fights which are some of the defining features of this game, my personal favorite bosses are V2, a supposedly “superior” robot to you that plays as the classic “You but stronger” trope, and Minos Prime, a ghost so powerful and angry even the Heavens feared him. Story-wise, ULTRAKILL is rather small, with the only snippets of lore coming from books left around the LIMBO and LUST layers of Hell that show the story of the damned, and enemy descriptions that you can see in a basically arcade type interface at the beginning of every level. ULTRAKILL’s story design however small, is absolutely my favorite type of storytelling; small snippets of lore, a brief and obscure story of how the events lead to where we are in-game, it lets you theorize on what happened directly before and what will happen late in the game without confusing you too much. Just as simplistic the story is, so is the visual design of the game; based on retro DOOM, it’s the classic pixelated, low poly, early 90s type design with a good touch of modernity with the effects and speed. This is something I particularly enjoy with indie games, that arent afraid of stepping away from the hyperrealistic art style that destroys my GPU, and favoring a unique yet familiar style that lets you do all the shenanigans without crashing your computer (until you spawn about 500-ish enemies, something I enjoy doing in the sandbox). On the topic of style, the music is unique compared to other games in its genre aswell. Although I’m not particularly a fan of edm-type music, ULTRAKILL is the exception and has an amazing score that compliments the gameplay. The fast paced drums and almost 8bit electrical type music is extremely fitting for a robot running through retro Hell, leaving carnage wherever it travels. All in all, ULTRAKILL is a great indie game that fans of extremely fast paced FPS games should try, it’s a beautiful rendition of what indie developers are capable of, with just one individual making the music, gameplay, art, and code, it's a feat of design. Its controls aren’t difficult, and it could run on probably slower than usual PCs. More people should support smaller indie creators like these, so more masterpieces could continue to be made.
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My name is Mario, and am currently studying Digital Design and Game Art in DSA. This is my class blog Archives
January 2023
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The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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