Easily the tightest designed, most satisfying shooter I've ever experienced. The culmination of a great many trends into something more than the sum of its parts. The designer has been unafraid to layer mechanical complexity and strange interactions together as deep as he can. 36 hours here and a bit more in the demo before EA release, and I'm still finding tricks and mechanical interactions I didn't know about.

There's a school of design thought that says a shooter should be a straightforward and fairly simple affair. Explained to make execution alone king, as we saw with Doom Eternal's endless popups. Ultrakill is a perfectly written refutation of that sort of foolishness. It is what it is, and leaves the player with the joy of discovering its intricacies and techniques for themselves. What direct popups it gives you are kept to a bare minimum of surface mechanics.

A lot of other people have waxed on about incredible movement mechanics and satisfying combat. These Ultrakill has, but it's perhaps greatest feature is its ability to let you discover it instead of telling you. "The WHAT does WHAT when you WHAT!?" Being an excited reaction it gets over and over.

Also, the tone and presentation of the story missions is impeccable. The level design on display there is absolute art. Both in terms of tone and visuals, and in guiding the player through self-teaching the mechanics, and presenting new challenges. Very much in the original Doom sense, the enemies aren't super complex, but the calculus of how to deal with them is shifted mostly by how they're placed in the level itself, and how that's designed.

I have never used the word masterpiece to describe a game before. Not unironically, anyway. But I'm breaking it out for Ultrakill.

Easily the tightest designed, most satisfying shooter I've ever experienced. The culmination of a great many trends into something more than the sum of its parts. The designer has been unafraid to layer mechanical complexity and strange interactions together as deep as he can. 36 hours here and a bit more in the demo before EA release, and I'm still finding tricks and mechanical interactions I didn't know about. There's a school of design thought that says a shooter should be a straightforward and fairly simple affair. Explained to make execution alone king, as we saw with Doom Eternal's endless popups. Ultrakill is a perfectly written refutation of that sort of foolishness. It is what it is, and leaves the player with the joy of discovering its intricacies and techniques for themselves. What direct popups it gives you are kept to a bare minimum of surface mechanics. A lot of other people have waxed on about incredible movement mechanics and satisfying combat. These Ultrakill has, but it's perhaps greatest feature is its ability to let you discover it instead of telling you. "The WHAT does WHAT when you [i]WHAT!?"[/i] Being an excited reaction it gets over and over. Also, the tone and presentation of the story missions is impeccable. The level design on display there is absolute art. Both in terms of tone and visuals, and in guiding the player through self-teaching the mechanics, and presenting new challenges. Very much in the original Doom sense, the enemies aren't super complex, but the calculus of how to deal with them is shifted mostly by how they're placed in the level itself, and how that's designed. I have never used the word [i]masterpiece[/i] to describe a game before. Not unironically, anyway. But I'm breaking it out for Ultrakill.