Ultrakill wears its inspirations on its sleeve like no one's business, and it pulls it off flawlessly. I originally discovered the game when a friend told me to go to DevilMayQuake.com, and it redirected to the Steam store page. And DevilMayQuake is the best way to describe this game. It takes the character action framework of Devil May Cry, the dynamic, reactive music, the style system, the combos and flair, and implants it directly into an FPS framework that is so close to being Quake that I can't decide if I prefer the movement of Quake to this.


The gameplay is about as slick as it could be, Surprisingly. This game has so much extra stuff worked into the baseline of Quake, yet it feels every bit as natural and smooth as Quake ever did. After a short time where you get used to the extra mechanics, the wall climbing, jumping, sliding, dashing, swapping weapons for extra points, etc, you'll be going ballistic. If this game was third-person I expect it would look every bit as amazing as high-end DMC combo gameplay does, maybe even better.

The weapons all feel amazing, too. You have this absolute cannon of a revolver as a baseline, a shotgun with such a satisfying sound that I've contemplated making it my text tone, a true successor to the Super Nailgun of Quake, and a railgun that's pretty much a BFG. And each of these has at least 2 alternate fire modes, and likely different variants of each weapon planned, too. There's such a wealth of content in the weaponry department already and there are only one act and the prelude done at the time of writing this.


The visuals here aren't so different from what we've been seeing a lot recently with these throwback shooters. What sets this game apart is its strong inspiration from the PSX of all things. With all settings off, it looks low poly with a generous colour palette, but you can dive into the settings and start making it look more pixelated via downscaling, but there's also texture warp and vertex warp settings that are a joy to fiddle with, and you can even make the colours get all bit-crunched down to size with the colour compression settings. I don't think it's too far out of the realm of reality to say that you could get this looking like a 1:1 clone of PSX Quake with enough fiddling in the settings.

Outside of that, we've got the general aesthetic of ULTRAKILL, which is shockingly diverse seeing as I can't recall a point in the entire game so far where you're actually 'outside'. There are medieval castles of multiple kinds with the accompanying poorly lit conditions, there are false outdoors segments where everything is a screen projecting the sky, there are more modern looking streets and buildings, a subway, and the inside of a giant, where the entire last part of act 1 takes place.

The use of colour is also nothing to scoff at, this game isn't dull at all, and it's not shy of using every colour that suits the setting they're going for (not like it matters, it'll all be red by the time you're done gibbing everything in the nearby area).


If there was ever going to be a shortlist or segment, it'd be here. Through the 11 hours I've played at the time of writing this Early Access review, I've encountered a total of 0 bugs and 0 balance issues. This game is absolutely in working order and polished to an absolute sheen that not even the best games of the genre in Early Access can keep up with.
This is the gold standard for what Early Access could, and should, be.


I'm excited for what's to come, and so should you. This game is only one-third of the way done and yet there's so much content here that it'll take you a hot minute to get through, and the combat is so fast, frenetic, and adrenaline-fueled, that it should keep you hooked. Everything about ULTRAKILL is great so far, and I can't wait to revisit it when Act 2 drops.


Note: Final score and review are only valid until the next content update, everything should be taken with a grain of salt once new content drops, and until the review is updated to reflect changes in the game.