Easily my favorite game of all time, ULTRAKILL is a beautiful return to form for quake-like shooters, and kicks so much ass you'll find your boot up the ass of whatever demon you shove it into. There is no feeling greater than mastering the beautifully weaved movement, gun play and mechanics, ground slamming a dozen husks into the air and perfectly slamming them with a shotgun core eject, lining up enemies to pierce them all with a railgun blast, or shooting a coin into the air, only to punch it towards an enemy, blasting the coin through its skull, instantly killing it. Fistful of dollar, baby.

Perfectly maneuvering the levels with a mix of dashing, jumping and wall jumping is a insanely captivating feeling, running down the malicious faces and swordsmachines that did the same to you beforehand. The tangible feeling of improvement where you go from slowly learning, sheepishly hiding from each husk that runs towards you, to running through enemies, to bathing in the blood, achieving perfect ranks. That is where I am, having gotten every level to perfect rank with all challenges completed, and if you can't tell, I f**king love this game.

The difficulty can be absolutely brutal, with you dying countless times to bosses, hordes or due to your own masochism while trying to get perfect time for a P-rank. Despite how many times you have to retry, the game never feels unfair in its difficulty (bar one encounter... if you know the game, you know what I'm talking about.) The game takes a lot of mechanical and hand-eye coordination skill, and if you hear that and feel discouraged, don't be afraid- the game comes with easy difficulties, accessibility options and cheats out of the box, (including an auto-aim feature) ensuring anybody who wants to play this game can. While this may seem like 'pandering' (or whatever term Gamers [TM] are using now), just look at it as the game being more accessible to people who aren't as good at FPS games, meaning more people can enjoy this wonderful game.

The graphics are perfect for what they are, with a retro Playstation 1 aesthetic, with the game being by default having its resolution scaled down, with effects like texture warping color compression adding to the feeling that you're playing a dingy mid-90s game. Not to mention, the game is insanely violent. It bathes you in blood (literally) as you tear through your opponents.

The story, while not the most important aspect, is simply put, fantastic. Firstly, if it's not your cup of tea, you don't have to follow anything that happens, with the extent of the 'required' story being to play through the levels and say to yourself, "Oh look, it's this a-hole again" when you have a rematch against a tough boss. However, if you pay attention, you'll get expert amounts of visual and direct storytelling which tells of the destruction of humanity, and the torture experienced by the souls damned to hell. Hidden in certain areas, there are (minor spoilers) terminals with poetic stories detailing different parts of the underworld. The visual storytelling is also incredibly powerful, where they nicely display a feeling of dread and progress the story without telling you, with the world-building evolving as you play, such as (SPOILERS) after defeating Act 1's final boss, Gabriel, (voiced by the amazing Gianni Matragrano) now in level 4-2 there is a mural that depicts him with the text 'FALSE PROPHET' written in blood, as he was disgraced after being defeated by a machine.

The secrets in the game are so well done to the point where even levels I have gotten P-ranks on numerous times still leave me feeling like there's something I've missed. Unlocking alternate weapons, secret missions and shortcuts is so fun I still do them even if I've unlocked everything.

However, despite my loving rambling, it's not perfect. Often times, a lot of enemies stop becoming a challenge once you discover ways to kill them en mass, (Note: I'm playing on the 'Violent' difficulty, the hardest difficulty released as of the time of this review) leading to a lot of the tension being sucked out. Even boss enemies like the Malicious Face and Swordsmachine are easily taken care of with a few shotgun blasts using the quick-swap method. And even the mini-bosses sprinkled into the later levels like the Mindflayer and the Sisyphean Insurrectionist are learned and conquered easily after they hand your ass to you a few times. It could be the consequence of me playing the Cyber Grind, the game's randomized wave-based mode (wave 31 high score atm!) so much, leading me to learning how to fight them easily, but either way replaying the game feels very easy because of it.

Another issue is the lack of weapons. I know this is because of early access, but it's still something to note. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the game works around this limitation by having a large amount of weapon variations, with each gun currently having 1-2 variations you can buy, and the basic pistol being able to be replaced by a revolver. (which kicks ass), Once again, it's not a bad thing, as the amount that is given to you with a small amount of guns is quite a lot, but overall they don't change your playstyle too much. The arms do change how you approach situations, (especially with the grappling hook) but not enough to be all too notable. They are, however, VERY badass.

Hey look, I've gone this whole review without mentioning DOOM Eternal. Well, here goes. Having played plenty of both games, originally, I thought that Eternal was too slow for me after playing ULTRAKILL, although there's something to be said in how DOOM handles its rip and tear difficulty ramping, as the real gameplay loop of the game is managing your resources while constantly dealing damage and managing which demons you're fighting at what time. And while it may seem like you're insanely powerful in Eternal, that's mostly a surface-level analysis, as in reality you have to be always pushing back, since if you don't, the game absolutely will. There are advantages to limiting when you can use certain abilities and not allowing you everything at all times, (For example, having a cooldown on Flame Belch, needing to touch the ground before your dash recharges, only being able to use the Super Shotgun's meat hook on a cooldown, etc) as they add to the increase of tension and mechanical skills other than aim that's present in DOOM. In ULTRAKILL, you have so many tools at all times that if you know how to use them all, you stop needing to manage how you go about things, leading to a more superficial feeling of destruction compared to the feeling of mastering DOOM Eternal's resource management and mechanics)

In conclusion, despite the few issues I have with ULTRAKILL, you should buy this game. It is an impressive level of quality and polish for being made by a single developer, with very refined movement and shooting mechanics to boot. The atmosphere and visual storytelling is so incredible I feel like I'm actually in hell. You feel so powerful destroying demon after demon, sending them to Super-Hell, or wherever they go after you kill them. And the thing is, the game attains this level of quality while being unfinished and in early access. You need to play this game.