Intense retro shooter Ultrakill is even more metal than Doom

You know the imps in Doom, who fling fireballs at you? Instead of sidestepping them, ever wish you were badass enough to just punch those fireballs back at them with your bare fists?

Welcome to Ultrakill, an incredibly fast-paced retro shooter that I daresay may even be more metal than Doom, especially considering you regain health by showering yourself in your enemies' blood. Gross. Very effective, though! And there's plenty of blood to go around.

I played a bit of Ultrakill this week, and this game is not messing around. If you thought Doom Eternal was fast, I hope your reflexes are ready to pump things up a notch. You're speedy as hell, able to wallclimb and zip around at breakneck speed in a knee-slide so vicious it creates sparks. And you can leap into the air and come smashing back down to the ground like a meteor, splattering your foes with a battering shockwave.

Not a lot of games give you a massive powertrip before you've even laid your hands on your first gun, but that's just the kind of game Ultrakill is. And once you've got guns, things only get bloodier.

Thing is, your enemies are shockingly fast, too. When the first one ran at me I genuinely said "Jesus!" out loud, and from that point on I basically never stopped moving. You can't—you'll be swarmed and ripped to shreds or torched with fire or otherwise killed if you slow down even for a moment.

It's intense, but there's a real feeling of satisfaction when you're pinging around like a pinball, blasting monsters in the face, healing in their blood, and sending projectiles back with a swipe of your fist. You can take a look at some footage from Ultrakill in New Blood Interactive's segment on The PC Gaming Show:

I didn't get too far in Ultrakill—at one point I encountered a monster who blasted me with something I couldn't punch back, and even chipping away at him while bouncing off the walls (and dodging underneath it to try to bathe in some of the sweet, sweet blood it was spraying) wasn't enough to keep me alive for long. But then, my reflexes aren't what they once were. I'm sure you'll do better.

Ultrakill is due out this summer. Here's a Steam page for ya.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.