The Real Reason Ultrakill is So Popular 

BIGEDIE

Something unique about ultrakill i havent seen anyone mention yet is the first bootup screen. It starts you out with volume sliders that at base are set to off. You get to set your preferred volume BEFORE even reaching the main menu and do not get your ears blown out by a game thats set to max volume. Its the only game ive seen to have such a courtesy feature.

you can punch your shotgun bullets to make them violenter this is 10/10 game design

Small correction, to earn a P grade in a level you have to earn a S in all three ranks AND complete the level without dying. Easier said than done, in many of them.

Ultrakill's strength is that it only PASSIVELY Nudges players into trying to improve, instead of Wallblocking the Player if they won't learn something the developer WANTED players to (Marauder for example, any Brain dead idiot will try to Xmen Juggernaut or Spooderman Rhino it like they do with every other enemy, cue them getting butthurt when Marauder Chops their PicoPP). And even then you can just ignore it and try some stupid challenge (Such as Defeat All Bosses, Parry or friendly fire only or complete the stages without certain weapons or combos). The game won't stop you playing like a Dumb idiot doing some self imposed Challenge, but will always indirectly nudge them that they have something to improve at the game.

Ultrakill truly does give me that oldschool game feeling, with all the weird secrets and exploit myths, substantial unlockable content.etc

Fun video, though you don't have to use slam storage to reach the surface for the Leviathan challenge. You can also ride a rocket to the surface too.

the thing about the HUMONGOUS DECEASE is the testing, train combos, see what you can use on the long run, coin juggling, coin railing and coin addition railing, shotgun and revolver swapping, rocket riding, everything, and beating your mission's old record simple game packed with user generated content

At launch the game will have a level editor (which is more a modding tool allowing for custom textures, models, mechanics) with incredible customisability. This will make the game even more replayable due to community content. Also when talking about the movement you showed rocket jumping but not the best part about the rocket launcher: Rocket surfing like Dante from DMC3.

you really don't need to master coin setups or half of what people have figured out to get P ranks, they really aren't that hard as long as you know the level and where all the enemies are

I'd like to comment that the *intended* way to reach the surface in 10 seconds is actually Rocket Riding. Basically, you shoot a rocket, time stop it, jump on, and ride it to the surface. Due to the changed physics underwater, it doesn't fall, like it would above water. This not only teaches you about Rocket Riding, it also teaches you about the physics difference water has on rocket riding.

First Doom, now Ultrakill? What's next? Destructive Shooting?

My favorite thing about the game is the insane skill ceiling and the amount of things you can do, 90% of the things you can do in this game would be an exploit that would later get patched out in any other game, I can’t imagine seeing slam storage or punching your own shotgun shots in any other game Great video

The fact that this game is at my top 5, and it's no even finished is insane to me

for me it's the musics, fast-pace and the feeling of the weapons

You kinda breezed through a huge part of ULTRAKILL'S replayability: mastering the mechanics. Yeah, you can shoot your gun, slide, dash and wall jump, but did you know that you can: Punch you own shotgun bullets to make them explode; switch between the two variants of your shotgun to shoot faster; parry your shotgun while switching to shoot explosive rounds rapidly. With the core eject variant, you can shoot the projectile with the revolver resulting in a bigger explosion (and if you shoot it with the explosive variant of the railgun, it instead becomes a nuke,) you can also shoot a coin with the revolver after a core eject and it will automatically hit the core, making it easier. With the pump variant, you can overpump the shotgun, creating a huge explosion around you instead of shooting, hurting you as well. If you dash before exploding, you can negate the self damage completely. If you stand very close to a projectile-based enemy and shoot while the enemy is charging, you can parry the projectile with the shotgun. That is, to my knowledge, all the tech you can do with 1 gun. Notice how other weapons and mechanics can interact with each other, creating really interesting and powerful moves. I believe this is the biggest reason why the game is so good. It gives you an interactive world where you can experiment and practice these mechanics. I laugh my ass off everytime I orbital cannon strike a poor husk. Also, the music in an *_absolute_* delight. Great video.

Minor correction: P-ranks require no deaths as well as all S-ranks

This video is beautiful. Thank you for it. It's so objective, and yet so complete. Nice job, man.

Going from taking 20 minutes to learn and beat V2's revenge fight to bring able to Perfect it in less than two minutes is a great time

good video, but at 6:40 you said that the soul orbs are for gun unlocks? That's not right. Style points (the P in the top right of the terminal) are what you use to unlock guns. Souls orbs didn't have any use till this update, but now unlock the gun skins.

The reason I like this game is pretty much everything is easy to learn. Nothing requires intense skill to do, only doing it fast and constistently is difficult. For someone who struggles getting over the hurdle of stuff being really hard to start with, and struggling to even get a foothold, ultrakill is easy to get a foothold in. Its great because as a speedrunner, I can do pretty much any strat in most levels, just slowly before working up and doing it fast. Its why I hated ultraboost clips and kinda hate rocket launcher clips now. You cant do em slowly, you either do it or you fail, there is little room of doing it alright. There are skills checks. Things that test your skills, but none of those individual skills are difficult. Its not that hard to hit most things, they have generous hit boxes, and weapons are all simple and intuitive. Its not hard to dodge, you have so many movement options and can become and invincible sliding robot of death if you slide right sfter a dash. Its about putting everything together, putting together a bunch of small, easy things in a way that is pretty difficult. Most of those little things are intuitive as well, not random obtuse things you have to learn. Some things are, slam storage, dash storage, they are things you have to learn about, its unlikely you will figure them out, but most other things are stuff you can get from jusr experimenting. Dashing makes you temporarily invincible, so dashing just as you shoot and explosion makes you invincible to it, allowing you to overpump and not die. Back to speed running because 99% of my time with this game has been just that, there are only two things that I dont think follow this ethos, oops boosting, where while in collision sometimes the game goes oops and yeets you super fast, and rl clipping, if you hit a wall while riding a rocket close to a ceiling, you pop out. for pretty much everything else, there are easier, slower ways of doing it. For 1-4 for example, there is a super cool kill where you coin punch him to death, requiring a deadcoin with awkward timing and some difficult movement. But you could just punch the coin 5 times and only lose a little bit of time, 3-4 seconds or so, and it is far, far easier to execute. You can work on learning how to do it before moving on, and because V2 has a long animation before the fight, there is a lot of leeway when learning the psycho strats, allowing you to take it slow and put it all together. To sum up a long ramble in 6 words, easy to learn, hard to master.

I remember during 2018 I search up “devil may cry fps” and found the ultrakill demo, never regretted it

Something I also love about the combo feature is that it actually has in-game consequences for having a low combo, coming from the "Hard Damage" or the gray part of your health bar you can't heal right after getting hurt. The bar diminishes quicker the higher your combo is when you're hit, allowing you to heal sooner the higher your rating is.

What I love about ultrakill? It's really creative and simple,yet gives you a LOAD of ways to do different unnecessary tricks,which can turn a long level into a speedrun - you can parry - enemies,projectiles,hits,your own shotgun shots,your coins You can parry ANYTHING! Even a fist 20x times bigger than you You can explode core shotgun shot with a hitscan to make it stronger,or with malicious railgun - a damn NUKE! Game also sorta pushes you a bit to switch weapons - they become fresh - more points at max,or dull - not giving you any style Plus,the graphics style by itself - even if you lower then,they still look natural! And,one little fact I also love - first ever merchandise of the company - Body pillows for V1,Mirage and Gabriel!

Great Vid! The only mistake I noticed is that to P-Rank a level, you also can't die/restart.

As Gianni Matragrano’s #5 fan (verified), this is a certified Gabriel Ultrakill moment

ALL of your videos are amazing! Subbed :)

I guess ill throw my hat in on what I love about ultrakill; Its DMC5 as an FPS game. And I mean that more than just the fact there is a style meter. Between the movement and the weapons the game gives both freedom and creativity to do whatever you want as you play, and those who mastered the systems even get a lovely 5000P bonus for the store for taking no damage at all. The end of level ranks and missing secret orbs almost taunt you to explore more and play better. That being said the game never hard walls you off but it will sure as shit skill check you with V2 and Gabriel, even if you do end up pulling a Mayo% to just pistol your way through a problem. Also can we just talk about the absurd creativity of this game with weapon interactions? Like a coin chaining red rail into a core eject round to cause some of the juiciest nuclear stall outs in gaming? Like that explosion is so massive with so much damage I'm pretty sure it chugs anyone's hardware. The only issue all the creativity in Ultrakill causes in my opinion is the absolute Mariomaker levels of bullshit people will come up with if this game gets a level editor...

Actually it’s because Gabriel has a nice voice and he makes me shiver

2:56 P rank is actually granted if you have S in all 3 stats but you also have to beat a level with no deaths/restarts

I love how all your videos (at least what I've seen) have the Risk Of Rain 2 soundtrack in them!

Bro dude the red border around the thumbnail made me think ive watched it before!! Anyway yes ultrakill is amazing also don’t forget there’s a level editor coming on release

damn this vid blew up grats man

Chris Christodoulou's music is always a pleasant surprise in a video. Good review, I'll have to give Ultrakill a try! I had promised myself to never buy into early access anymore buut I shall, just this once.

I play this game on the daily and have been for about a month now, its truly the most rewarding shooter ive ever played and it just keeps giving, i feel i still have such a ways to go in regards to skill and it has me hooked

6:08 If only we knew the suffering that would befall us next

Ultrakill is so good is automatically became my favorite FPS before Act 2 even came out. And at this point Hakita would have to pull some Doom Eternal DLC bullshit for it to not be my favorite FPS anymore.

You forgot to mention the fact that there are *Official Body Pillows* I'm serious

It's good :)

Secrets and replayability is why I *fucking love ULTRAKILL.*

I love Ultrakill because the super-hard boss Minos Prime can be beaten with your fists.

playing ultrakill with no screen shake at 145 fov than watching a video with screenat 90 fov feels wierd

"The P ranks weren't a reward, they were a warning"

my ears are highly tuned to spot Transistor - Impossible anywhere you cannot hide it from me

You can also do the leviathan challenge by riding a rocket up, or ultra posting upwards or to the end of the section.

Honestly, I've been replaying ultrakill more than I have other games! I really like it, as a retro fps fan, this is really cool.

Ultrakill is also replayable through weird challenges you can give yourself. I recently beat all the currently released layers with just the arms (albeit on lenient difficulty, yes I’m a wimp) and it definitely helped me get better with using my arsenal and timing to get the most out of what I had. It made me need to slow down and see challenges from a different angle, which was really cool and interesting.

0:17 LEBRON JAMES spotted using THE SLAB MARKSMAN revolver

With so many new mechanics to learn and master Ultrakill got more Eternal than DOOM Eternal

so true, the weird secret lvls and actual cool secret content as a reward for perfecting the levels is mew under the truck, or L is real lvl stuff, i love it.

this game is the rule of cool manifested into reality.

oh my gosh! i have found him! i have found EUSTACE! from Narnia

4:30 funny how people assume slam storage is the intended way... Rocket riding IS the intended way to get the challenge done. It's just us, pretty much old players, knowing about every tech ever

I feel like that Ultrakill is so good because it takes inspiration from original source. It isn't just doom and quake. It's also dmc and Serious sam and titanfall and many more

you can kill demons and angels with a coin, thats why

Mad respect for including the ROR2 soundtrack

for me, the best part about Ultrakill is that some of the best parts about this game are either callbacks to the past, developer self-indulgences, or 'accidental innovations'/ascended bugs. we all know how to rocket jump, it's cool, let's be able to do that. why not have a rival battle? they're fucking awesome! hey, DMC and it's spiritual sequel Bayonetta let you ride rockets, let's add that since we're doing literally Devil may Quake. oh hey, Titanfall's Slidehopping is cool, but we can do better. oh shit, my community figured out how to abuse my engine to punch shotgun pellets into explosive slug rounds and to launch themselves sky high: let's make sure to never patch those outside of making sure it stays in the game. the game oozes style and indulgent power fantasies and gently nudges you to indulge with the developer of the game in these power fantasies. ALSO THE GAME EVEN CANONIZES SOME OF THESE TRICKS. seriously if you ever wanted to dig deep into your kit, the weapon info tabs in the store not only explains how the weapons work but also some of the crazy out of the box dumbassery you can do with it.

did you miss the secret crash bandicoot level? thats the best secret level

ultrakill's just got something extra i can't quite name, but it made the game so much fun even for someone like me, who usually prefers a puzzle/story game than an fps. also, i can't not mention the awesome community this game has. really looking forward to the game's full release and what it will have to offer

for the leviathan one, the intended way was to rocket ride to the top since rockets last forever underwater

I love the Riak of Rain 2 music in the background

Htwo spotted using the SLAB REVOLVER sentenced to 18 years-life

True. I don't actually own the full version but there is something that pulls me back into the demo...

There are 3 ways you can reach the surface in 10 seconds in 5-4: -Slam storage -Rocket riding -Nuke yourself upwards

Fun fact: The projectile boost thingy was originally a bug in the game. But the devs liked it so they added it as a feature

Will there be a video about dusk?

As someone who hates speedrunning, high scores, and style meters, but LOVES movement options, weapon combos, and horde modes... I'm interested in this.

everyone is talking about the video itself, but what about the Risk of Rain (probably 2) music at the end?

Best thing about ULTRAKILL is consistency of quality of every aspect the game has. Lore is there and it’s quite good, secrets are funny, useful and unique (secret missions literally change the game genre). Gameplay, motion, features, graphics, music, enemies and their color pallets, they are all made with high quality. It’s like everything Hakita was making, he was perfecting until it’s good enough to use or read

btw the orbs can actually be used to unlock special weapon skins in the weapon select menu vending machine thing, just recently discovered it while replaying.

I just want to say that this video prompted me to boot up Ultrakill, go to 5-4, nuke my way up to the surface, and then P-rank the boss on the first try. I had a D-rank on it before. I haven't fought Leviathan *since* I first cleared 5-4. This game is fucking terrifying. (For context, since I cleared through all of the current content about a week ago, I've done a *lot* of practicing and fucking about. Even I'm kind of scared by how fast I've improved at the game.)

For me the thing that makes this a great game is that the secrets that the game has usually come from free updates

love the ror2 ost in the end. two favorite games

The 2D anime dude is Hakita's (developer's) profile picture character.

I'm surprised you didn't talk about rocket riding for the leviathan challenge

I would like to add that not any game would awnser almost every question you have with a “yes”

4:30 the intended solution was to ride on rocket, but I did it that way too before thinking about it.

Ah yes, the linear early access game that was only 1/3 complete before a couple weeks ago that I have over 50 hours in.

I'm pretty sure the "intended" way for 5-4 challenge is rocket riding straight up

That intro reminds me of FUNKe’s review

I thought ultrakill is so popular beacause killing them monsters in the game is so satisfying and cool video mam :]

You forgot to mention that you can ride leviathan and malicious face,and that the sawblade launcher's location spoilers next Prime Soul

If I could upvote you twice just cuz of the Risk of Rain outro music I would. NEVER hear people using risk music in videos.

I just love how he talks about how interesting are the levels challenges and then proceed to explain exactly how to do them just to remove the joy of finding it yourself

because it's.. good? okay nice eight minute video thank you very much

04:30 the actually intended solution is to ride a rocket straight up. But slam storage is generally just the better option

4:40 just so people are aware a rocket ride is also fast enough to get you to the surface in case you can't get the slam storage in that opening room (as the water can make it hard)

...was that Owane in the outro???

JUDGEMENT!

One thing I learned from this video is that Htwo loves shotgun swapping

For me this game's replayability mainly comes from the cybergrind arena. So addictive trying to reach higher waves with more tricks under your belt.

I really suggest you try DUSK. I think that will also be a great game for your reviews.

Ultrakill is what games should be. It’s so humble, so chaotic, so challenging, so unique. The secret levels are hilarious, and doubles as references, the Easter eggs and orbs encourage you to map everywhere around the map without the feeling of being locked in by a border. Every single thing in the game feels like it’s important and matters from the enemies to the level design to weapons. The inspirations are quite obvious but is so well done it has its own feel to it. Pulling real life culture and mythology into the game and the fact that it doesn’t shove lore or story in your face shows that it not only won’t force you to do things but also invites you to explore it yourself. The game embodies human curiosity, adventure, and humor, in a setting where there’s blood and gore everywhere. This game might be the best game ever made.

the first 30 seconds was all you needed

I totally agree about your points on replay ability. I can beat the game in like 2 hours yet I have 115hr just from playing it over and over and messing around in sandbox.

Ah my favorite indie game MEGADEATH

It seems like Ultrakill was the very definition of "Our Childhood The Game" where it's literally reviving our good old times.

That moment when "anime dude" created one of the games of all times

You can unlock cool skins for your weapons with enough soul orbs, always a reason to collect!

“Cause it’s fun.”