Ultionus: A Tale of Petty Revenge

Ultionus is one of the groupees greenlight bundle games that looked better than the average and stood out for a while. It took a bit to get through greenlight and get on steam, then get its keys through groupees, but eventually it did. And then the developer said he'd put cards on it eventually, and I guess I just forgot about it until now while browsing through games on my account that still have cards.

Which is like 200 or something, for what its worth. (Worth: About $80)

Ultionus is a remake of Phantis, which was on the Spectrum ZX or something and whether or not it is licensed to do so, I don't know and I'm not going to bother looking it up. You don't care anyway. Phantis was a run and gun platformer/shootie type game and this is too. Frankly, it's pretty generic in this regard.  You play as a lady, she has a gun, you shoot some monsters and progress in a 2d platforming world.

If you're looking for modern mechanics, or even modern gender portrayals, don't get too hung up on this game cuz it ain't interested in doing any of that.

Ultionus has basically one thing and one thing only going for it: Gorgeous pixel artwork done with lots of attention to detail and care. It's visually attractive and vibrant, if you're into pixel artwork, you're going to enjoy looking at this game. Whatever else I can say for the hour I spent playing the game, I can't complain about the visuals. They're great. There's a lot of nice little animated touches, and backgrounds are huge but you can only see parts of them at a time, usually blocked by cave walls or whatever else. I'm not sure why this works so well, but it gives the game a great visual feel as you move through the zones.

Actually, I will say the music is nice and the level design has this interesting non-linear feel to it. It's a little Sonic the Hedgehog, if you get what I mean, where falling down takes you to a different path. This element is kinda nice actually and makes the levels feel bigger than they likely are. That is, the levels that stick to this - there's a space ship level at the start and two "rush" levels, the second being dedicated to riding a lizard Golden Axe style and ridin' n' gunnin'. The game's attempts at variety are nice, but there's not really enough and the core gameplay just isn't that good to begin with.

Inversely, an hour is how long it took to finish the game on easy, and I'm going to be honest in that I considered replaying the game to get the 'good ending' but just... Eh. I didn't find the game miserable, but less than it should have been. Basically, the other thing about Ultionus is that it is difficult for difficulty's sake, without any real regard for what makes for fun difficulty. You can't move and shoot, unless you're jumping, and enemies spawn endlessly... So increasing the difficult in terms of how many hits enemies take just sounds awful in terms of standing in place shooting. Bosses are big, colorful and very poorly developed. Enemy attack must be pattern based, but I never quite figured out some of the patterns. Stuff just seemed to lack tells; some attacks had obvious reasonable ones, and others just... Didn't?

One of them, a crab boss, just seemed to do whatever he wanted. Killing him was blind luck once I got what felt like I got the part of the pattern I could influence down, as sometimes it would spawn enemies on my head or just do an unblockable attack in my face. Maybe there's a way to cleanly kill it, but honestly, it wasn't obvious enough to want to mash my face into the game again. Another boss had an easier to figure out pattern, but parts of the boss would vanish from the viewing area, which was pretty annoying.

The other thing is that ultimately Serena S just feels kinda more sluggish than the game seems to want you to be. You always feel a little too slow, both in terms of scroll speed and in terms of reactions. You need to know where you're supposed to be before the visuals start telling you what's going to happen, which mostly comes down to rote memorization and seeking a pattern which feels not all that fun.

I wouldn't necessarily say Ultionus is bad, but it's retro in sort of an unfun boring way at times, and there's not that much content. For a short game to pick up for a couple dollars and play for a night, it isn't bad, and the visuals really are lovely. It's certainly nice to look at. But that's about it.

I should mention the game has... Some weirdness involving the female lead. I can't really get a bead on what the developer wants for her. I mean, the game over screen has her ass sticking in the air, but it's not really sexy - just comedic - and much of the game seems uncertain as to if she's supposed to be sexy or how to execute her being sexy. The pixel art is really gorgeous, so it's hard to imagine the artist didn't have enough talent to execute but she is not really played to look like a bombshell. There's a comment on the Steam forums asking why she has a C-section scar, and the developer replied she doesn't, but he doesn't mind the idea of her being a mom.

I don't know. I just can't get the full on misogyny vibe from a dude who is like "yeah, I'd be ok with my female lead being a mom!" I just feel like he's doing whatever he does.