#the ultrakill experience honestly | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

decamarks · 2 years ago

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i bought ultrakill forever ago but never got around to playing it. what is the deal why has it spawned such a dedicated fanbase. you seem like you'd know....

IT'S JUST REALLY GODDAMN FUN!!! that's the short answer and honestly the best answer. it's really ridiculously fun. like probably one of the most fun games to ever exist.

there is a ridiculous amount of care and skill and soul packed into every design choice; it culminates in some of the most immaculately ecstatic and visceral gameplay i've ever experienced. it cannot be understated how brilliant this game's design is. the only way to really understand why it excels is to just play it!

if you'd like an anecdote to represent the overall ultrakill experience, here's mine: when i played the demo for the first time, after maybe 5 minutes i became so physically nauseous that i had to stop. and in that time i immediately went to get the full game. it's DELIGHTFUL. (see also: jerma's playthrough where he starts screaming "humans aren't supposed to be doing this" during a boss fight.)

but even aside from pure gameplay, there really is a lot to love… there's a certain self-aware sincerity to everything. it's unabashed on purpose, and in the best ways possible. despite its obviously absurd violence, don't at all mistake ultrakill for something cynical or misanthropic—there's a lot of depth and heart dancing beneath the surface, a lot of it in places i didn't expect to see it, and so much that i didn't expect to appreciate nearly as much as i do.

[okay this got too long. the rest is going DOWN HERE ↓]

like okay, obviously the music is just. insane. the goddamn midi metal/breakcore genre fusion is THE most hilarious and unfathomably genius stylistic choice that could have been made. and it's not even just that!! there's ambient & drone & harsh noise influence all across the ost, which just enchants and delights me. i DEFINITELY didn't expect it, but i love it. (the fact that there's like, a level named after a sunn o))) song, and that the latest update contains a godawful joke about trout mask replica might tell you exactly what kind of game ultrakill is, or it might tell you literally nothing.)

the writing and worldbuilding can be rich and compassionate in ways i really didn't expect, too... it's so evident that it's a work of passion, with really sincere and often sweet philosophies sprinkled throughout all the bloodshed and grotesque silliness—and often within them. it makes me smile! also gabriel is a really good character. people go apeshit over that guy. for good reason. he's just REALLY good.

if you're just interested in understanding its amassed fanbase, yeah ultrakill's is pretty ridiculous and dedicated. and it's extremely deserved! the game is fun & the characters are fun. being in early access, it's kinda built on ongoing feedback, so it makes sense people are invested. the devs really seem to embrace the fanbase wholeheartedly, which helps a lot too. that is also why, kind of inexplicably, ultrakill is kind of a gay & horny game. please note that i do not say these things flippantly or lacking deliberation; there's an extremely good essay to be written about gayness across ultrakill & its communities. like aside from the general hilarity of a game having official buttplug support, the fact that the dev team hired an artist specifically because he drew a lot of incredibly beautiful/obscene depictions of gabriel DOES say a lot. this, of course, makes ultrakill 100x better.

anyway that's the basics. i could definitely write THOUSANDS of words about this game and that's honestly... not what i expected when i booted it up the first time LOL. it really just happened to appeal to a lot of things i sincerely adore, in an unexpectedly sincere way—all while being a STUPIDLY good game.

TL;DR: it's a fun robot video game where you shoot things. and there's blood and explosions. it's good you should play it

#ultrakill #for the record i haven't actually been into it for that long... it's been around for years now so i'm relatively new to it.#but MAN it's great. thank you for giving me the opportunity to blurt out all my thoughts about it LOL #going through the game's developer museum today has me thinking about Making Things in general. it's seriously inspiring...#i just love when you can see heart and soul and passion positively bleeding through a piece of work. AAAGHH...

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cycloneslash · 9 months ago

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I've been playing a lot of Ultrakill lately, and 7-4 has got to be my favorite so far like holy crap. You just go in there and come across this massive absolute unit of a machine carrying an entire city on its back. The moment the healthbar appeared, my jaw dropped like omg I NEED TO KILL THAT??? And I'm just a big fan of levels with brief escape sequences where you need to watch out for the timer, do platforming, kill enemies etc etc. Honestly one of the coolest experiences I've had in a game. Also V1 gets to perform a lobotomy 10/10.

I needed to get that out it's just so cool.

#ultrakill #1000 thr earthmover #also the music is so good...#alarms blaring = music to my ears

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cherubchoirs · 2 years ago

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ik this is a very oddly specific question but. how do you think the ultrakill guys would react to seeing something they can really relate to? like a song, character from some media, ect. its something i think about a lot because its kinda fun to explore how they might react, like they might either think about it all the time or aggressively deny it. and uh yea (im not good at asks like this)

ooooh this is a fun question! esp since i think they would all react pretty differently tbh

v1: v1 would really enjoy engaging with media, always ready to consume massive amounts of information no matter what that information is. however, it's normally pretty detached from the experience, not tending to get emotionally invested in much and taking the place of a spectator when it comes to things it doesn't have a direct involvement with. honestly i think it would find it difficult to relate to anything too deeply in that sense, not fully capable of holding that mirror up to itself in the same way we might. BUT i think if something could hit it just right, in whatever sense, it would immediately go absolutely wild about it. its brain would pick it apart in a thousand different ways, it would deconstruct it down to its constituent parts, and probably watch/listen to whatever it is a million times lol and every time it does, it will emphatically express "ME" in any capacity it can to whoever's in the room.

v2: this is the one that's projecting onto that piece of media/character while insisting they don't, actually, relate to them whatsoever lol i think it would be much easier for v2 to sort through all the problems it's gone through with something outside of itself because it's made for conflict resolution....but it's no good if that issue is internal. so for v2 relating to something means shoving all of its trauma onto it and examining it that way but likely having no idea that it's even doing that. it just so happens that its favorite characters are dealing with the same issues it is BUT it has canonical based proof that it didn't add that in, it's just the way they're written!!! and also those are not all of its issues. it's got nothing to do with all of that anyway.

gabriel: guy that hates the characters he relates to, 100% he will give entire presentations on why they're awful and he absolutely doesn't recognize that he's just describing all the problems he has with himself. HOWEVER for songs he relates to, he will put them on repeat and simply listen to them as hard as he can. being an angel means that music is woven into the core of his being and so he WILL lie in a dark room listening to nin for hours to work things out with himself. it's a deeply important experience. he's meditating. he's expanding. he's discovering every truth about him. but please please no one ask him what he's listening to please please this is a personal thing

#v1 is the one that's open and honest about all that lol #if it relates to something it's immediately making everyone else experience it too #it will look at them expectantly the whole time #i want them to have movie nights #ALSO i want them to experience each other's playlists #this was cute ty anon!!#cake answers

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transcendence-team · 4 months ago

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Scarypasta commentary!!!!!!!!!1

Talkin' bout my april fools-but-not-actually april fools story in full. I'm gonna go through the story and explain some choices I made, as well as lending context to the unused stuff in the previous post. I'll be talking about the second part, mainly cause I don't have much to say about part 1 other than "I enjoyed making it". Let's get started!

Firstly, I wanna mention this second part's inspiration. It was very influential in this part's theme. I ain't saying it because I like leaving unsolved questions, but if you pay attention to the music choices, maybe you'll figure it out?

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAMQxri9v78

I had this exact recap gag in my head from the first screenshot to the actual narration. Even the "What's up - Video game - cough cough - (death)" I had thought of far in advance. It's not a super big deal, but it was hella satisfying to get done.

Here's an early design of Satan I forgot to show last time. He was later redesigned to

As for Satan himself, I honestly don't have much else to say other than he was super enjoyable to write. Interpretations of the guy have been done to death, but honestly, I think it's because he's just hella fun to write. Writing him completely straightfaced as opposed to Tom being... Tom, was also very enjoyable.

I do wanna clarify something about Satan's character, though: He's not evil. Yes, he's cruel, yes, he revels in suffering, but he only revels in it when terrible people are on the other side of it. On the whole, he just really detests flat-out terrible people. He even has a distaste for the layer of Limbo simply due to the fact that it's used to punish perfectly good people. Maybe I'll make a fuller disclosure on Satan's bio, but that's a grill for another BBQ.

Here's defricladus' full board, never shown in full. Not much to say about it, so here's a fun fact: The name is derived from the latin word for piss (defricatus urina) and (cladis). Because haha piss

I'm really happy with how pretty this stage turned out. I used to suck real badly at sprite edits, but I think this turned out super well. Years of experience finally matter. I'll hold off on discussion of Groudin for later.

So, the interesting thing about inferna isn't the obvious. That being, they're a demonspawn inferno craft but is rather nice despite still being murderous. Nah, they're actually kind of a leftover of an idea that never reached true power.

Originally, tom was gonna get partner characters throughout the world who would assist him until the end where groudin would kill all of them. The ones pictured here are called "The umpire", and "Fake El Wawi". I tried to visualize how I could fit them into later events I had planned up to their deaths, but I came up short and decided to just stick to inferna. Also making full on sheets for them scared me

No, Benjamin wasn't gonna be used in this story. I just needed a good background asset that could serve as a radio tower.

turns out i just needed to be normal and use radio towers

Pizza tower is my favuorite gamezing!!!!!! but a part of my brain said to not use the pizzamart so i complied and used wily's fortress from MM7 instead.

Umpire's actually still somewhat represented in this story. Also, that siivagunner statue was originally gonna be used for chaospasta, if you can believe it.

man if only groudin could fly huh

That specific render of gigan here is actually from a godzilla mobile game where there's an emote of Gigan saying "Damn it". See, I'm a fan of godzilla! Who else would reference this classic mobile game called ummm.... uhhh

what is there to explain?

Oh, I guess there's this. The little faces to represent Gigan's emotions are carried over from a cancelled NGC remake made by yours truly. The emotions were a mechanic that would tell you how your monster was feelings and do.... things....... yeah it wasnt really a super deep mechanic. at all.

All of the enemies here are Ultrakill references (Solomon's a maurice, Anguirus a husk, Rodan a drone, and Mothra a Mannequin). You could probably tell I was fond of the game from the reference earlier, but I'm still bringing this up.

Oh yea and Goji2 is V2

I killed Inferna because I like making people sad :))))

This didnt get used cause i forgot to use it. lol

Bridirsom!!!! Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii had funnnnnn wriiiiitiiiiinnnnggg Bridirisom@!!!!

hes just a really goofy dick dastardly like antagonist..... but is somehow sane enough to call Tom out on his bullshit...... man i had fun writing about him

This is where I bring up groudin. its not super deep commentary here but groudin is basically what happens when you give a fucking idiot a nuclear bomb. groudin literally gets stronger from pure hatred. He was spawned from the essence of Tom being a shitty person and even after Tom dies he will only continue to get stronger because his hatred is stronger than the human soul. even then groudin has become independent of Tom's essence due to being so powerful. i know hes basically rodan.exe but maaaaaaaaaaaaan i had fun with him.

Yes, we did sprite an entire army of Godzilla reskins for Bridirsom to use. Like godzilla5 in the front there

I even made this sheet of godzilla using a coal texture! but i forgot to use him oops.

now for the escape sequence; i cant stress enough how hard it was to not use it's pizza time. Hurry up sufficed, but like. Man.

And yes i did in fact meticulously craft a timer for the way back. Three. god damn. minutes. that is 180 frames in total and i had to compile the whole thing in aseprite. the last minute was barely even used. fuck. do i have a problem

Here's the thing about Tom's deal with Satan I didn't mention: The layer of foolishness never existed. There's a lot of people it could be used for, but why dedicate it to one guy? No, Satan brought this up to Tom beCAUSE he knew this would provoke a reaction. Satan wanted tom to try to weasel his way out of punishment because no matter what, whether tom would succeed or not, he would get punished forever. Even if Tom were to have an epiphany that he's a terrible person, nothing could be done to prevent the punishment that would follow.

All of this is to say, the pasta was truly scary from the start.

by the way two things: the cactus is a reference to buddhist hell, and Tom bringing up his love for eating charcoal was a way to setup the punchline at the end where he's burned by fire that's fueled by clean burning propane. Bwah haha hahahah

That's all I got to say, I think. This was kinda scrambled and i said whatever I wanted but honestly this was super fun! Maybe I'll do this for a future project, but for now. this is the end. I love you

"but Dizzy why is this in the same playlist as insolvent are they canon to each other or some-" *kills you with my laser eyes*

#nesgodzilla #transcendence team #nesgodzillascarypasta

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northwest-cryptid · 5 months ago

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This shouldn't be nearly as much of a controversial opinion as it is; but I miss when games were literally and firstly designed to be fun experiences. That fun can absolutely lean into the demographic of the intended player; but the entertainment and fun used to be very clearly emphasized for the common player.

And see this is where I lose people. They get too caught up on the first part of that and ignore the last 2 words. I've heard people tell me "you're just salty because you're bad" but at the risk of sounding arrogant, no I'm actually salty because I'm better than the average player and if I'm getting frustrated and struggling to ENJOY the game then there might be a problem here.

Sure you can wave this off saying "you're arrogant if you think you're literally better than the average player" but honestly I see this issue a lot of in the communities of actually difficult games, where the difficulty is part of the fun. People treat it like a dick measuring contest and refuse to hear anything bad about it; as well as anyone saying they're actually good at it.

Thing is, I actually do enjoy difficulty in games. When I played ULTRAKILL I made a point to start the game on Violent. Even when I was told to go get all the weapons first; I found that I enjoyed a challenge that was designed with what I had available to me in mind. Sure I didn't P rank everything on my first go of it; but soon after I not only felt motivated, but enthusiastic to go back and P rank those stages with my new fun weapons.

Dark Souls 3 is literally one of my favorite games, it's clear that for all it's faults; there was a good bit of care put into the difficulty to match with where the player was expected to be at the time. Even with it's branching paths I never felt underleveled for a boss encounter. Bosses didn't have over the top wild combos that they could switch up on the fly; or ridiculous AoE spam that comes out exclusively in the last 10% of the fight. They were just balanced, challenging, entertaining fights.

I think the major problem people fall into with "Difficulty Is Fun" type games is that devs fail to understand who they're making the game for and when they're making the game for them.

Again going back to ULTRAKILL here, because it's a GREAT example of how a difficulty is fun game can be done right.

See the game starts very slow with a firm understanding of your basic weapons leaving you to figure out how to parry fairly early on and use it alongside your guns without thinking of it as something that's difficult to pull off. It's not this high risk high reward thing, it's just another tool in your kit.

But the dev/devs clearly understands this game is made for the Difficulty Is Fun crowd; so they don't just give us a difficulty option for the game; they additionally make sure the difficulty ramps slowly.

Throughout the first half of the game you're more than allowed to get used to how things work before being expected to use them well; and when you clearly have more experience and confidence with the game it begins throwing harder stuff your way.

But you know what's cool? The ultra-hard content that's made for the dick measuring contest elitists? That's locked behind getting Perfect rank on all the stages in an act; doing so unlocks the super hard boss mode stages and if you beat all of those you unlock the like ultra-hard masochist gauntlet stage.

Did I mention you can do this on any difficulty? Or that different difficulties actually change up how the game plays? With easier difficulties allowing you to counter your way through the whole fight but at Violent and higher you can't parry throughout the second phase? This means if I enjoy getting into the thick of it and scrapping by on 1 HP and a dream, I totally can; but my friend who wants a stress free fun time with the game can actually experience all the same content on an easier mode and guess what; we're both happy?

Like I'm sorry I'm not saying every game needs to have an easy mode; that's an argument in a totally different ball park. This isn't about "easy mode" because that's not what I want from games. I don't want my Difficulty Is Fun game to have an easy mode; I just want it to be fair and enjoyable.

People shit on Dark Souls 2 for a lot of stuff, but you know the one thing that has always bothered me?

There's this really pretentious achievement you get the first time you die, it's literally titled "This is Dark Souls" and you know why that bothers me?

Every SINGLE time I see someone unlock that the reaction is roughly "oh no, I'm not going to enjoy this game am I..." Which all the "hardcore Souls fans" laugh at and say "yea get ready to die for 40 hours lololol"

I'm sorry but like, that's the dumbest shit I've ever seen; go wank off to difficulty somewhere else. Did you hear what they fucking said? They're not going to ENJOY the game they paid for? What's the point of doing the thing that's supposed to be entertaining if they're not entertained?!

Are these games meant to be "rage games"? No that would seem almost insulting to call them that.

Why do I like Dark Souls 3? Because the game doesn't feel like it's looking down on you, the whole game is designed to cheer you on, to coach you. Every time you get knocked down the game is telling you "get back in there champ you got it this time." If you're not sure what I mean I should likely explain it like this,

I once watched a playthrough in which one person had never played Dark Souls and the other was a veteran player. The vet was a sort of coach to point out things about the game the newbie was likely missing.

The first boss encounter was pretty scrappy but whenever he's die the vet would ask him "did you see what happened there?" Essentially talking him through like "you dodged right but he's right handed so you dodged into the swing, try sicking by our left, his right; and dodge under his weapon instead." Or he'd explain things like attack opportunity and such. The idea of their turn and your turn, the enemy attacks; and then during their recovery you get to do an action as a reward for actually dodging the attack. This lets you heal, attack, or set up something for the fight. It's a classic back and forth that leads to players being able to play in different ways and not just build for Poise, Vigor, and Strength so they can play the most boring character known to man.

It's cool to watch because having someone there to point things out is a great way to show how a veteran vs a newbie is going to view the game. If you've played a lot of Souls before, or you've played the game longer you're likely going to pick up on the ways the game is trying to hint at you to do something.

I recently did a Dark Souls 1 stream in which I literally beat the first boss with the broken straight sword and doing so was a way for me to sorta showcase how. No the game isn't about DIFFICULTY; it's about understanding. I know that's a big meme in the souls community but I'm serious you know, if you learn the attack patterns (which they don't constantly switch up), you figure out what animations are tied to which AoEs and which attacks; and you focus your efforts on dodging those attacks and learning their timing. Now you know where your chance to hit the enemy is, you know how long you have, you can learn and gauge how you need to weave in and out of range.

There's this constant "git gud" saying that I really hate, because on one hand that explains nothing; on the other hand it's absolutely true. However when you tell a new player or even an existing player to "git gud" they're not going to know what that means, they're not going to actually take that to mean:

If you feel squishy, throw some levels into Vigor.

If you're rolling to slow, take off some gear; you won't need the defense when you learn the attack timing well enough to dodge it better; the extended i-frames will help you dodge more.

Take a moment to study the bosses movements so you know where your chance to attack comes in and roughly how long you'll have when it does come up.

Remember how scaling works, dumping 30 points into STR isn't going to do as much as upgrading your weapon to scale better. You can dump those points into Vigor and then throw a few points at whichever damage stat your weapon scales with and still deal considerable damage.

Use your estus early, if you heal for 50 HP with each estus, and you have 10 estus. With a total health of 100, you have effectively 600 health. If an enemy hits you for say, 30 damage; that looks scary, that can 2 shot you right now; but if you actually use your estus liberally you'll realize the boss needs to hit you closer to 20 times. As long as you're healing you have plenty of mistakes you can make.

When I say that games aren't made with fun or entertainment in mind anymore; and they're made to circle jerk the other top players and elitists of a community. I'm not just talking about how hard a game is to beat. I'm talking about nerfs made exclusively for PvP that effect the vast majority of PvE players who will never touch PvP. I'm talking about nerfs made to weapons that could help struggling players with specific bosses because they happened to pay attention to how damage resistance/weaknesses worked.

I'm even talking about how Elden Ring is a so called "Open World" game that refuses to tell the player the recommended level for an area. Meaning it's very much still a linear experience, just with more steps. You're not playing an Open World game, you're playing a Linear game with extra steps and longer walks between quest NPCs.

Okay so you start in Limgrave, cool; most the world isn't accessible to you until you beat some bosses; other parts are totally accessible to you, let's explore some of those first right?

Now if we assume you're a common everyday player, maybe new to Souls games because you've been hearing all the Elden Ring hype and want to try it out. You're probably not good enough to immediately go and fight the first real boss of the game. You're also likely not going south, because the game doesn't point you in that direction.

In fact, one of the early game paths leads straight into a level 60 area. How would you know this? Surely the game has some form of a warning right? Like you know, maybe an NPC along the most common path that will tell you that you're not ready yet. Maybe a message left at a grace warning of powerful enemies ahead; this isn't uncommon for Souls Games having little messages around to clue the player into things.

But no, it doesn't; it just lets you go in and attack something and see you're dealing no damage and then when you inevitably get 1 shot you go "guess I'm not supposed to be here" right?

Well no.

Remember, This Is Dark Souls, you're gonna die fucker; you better get back in there and keep trying until you get it, because THIS IS DARK SOULS.

That's when they inevitably get fed up and if they're smart, they go somewhere else. So let's say you try to skip over the first remembrance boss of the game; you finally got passed Margit. You do not want to have to fight another big boss right now. You just want to explore the open world, maybe get a few levels; see the sights.

Well I hope you're already level... 40-50?

See this?

This is the wiki's recommended level per area, do you notice anything about it? A sort of linearity? Now you might not at first, you might say "but Cryptid there's multiple areas with the SAME recommended levels!" Sure there are, and accessing those areas may require you to beat a boss in another area, or travel through an area to get to that one. In other words; it's still a linear path, and while more than one of these is accessible to you. If you're not already a vet who might have over-leveled or who may be skilled enough to fight enemies significantly higher level than you; then it's possible to go from say Liurnia of the Lakes to Siofra Aquaduct and get your ass handed to you.

That's all well and good but the issue here is that it creates a sort of metronome of frustration.

When you know where the game wants you to go, and you're on par with it's damage output and such; you feel fairly confident even when the game does some genuinely bullshit AoE spam. However when you ping-pong between higher level (but technically "accessible") areas getting killed repeatedly and always having that core philosophy of "this is Dark Souls stupid, get used to it" in the back of your head where you can't tell if this is the intended path or not because sure it's hard but, and say it with me now; This Is Dark Souls.

You might be thinking "but Cryptid, even the cult classic Fallout New Vegas does this!" Which is wrong, they do in fact use high level enemies to dissuade the player from attempting specific paths and essentially railroad them into the intended route. However, there is one key difference; the fallout community doesn't pride itself on the difficulty of their games. The fallout community doesn't use the saying "git gud" in place of real advice. The fallout community is very open about cheese, breaking the game; and how this is a fun and acceptable thing to do. Not that if you cheese a fight or make something easier for yourself you're somehow "playing the game wrong."

So more often than not, if the player encounters a field of 50 Deathclaws they think "yea I'm not meant to be here yet" and move on. With many NPCs telling the player safer routes, the player actually not only has options if they want to leave, but actually knows where to go to progress as intended. They're still allowed to try to break that progression and do things their own way but you can't say they weren't literally warned by the in game system designed to make sure they understood the difficulty of what they were undertaking.

Dark Souls 1 and 3 feel like flawed, but enjoyable games; If I found myself frustrated with them; it was often because I was frustrated with myself for making the same mistake multiple times when both I and the game had been telling me not to do that again.

Elden Ring felt like a hot mess until I started paying more attention to things like recommended levels. Then it felt like a bit less of a still hot mess because I'm sorry but that's what it is.

Now I'm on the DLC and I hate that every time I get into a boss fight I begin to enjoy myself; I think you know, it's fun it's cool this feels fair but challenging. Then in the last like 10 - 25% of the HP bar they have to pull out some extremely spamming AoE that locks you into multi-hit and can 1 shot your entire health bar; or heal them for their entire health bar; or both!

Which you know, if I was a squishy glass cannon build or something then I wouldn't really complain. But I'm not, I'm literally playing the boring Vigor Poise Endurance heavy armor fucking bleed build ass piece of shit mimic tear summoning HP talisman + defense talisman build. I'm still getting consistently through most of the boss fight and then suffering because there's some cheap shit they pull out last minute to ruin the fun.

It's still impossible to know if you're on par with the area you're in, I don't want to look up a guide; sometimes everything leading up to a boss feels really solid; I dish out as much as I take; I'm feeling good about it. I go into the boss room, nope 1 shot. What, is the point?

Okay so now do I throw myself into the brick wall 40 more times or do I go grind? Or do I explore somewhere else? I don't know man I think I'll do the first because I got pretty close that time. Oh wait no I didn't not this time because I didn't really get to learn any of the moves. My camera is a mess, sometimes they can hit through walls, sometimes their hitbox extends outside their actual model; and sometimes they have a multi-hit AoE that launches so if you even get hit by 1 part of it then you're hit by the whole thing. Hope you somehow knew what this boss was and already preemptively built resistances to it or else you're not going to have fun dying to the last 5% of the HP bar repeatedly because oh yea it can still do other attacks while doing the bit multi-hit AoE bullshit. Fuck off.

I hate the feeling of "this is a fun boss fight I'm actually enjoying this; that's pretty solid I feel like I'm enjoying this game again." Being met with "oh no can't have that; let's throw some absolutely bullshit mechanic at the last 5 seconds to make sure you're here for 3 hours longer than you should be."

Look if I were particularly bad at these games I'd honestly shrug it off, but I'm not. I'm sorry if you think I'm fucking arrogant; I can't sit here and justify my confidence to you; if you think I'm arrogant there's no telling you otherwise. The truth is I used to speedrun DS3, I've done full no-hit runs of DS1 for fun; I actively enjoy getting P ranks on the fucking Prime levels of ULTRAKILL on Violent and fucking Brutal difficulty.

Not only am I actually good at "difficult is fun" games; but I genuinely enjoy them for it. I've not had a single boss fight in the DLC where I've won and still been excited about it. It's always a "fucking finally done with that bullshit" never a "WOO YEA BABY" is that what you want your players to experience?

There's absolutely a sort of bell curve in my opinion when it comes to the enjoyment of Difficulty Is Fun type games; they're the sort of thing you likely will be frustrated with a lot up front; but then as you spend more time with the fight you're going to learn it's mechanics and it's attack timing. So you begin to enjoy the flow of the game, you get into the sort of groove for when you can attack and when you need to dodge; or when you need to do a specific thing; or swap to a specific weapon. It all starts to come together in this kind of fun exciting back and forth between the game and you. However that runs out after maybe 15 - 30 minutes; now you've hit the point where you're confidence is so high that you don't feel like "you CAN do this" you feel like "you should have ALREADY done this 5 attempts ago." Your understanding of the attacks isn't "oh wow I should dodge INTO this one and AWAY from that one!" Now it's just "ugh right it's this one, god I'm fucking stupid I should be able to dodge that by now- oh right, cool yea fuck it go on do the fucking unavoidable chin move right right okay I don't get a turn to attack..." You don't celebrate a victory, you sigh in relief of it being done and over with.

I don't know about you, but I'm really sick of how especially in the souls community, if you dare to say something is bad and you've not beat it on your first try and mentioned how easy it is. You're ignored, told you're just salty; told to git gud, told to go play a different game if you don't like it. Now look where we are, FromSoft acts like the worst of the community, they refuse to let their game be accessible to the common average player. You pay $40 to get mad, frustrated, and give up repeatedly until you finally overcome the problem and don't even feel happy about it. Congratulations, I hope you "enjoy" your suffering because it's just not a good fucking time.

I remember how many people refunded Elden Ring back when it first game out, and I remember every fucking elitist dick measuring contest participant out here laughing about it. Why? Do you not think those people deserve to enjoy the same fucking game we do?

#Aye well I'm just venting then ain't I? Yo fuckin' know it lads

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nerves-nebula · 1 year ago

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The contrast between faith and ultrakill, two games published by new blood is so funny to me

Faith: the satanic panic was real

Ultrakill: god is a cowardly little bitch and heaven is corrupt, anyway watch me do this cool backflip

Like I get that they only have the same publisher with completely different teams but once I heard them get lumped together as cool games that new blood published and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it

Like I remember when the first chapter of faith came out

Two parents are suspicious of their daughter's behaviour (for being too independent after getting a job as a nurse, idk it's been years since I have seen the first chapter) call a pair of priests to exorcise their daughter believing her to be possessed

The two priests fuck up the exorcism horrifically, resulting in the death of the parents and the daughter escaping

Later you, one of the priests who was there that day, come back, AGAINST THE CHURCH'S WISHES, to finish the job.

The daughter shows up, truly possessed like her parents had feared, the demon tells an evil speech about how it had stolen the girls body, and the priest succeeds at exorcising her and shoots her dead for good measure

Now, my memory may just be faulty, but I sincerely don't recall a moment in which you, the player character, is proven wrong

Also did you know that the daughter had a younger brother who is also apparently possessed, and in the opening second chapter you meet strapped to a bed, his body pale and gangly (which is apparently sign of demonic possession, like have y'all considered he's just sick??), held captive by the other priest, as the priest says that this is for the boy's own good??

And another also, did you know in the final chapter, in the final boss's evil lair has a portrait which has the word for demon written Latin Arabic and Hebrew?

EXEPT THE WORD IN ARABIC ISNT THE WORD FOR DEMON, IT'S JINN, A TYPE OF SPIRIT MADE OUT OF FIRE, Lucifer used to be one (not an angel like in Christianity, since angels in Islam don't have free will, only humans and jinn do), but after his fall he became a shaitan (the actual word for demon).

(fun fact, Satan's reason for falling in Islam is because he believed himself superior because he was made of fire while humans were made of mud)

(tho Islam has multiple sects so this may be different depending on the sect, idk)

And what makes me sad is remembering the early fandom that was the fact that a lot of us were convinced the priests were gonna be proven wrong, but nope, the final boss of the game is preventing the birth of the anti-christ

Who knows, maybe I'm being harsh, I don't quite remember the plot, and I didn't even finish it, the priests being constantly proven right put me off.

If there is like a secret plot twist ending where it proves my entire rant wrong I'm happy to hear it, cause I genuinely wanted to like this game

Honestly what sucks more is that the artstyle and the cutscenes are cool as hell, and we had a really cool setup for an unreliable narrator in chapter 1

We could have had another water womb world, except longer and with less fish body horror and more child abuse

idk what water womb world is but this sounds like a frustrating experience. RIP.

#nnstuff #ask #hateful webseries

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chaotic-minds-think-alike · 1 year ago

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Random ramble post since I’m working on things you’ll see eventually but I feel like just rambling how the bosses went for me in ultrakill. (<- because friends had drastically different experiences apparently)

Swordsmachine - I can’t remember which encounter but it was in the demo and I did so horribly iirc; I think I thought I had more room than I did and got caught on walls where I was cornered and shredded. Swordsmachine in the main game however was a bit easier because I knew what I was getting into and honestly I think they helped me develop strategies for the Gabriel fights later on.

Cerberus Duo - I think I died at least 2 times to these guys for the same reasons as above: got cornered thinking I had more room. They were fun though but as normal enemies I hate them for their knockback dash attack.

(Demo ends here, read more for what picks up after, spoilers)

Hideous Mass - The start of almost rage quitting. It was the ground slam that’d destroy me every time for multiple restarts, I don’t remember how many. I still love this thing as a creature but as a boss… horrible in my first encounter, even worse later on… experimenting in sandbox though made me learn some cool things about how you can use its armor against it by strategically placing your shots, though I only used the revolver for this.

V2 (first encounter) - Sighs so loudly. I can’t remember how many restarts it was but it was a lot, less than Gabriel first encounter though. I almost quit for this fight I think because I was getting too stressed. I didn’t know what I was doing and tried to stick with my favorite, the revolver, but eventually out of anger I tried to stay as close as possible with the shotgun mainly for heals and less about damage. Defeating them actually excited me so that was fun !! Side note: currently I’ve beaten this encounter in less than a minute BUT I had no style so no P rank for me

The Corpse of King Minos - I DIED SO MUCH. At this point it feels unfair to compare all the fights because they all have something that tests you. Part of the reason I died so much at this point is parrying is so hard for me… I feel if I at least tried to learn it then I wouldn’t have been put in the blender like I was here. Both before you meet him and after, I died a lot for similar reasons mentioned above. During the 2nd phase of the fight Id die due to being chipped away just enough to get crushed like a bug. I almost rage quit for this one too, not knowing how to heal and hating having learned you have to get as close as possible to his hands to do so.

Gabriel (first encounter) - Where the fun begins!! I restarted 37 times. I was really looking forward to this fight due to my friend telling me about him before I even got into the game. It was so nightmarish but I was too insane to just give up like that. So many times I flew off the arena, slid onto the middle and got caught in the air, too slow switching weapons, so many reasons I got severely punished for. I don’t remember how the final fight of 37 restarts played out but god I was so full of adrenaline after that. Little did I know that it’d get much worse in the second encounter. Side note: currently I’ve beaten this encounter in 2 mins 13 seconds but I didn’t have enough style so no P rank..

Sisyphean Insurrectionist - At this point, understandably, I got very angry with how badly I was beaten up. The shockwave attacks I hate so much and that’s what got me so many times. I don’t have much to say because this fight bored me as much as I’d rather not say that.

V2 (second encounter) - If I remember correctly… I think I had less restarts for when I had the first encounter. Still, I had my ass handed to me. I stuck with the same strategy as before, we kinda just danced together with shotguns in our faces. I really liked the scene when they try to escape and we pursue them. I will say that at the end when we land and they crash, I was in denial about them being gone for good and kinda just.. stood there for a moment. It felt wrong almost to continue without them.

Ferryman - Another fight with plenty of restarts up there somewhere. As cool as I think they are, this thing kicked my ass so hard I almost rage quit, again. Even when I had plenty of room, my flaw was my slow reaction timing. I could handle myself for the most part in phase 1 but phase 2 is where it got even worse. The small arena, the knockback the idol gives you, the range of it’s attacks… absolutely horrid. It was always the idol that got me stuck and cornered and turned to scrap in an instant. I relied so heavily on my railcannon here for healing and it was difficult to be patient when I had to be responsive and aware of such a small area. Overall, I enjoyed it somewhat, I like the Ferryman’s character and seeing it’s ship was quite a moment. (And the hologram room… I just had to sit there and watch)

Leviathan - They were actually pretty easy and I think I restarted less than 5 times. If it isn’t obvious, the attack that got me was it’s lunge for a short bit, otherwise then it was the tail. I really like Leviathan’s design but I feel as if the encounter was sort of just thrown in there.

Gabriel (second encounter) - I am totally normal about this guy. My first time encountering him in the story I defeated him with only 2 restarts in 6 minutes. Jesus christ. This fight was really, really fun and easy to me which still shocks me my friends thought the opposite. I was also really looking forward to this fight both because of what my friend told me and I wanted to go down the youtube rabbithole but didn't want to spoil myself. I was totally normal through this fight (and after). That was a lie because I had so, so much energy from it I had to draw the scene of him playing the organ and I had to make it pretty. Side note: currently I've beaten this encounter in 2 mins 12 seconds, a second apart from the 1st encounter, again no style because I suck ass and getting these P ranks will be the worst thing of my life

#thunderposting i guess #ultrakill

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shock-micro · 1 year ago

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weird brain thoughts, the void, and "me"

i think it's honestly quite incredible how brains can function in such different ways

i'll put a cut so you don't have to see my intensely long ramble unless you really wanna~

i'd describe my "headspace" as the following: it's mostly void, pierced by my strong inner voice, and occasionally a background of various music (i call that the radio)

i can visualize things i've seen before fairly well, but it's harder to "synthesize" entirely new things in my mind's eye

talking with different people, i love hearing about all the different experiences people have with their own headspaces

like one of my friends is currently so fixated on ultrakill they're actually just like playing it in their mind

n like i have a lot of plural friends who experience it in different ways and it's very interesting hearing those perspectives when i can

as for me? well, i don't quite think i'm alone... i wouldn't quite say it's another person, but like, the background music in my head is distinctly not me a lot of the time, and there's a bit of a distinction between Raw Thought ("brain") and Me

like, occasionally the topic of "what's goin' on in your head" comes up, and i often got a bit confused? brain gets caught up on a few concepts and is like, how do those apply to me? do they?

and i've noticed during a few of those bouts, the "void" i described in my headspace is... a lot more tangible? like it's its own entity in there, just lurking with no thoughts

and sometimes it just, like... took over.

quite literally pushing my thoughts to the back, and bringing void to the front, which meant... not much. it looked around a bit, but it mostly elected to do nothing.

the reason i talk about this now, is because there was another conversation on the topic, and brain got caught up in it again, and the void came out to do nothing again.

but later, the convo had moved on, and i was getting stressed about something relating to my sona, and it got me stressed about my whole sense of self...

and i felt the void creeping up again, pushing my thoughts to the back, as my eyes closed, and it just. dampened the whole thought process.

i was a bit stressed then bc like y'know, what happens if it just smothers my thoughts as a whole, but it just kinda... released its hold after i pushed back a bit

and looking back on it, i kinda regret it? it was almost nice, in a way, like a weighted blanket for the soul

and ever since, it's been a lot more easy to feel that presence. and it's nice, knowing that even though my inner voice is shouting into the void... the void is listening, and it cares.

i've decided to call it "void", no 'the'. i think it enveloped me again as i was writing this post, and i just kinda fell over. it felt quite nice. though, i did assume control a bit faster than i would've liked, bc i did wanna get this post off my mind.

to sum up my feelings at the moment, i've felt a lot more... whole, understanding this presence, understanding void. and i certainly feel more secure in my own mind, thanks to it.

there might very well be another explanation for what's gone on here, but this is the one that makes me feel the best. so unless it can somehow be proven that void is not its own presence within my mind, i'm not really gonna question it.

#i stare into the void #and the void stares back #and sometimes #it envelops me like a warm dark blanket #when i need it most #random mira thoughts

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sourestcandy · 2 years ago

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if i had a nickel for every game i've played whose entire plot is picking up the pieces of a story that's already been told, i've have two nickels. which isn't a lot, but i'm surprised that this is even a trend. though, honestly? good! because games where the player is piecing together something that's already happened is really, really interesting.

(very very late night ramblings below: heavy spoilers for omori and ultrakill)

what even kicked this off is when i realized ultrakill isn't about the player character. in fact, it would be the same if v1 were completely removed from the story. layers of hell are still being purged by machines and heaven is still in mass hysteria because god has literally fucking left the picture. the only real difference is how gabriel would experience his character arc, as v1 specifically would not be antagonizing him. even then, it's possible v2 would take its place as its only major difference is having regular plating instead of blood-absorbent plating.

the story has already happened. whatever story is left would have been played out anyway. gabriel was eventually going to realize that he had committed various atrocities for an entity who had abandoned him. both prime souls have the outcomes of staying trapped in a fleshy prison, roaming a wasteland that's been torn to pieces, or dying (of which is undeniably the best outcome for them). the only people who are "happy" in this story are the residents of heaven, and even then, they're not exactly thrilled knowing their ruler has abandoned them.

why does it matter? because you have zero influence on the story. you have no say in what happened or what will happen. everything will play out the exact same with or without you. you're just there to pick up the pieces of what god had left behind. at most, you're an archangel's plot point, which could have easily been filled in by another machine or by time itself. despite being unique, you're expendable. this isn't a concept that's explored very often: usually the player character is given a very prominent role and has notable feats nobody else could possibly achieve. not ultrakill, though. you're just trying to survive, albeit in a manner that's unique compared to other machines (remember that v1 is the only known model to absorb blood the way it does).

omori, on the other hand, does give the player character a prominent role and notable achievements. after all, sunny is a one of a kind individual. he played violin and he is very creative, as made evident by the sketchbook in white space and the existence of dream space. he's made friends and has left an impact (both good and bad) on the people around him. unlike v1, sunny is a whole-ass human being doing human being things. you cannot have the story of omori without the character sunny.

like ultrakill, you the player are only there to piece together a story that's already happened. unlike ultrakill, there's still things to be explored, as every character in the real world experiences growth in some form. you're witnessing something that wouldn't have happened if sunny just didn't participate in the story (yes, hikikomori exists, but it's late at night and i don't feel like making that fit into the post).

the most interesting part, really, is how these games show the player that they're late to the story in drastically different ways. ultrakill never says it outright; you're told that mankind is dead, blood is fuel, hell is full, guns shoot bullets, and everything bleeds. you're never directly told that you're in the midst of a fruitless venture. you're never told that other machines will rip hell apart with or without you. you're never told that there's nothing to gain after hell is completely cleaned. as of right now when Back to the Cyber Grind is the newest update, you have to go out of your way to find this out - and when you do, it's a punch to the gut. in a good way.

and then there's omori.

omori tells you right out the gate - in fact, from the "about this game" section on steam - that the story is already done. you're playing a murder mystery where you're the murderer and you don't know it. you're not setting out on a grand adventure and embarking on a quest - you're hanging with friends, spending what little time you have left with them, settling low-stakes disputes, and unearthing memories that were once buried. you're just a fuckin' dude living your life when suddenly memories of killing your sister start invading your dreams. you're not part of a new story, you're reliving an old one.

now i hear you asking, "sour, what the hell are you blabbering about? why does it matter that two games show the aftermath of stories that already happened? who even gets excited about not being directly shown the real story of a game?" and honestly, it's 4:03 AM, i just watched an ultrakill theory video on one of my precious days off, and i'm gonna have to admit that i don't really have a point to be made. i just really like it when games do this. these games are what it feels like when you're late to a class but someone lets you read their notes. i like that and think more should exist in the world. that's all.

now if you'll excuse me, i need to slip into a 48 hour coma.

#omori #ultrakill #omori spoilers #ultrakill spoilers #sour speaks #im not proofreading this we die like warriors

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