✦✦✦

2 years after Violence, 9 months after ULTRA_REVAMP, Hakita dropped the penultimate layer 8, filled with mind-bending, reality-shifting, unexpected performance tanking experience. The Steam player statistics soared again, as many players enjoyed the layer through and through, some even completed all of them P-Ranked on Brutal. My experience wasn't filled with hollering, shocking, or even jumping off my seat in awe. I mean, I was generally just sitting and be mildly amused at fun details this game offers, but it doesn't mean this layer was a mixed experience.

This layer does make handling enemies a little bit trivial. For example, the new enemy, Providence, is very cool, but the hard damage negation makes healing easier when dealing with a large swathe of enemy, making enemy management in 8-1 a lot easier than in 6-1. Not to mention the hook point explodes upon contact, causing a very huge AoE, wiping out nearby foes. The Mirror Reaper, even after a couple buff changes, still succumbs to jumpstart, fire cannon and sawblades spam, losing all it's cool aura. Geryon pre and post hotfixes is still a creative penultimate boss. Some might say it's boring, or mixedbag because the level restricts your movement in a movement shooter game, but the final boss, as well as the layer itself, often complements subverting expectation, and in this case, fighting a boss with less movement and more weapon spamming. The amount of portals at work that constantly reshape the level often bring about extensive lags, which I found extremely funny to play, but for some, it did leave a bad taste in their mouths.

My criticism for work-in-progress games like these often leaves out issues like performance, which I believe would be patched in one or two days. Ultrakill isn't entirely shielded by criticism, but personally, it would be a better approach to find the bugs so the devs can make the full release a better experience for future players, than leaving hasty criticism that acts as a permanent footprint on the social network. Right now, this is still an unfinished game, and current criticism should take that into consideration. Maybe when the game releases, all layer's experience would differ a lot to what you have experienced for the past few years.

Either way, when 1.0 comes out, I'll write another one, in-depthily.