POSTED 31/5/15


ULTRATRON

Puppygames/Curve Studios

There was a guy. An ace programmer guy who controlled the C...

Actually, that’s BS, as we’re pretty sure that Eugene Jarvis didn’t program in C when creating such arcade classics as Defender, Smash TV and that which the latter evolved from, Robotron 2084. Which is also what Ultratron owes its entire existence to.

Yes, no Robotron 2084, no Ultratron. But we’re eerily echoing our look at Puppygames’ previous outing, Titan Attacks! (the exclamation mark is theirs, not ours (for a change)).

As we stated then, if you pay homage and it’s worthy payment then we’ve no problem. This applies to Ultratron, which takes the basic arena with many robots to shoot situation and proceeds to add, meddle and otherwise cause twitchy, nose-itching addiction.

It may look blockier than LEGOLAND emulated in Minecraft on a VIC-20, but that’s no barrier to fab shooty-shooty-shootiness. You’re the last humanoid battle droid, who’s sworn revenge-fuelled photon death on anything remotely resembling an evil killer robot, as they done made the human race extinct. It’s akin to shutting the paddock gate after the horse has pissed off, but the sentiment’s sweet.

What starts out as a seemingly too-simple twin stick blaster soon becomes more complicated. Stuff inspired by vintage classics such as Pac-Man and the aforementioned Defender start coming into play, and those evil killer robots bring out the bigger, harder, faster, more artillery, all the time spewing such Dalek-inspired rhetoric as “Kill all humans!”

It’s pure, uncomplicated arcade joy – something which is all too rare nowadays when even basic indie games feature self-important cutscenes so fucking long that you could safely go from bonk to baby birth and still be left waiting to actually interact.

Our only quibble is the blackness of it all. It’s like playing a game on Disaster Area’s spaceship, with bad things often getting lost as they’re black on black.

Otherwise, old school fans rejoice, for we’ll all takes turns... (well, unless we go co-op, natch).

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