Curve Digital (studio)
(certificate)
07 May 2015 (released)
10 May 2015
Ultratron is an energetic top down shooter which implements a huge variation of colourful and eye melting visuals. It’s these two strong factors that overcome the elements which are missing, such as a well written narrative or character development (but aren't missed). Instead Ultratron gives players an engaging and accelerated action experience, similar like the classic SNES shooter Super smash TV. In similar fashion, Ultratron features various stages that swarm massive amounts of enemies, bonus objectives for extra rewards and of course a big bad boss to fight at the end of each chapter.
Ultratron has a simplistic design yet one that extremely easy to immerse yourself in and hard to break away. Players will gain points and currency during the waves and at the end of each stage, will be allowed to buy from a host of weapons and variation of items to aid in their battles. These include mobile turrets, EMP devices and powerful explosives that wipe out every enemy on the screen. A great selection of items to choose from but I felt that closer to the end, most of the items became too expensive to buy as the rewards didn't increase during the progression of the game. So upgrading your abilities will increase the price of the next upgrade, but half way through the game, you’ll realise that you won’t earn enough money to buy the upgrades. You’ll find that most of the time you’ll most likely spend your money on obtaining enough shields to make it through the next stage. Sadly the game never matches the rewards to the higher risks of the games that later emerged.
The co-op feature is fantastic as not many games do it now days on the next gen consoles and Ultratron is a spectacular game to play with a friend. It’s extremely stunning with a wondrous pixelated stylisation that represents the energetic fun of older retro games so well. It’s beautiful to look at with some nice graphical effects that make this game mind blowing to observe at times.
Sadly Ultratron does not offer much else apart from the short campaign to engage in. There weren't any bonus or challenge stages to unlock or play after the main game was completed. I felt as though the game could have allowed players to choose various stages to player again, such as the bonus or boss battles.
Ultratron's flaws are with it's lack of content after completing the main game and it's unfair nature to players in terms of risk and rewards. But for its energetic fun, co-op playability and spectacular visuals, this is highly recommended and a worthy title for your pc or console library.
Reviewed on Xbox One