Ultionus: A Tale of Petty Revenge

Petty revenge, my favorite.

Ultionus: A Tale of Petty Revenge is a SHMUP/platformer (SHMUP-former? former-SHMUP?) where you play as Serena, heroine of the universe, who is out for revenge after being trolled on Spacebook by the Space Prince. After crash landing on his planet, you have to make your way through a number of stages to reach his castle so you may exact revenge.

A normal start.

The game pulls its looks from PC games of the mid-90s—classics such as Jazz Jackrabbit and Duke Nukem. It looks great and the animations are fluid. Regarding animations, the game does have some…suggestive assets that may turn some users onto or off from it. The heroine is quite voluptuous, and the opening sequence takes particular care to emphasize this. She also runs around in a barely-there space suit as she makes her way to the final castle. I felt it was done in a humorous manner, but I can see it being a problem for some.

I want to point out the controls because, to me, they are one of the most important aspects of any game. Ultionus takes time to get used to. The opening stage is your standard space SHMUP, but once you’re on the planet’s surface, things change drastically. One of my largest complaints with this game is also one of the most common complaints I read online, it’s that you can’t fire while moving. The game does try to use part of one stage to get you used to the idea but it’s still jarring once the action starts. If you do stop, you’re unable to keep up with the enemy spawns as you try to clear a path. Most players probably stop at this point but if you master jumping while moving, an action that doesn’t slow you down, you’ll be fine.

She stopped to shoot. Bad idea!

I played through Ultionus on Normal, and while there were some portions of the game where I died a lot that gave me some trouble, overall the game didn’t feel terribly difficult. You get nine lives and unlimited continues, which makes beating the game a venture that takes maybe a couple of hours your first time.There are a handful of vehicle stages where you are rewarded for how fast you can smash the Fire key which will kill your wrist. I had to take a day’s break to recover after one such stage.

One part of the game made me question the design of its absurd art style the first time I saw it: The Game Over screen depicts a “bad end” scene with the main character bent over, drooling and ass in the air. (NSFW-ish, triggering pic) It caught me off guard and left me feeling awkward.

All in all, I would not recommend this game. I did enjoy parts of it and the ending was satisfying, but the overall length of the game and easy patterns in boss fights left much to be desired.

Ultionus: A Tale of Petty Revenge was developed by Last Dimension. It may also be found on Ouya

$for 9.99 you’ll be able to share this dish served cold.