ultrakill - dnf
a very harsh reminder that i am in fact disabled and i am unable to engage with the things i loved
please note: this is a game i have reviewed multiple times! the prior versions of this review will be included below. enjoy!
i dont know why i keep trying to come back to play this game; literally every single time i do i have a deeply uncomfortable personal realization of my rapidly deteriorating health, how as little as a wrist flick which i would comfortably do for hours previously can now reduce me to groaning lethargy requiring days of rest within minutes of overexertion - a request made frequently and in large demand by ultrakill.
i keep trying, foolishly, perhaps as some sort of way to fight that inevitability; to try to kick back against the notion that just because i have my wasting diseases, that doesnt mean that i cant still get into the high-octane, the thrilling and the speedy. and yet every time i attempt to have that confrontation, it always ultimately ends in my defeat at the hands of the game, time and again. is that a failing of the game? arguably not, and yet it leaves me with such a sour taste that i cant help but feel offended by it.
i used to love shooters of this ilk. quake, unreal, hell even older boomer shooter trappings such as duke 3d and blood. but as time marches on, and my bones stop being able to, i find myself increasingly isolated from a genre which once dominated my life and made me feel such a great high once i attained mastery - a luxury which i took for granted at the time, and one that i am not afforded today, due to the time investment being one i simply cannot meet due to the physical strain it places upon me.
and yet, simultaneously, i cant stop trying to come back to it. like its some sort of closure to my teenage self, like its getting that one-sitting nightmare playthrough of quake 1, like its playing through all the half-lifes on hard, like its experiencing the shit in blood that made me want to punch holes in my wall. i keep clawing for this lost part of me to return, in vain, only causing myself more physical anguish in the attempts to climb, and mental torture as i fall. i am but a rat that struggles for the taste of cheese, but i can only get there through a maze of threaded spikes.
that new HEALTH single for the cybergrind was alright, though
the bosses in this game genuinely made me come to terms with the fact that my wasting disease is slowly killing me and my ability to play video games and that was not an experience i particularly wanted. not to mention that the levels become scavenger hunts for enemies after a while. i'm glad that it got new blood pretty popular so they could go on to publish other, better games that don't make me have existential crises from how utterly alienating their design is
