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There is certainly no offense intended to anyone at Puppy Games, but Ultratron is one of those offerings that falls squarely on the wrong side of average. The opening screen is reasonably promising. The 8-bit retro sprites and a funky, Matrix-style soundtrack suggest a simple and addictive style of play which is undoubtedly what the makers were aiming for. But from there it's almost all downhill.

There control system is intuitive and very basic. You move around using the keyboard and shoot using the mouse at the multitude of aggressive robots that appear from nowhere. The premise is a little unclear. There are certainly a lot of robots that you have to kill, but you seem to be a robot yourself. This caused my friend and I some speculation as to whether we were turning on our own kind or whether they were rogues threatening our peaceful mechanized society. Good times. Anyway, these robots sometimes drop packs when they die for the player to pick up. Shooting at the packs changes what they give out - money, shields or special attacks. If you're planning on having a go at this game, my tip is to avoid the cash and go straight for the useful stuff. The difficulty level generally goes up by increasing the amount of bad guys on the screen so hang out for the shields and smart bombs.

The graphics and sound effects were both annoying in their own way. The enemies and their long-range attacks tended to blend in with the uninspired backgrounds making the game hard on the eyes and sometimes frustrating if you missed seeing that missile volley coming straight for you. As mentioned above, the player and the enemies are all robots and there is very little visual variation on the screen. When you move to the next level, a gratingly artificial voice tells you so. The same voice also makes occasional announcements during the game play but they were so indistinct I have no idea whether they would have been helpful or not.

Overall, Ultratron has very little replay value. In fact, when I died I had no real desire to have another go at Ultratron and very much wanted to go find my copy of the similar, but much more innovative and addictive, title Crimsonland. Most of the fun to be had from this game is the kind you make yourself. My friend got more into it than I did, making his own shooting noises and smack-talking the robots, but even then the hour long demo was more than enough for both us to feel we'd had our fill.

Rating 2/5

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