Take note, Metroid likers, Ultros is one trip you won't want to miss in 2024

Ultros is one of those games you can't help but pay attention to. Back when it was first revealed in May at Sony's pre-notE3 PlayStation Showcase, its colourful, fever dream visuals from Hotline Miami artist El Huervo instantly made it stand out among all the drab multiplayer shooters jostling for attention. Then, between talk of it being set inside a cosmic uterus known as The Sarcophagus and having to use seeds and plants over successive runs to alter the shape of the map to your whim, it only became more intriguing. Now, after playing almost two hours of this Metroid-y roguelite for myself, there's still a lot about it to take in and digest, but holy moly what a thing to behold at the same time. This is surely going to be one to watch for Metroidvania likers when it comes out on February 13th next year, because cor, this is looking really quite good, folks.

My preview began with Ultros' insectoid-like protagonist waking up beside the luminous stalks of several shoulder-high giant spores, with an empty, discarded pod sitting abandoned nearby, overgrown with mushrooms and other coiling, coral-like plants that stand in colourful, stark contrast to the pitch-black shadows of the foreground beneath their feet. It's an arresting scene, but that's not even the half of it. These strange, tendril-like growths quickly give way to even more fantastical, ornate structures, stained glass windows and talismans draped from one wall to another. Each new corridor is so dense with detail that it almost defies description - heck, a lot of the time, I'm not even sure I could describe what I was looking at. This so-called Sarcophagus is unlike any video game world I've ever visited, but the good news is it's not so alien that it's entirely off-putting.

For example, the way your hero moves and fights is pleasingly familiar, erring more towards the weightier, Hollow Knight end of the platforming spectrum than the lithe, nimble slips and slides of Ori or Rayman. Their bold green visor, luminous elongated elbows, trailing red cape and pitch black legs make them easy to pick out against the busy flora behind them, and after building a little momentum to their maximum running speed, they can glide smoothly from one platform to the next without feeling awkward or stilted. It's not long before they pick up their first weapon, either - a short, sharp blade that they prize out of the chest of what could easily be one of Doctor Who's Oods in a shroud.

Combat isn't a mindless, hack and slash affair like it often is in other Metroidlikes, however. It can be, if you don't mind mashing your enemies to a pulp in the process and only gaining minimal spoils from their mangled, gribbly carcasses. But you'll earn better rewards if you take the time to execute different moves and avoid repeating yourself. Dodge rolling through an attack will let you counter and plunge your sword into an enemy's weak spot with Y, for example, while hitting certain enemies in mid air will initiate a 'juggling' sequence, letting you launch them into the distance like some chitinous Sonic The Hedgehog. Your basic X attack can also be combined with most cardinal directions on your d-pad to add even more variety to your growing moveset. Keep things clean and varied and you'll earn a 'perfect' variant of your foe's particular item drop - a reward that might be met with a roll of the eyes in another game, but here it makes a surprising difference.

You see, the items you earn from enemies in Ultros double up as both your healing items and the EXP you need to unlock new abilities. Chowing down on some Puppaluppa Limbs, for example, will give you both a small health boost and slowly top up all four of your main ability bars, whereas munching on rarer delicacies such as an Uloborus Spinner may give you a bigger bump to just a pair of your stat bars, but a larger kick to your HP bar. Battered variants can also be won for less than perfect scraps with your foes, but sloppy encounters will merely earn you a Bloody Pulp, which will only restore minimal amounts of health and nothing more.

It's an interesting system, and one that asks you to juggle keeping yourself alive with becoming more powerful. But if you're worried about deliberately hampering yourself in the process, you needn't. I was perhaps overly cautious in how much I consumed early on in my playthrough, but as Ultros quickly makes known, this isn't your daddy's classic Metroidvania. There's roguelite DNA running through these psychedelic veins, and upon reaching and destroying one of the seven MacGuffin glass chambers that are supposedly keeping everyone imprisoned inside The Sarcophagus, I was zipped right back to my starting field of jumbo dandelions, my abilities reset and my pockets empty. Thus, I learned that gluttony was absolutely the way forward in this strange place, and if you've got a nose for exploring, you'll eventually find little mycelium locks that let you retain certain skills between loops. And besides, enemies appear so often in these colourful chambers that you needn't hold back - everything lives in fertile abundance inside The Sarcophagus, so you might as well let rip while you can.

Abilities aren't the only thing that eventually carry over between loops, either. Despite this being a game that positively revels in blood, guts and noshing down on brains and whatever bodily fluids you can get your hands on, Ultros is also - strangely - a game about gardening. At various points on the map, you'll find glowing patches of soil where you can plant seeds you find around the environment, and while their initial growth spurts might not produce anything particularly impressive (bar a super-charged snack for later), they become a lot more plentiful over time. Tree stumps start shooting out boughs that let you leap up to previously inaccessible platforms, for example, while swinging vines get longer and spread further across a room to create new pathways - and even within just the handful of loops afforded to me in this particular demo, The Sarcophagus quickly started feeling like a place that had been convincingly altered by both the time I'd spent there, and my journey through it.

It will no doubt produce some fascinating speedruns once it's out, but I also have a few lingering concerns around these plants that might end up raining on Ultros' parade. For instance, I never felt completely certain about what I was planting in these soil patches, or what each seed's intended effect would end up being down the line. Some I planted by accident, simply by virtue of it happening to be in what I dubbed my 'snack slot' on the left trigger (the in-game alphabet symbols are woefully unclear at times), while others I planted just because that happened to be one I'd found most recently nearby and seemed like the right thing to do. Was that necessarily the correct choice, though? Should I perhaps be saving this much rarer seeds for later, in the same way I was hoarding my initial food supplies? I never quite found the answers to these questions in the demo, but hopefully the final game will provide slightly clearer guidance on this.

Another story-critical doodad you'll encounter early on is the Extractor - a curious little contraption that tethers itself to your waist like a floating mechanical balloon. This, too, looks as though it will gain different abilities over time. By default, it grants you a double jump, but I also gained a power that turned it into a kind of turbo-charged hedge trimmer, while another one let it up suck dark, cosmic energy blocking off ominous looking corridors. Sadly, I had to rediscover the Extractor (and my sword, for that matter) each time I started a new loop, and there didn't seem to be any mycelium-shaped signs or hints that there'd be something to make these items permanent later on. Indeed, I don't think I've ever mourned the loss of a double jump quite as much as I did here, and I'll be intrigued to see how Ultros handles resetting some of its other powers later on - will it limit exploration in such a way that everything becomes a bit repetitive when you start afresh? Or will it take a more open-ended 'one size fits all' approach that doesn't require specific power-ups to reach its other MacGuffin chambers?

If Ultros can thread this needle without stinging its players in the process, then I think this really could be one of the most promising and memorable Metroidvanias we'll see next year. I mean, what other game can claim to have a boss that looks like a winged, wolf Xenomorph that has a purple void for a belly and two neon pink lightbulbs on its back? Even Elden Ring's expansion wouldn't dare to get that weird, I'm telling you now. So mark your calendars for February 13th, folks. This is one freaky pulp adventure you'll almost definitely want a taste of.