Ultra Age (PlayStation 4) Review

By Eric Ace 21.06.2022

Review for Ultra Age on PlayStation 4

Ultra Age is a small budget hack and slash game on Playstation 4 made by a company called Next Stage Inc. It tells the story of a man named 'Age' who decides to single-handedly fight against a horde of robots using futuristic swords. It is complete with some RPG elements like levelling up skills, learning new moves and getting a few new weapons.

Ultra Age feels far too much like how a majority of indie games are these days: some areas excel, and others are so bad it is clear there was no direction or overall director trying to tie it all together. From the beginning when the main character Age crashes down on a planet and starts talking, it seemed like a joke for how stupid his lines and voice was. It resembles perhaps a setup for a flashback when he was younger and dumber, and now he is some crazed berserker. Alas, that is how our hero actually is, a confused character wandering around in a self-induced fog of ignorance.

For a small indie company, their background art including the jungle, water, and caves is on point. The characters themselves, not so much; Age and all the robots slayed along the way look straight out of a Playstation 3 game, and that is being generous. This is yet another example of inconsistency throughout the title.

Gameplay revolves around the typical hack and slash style of dashing around, getting hits in, and fighting endless hordes of enemies. It plays fairly well, no major complaints other than often there are too many enemies and they take too long to kill. Frequently Age can simply run around in circles, getting all the enemies to group up into a huge blob, get a few hits in and then the cycle repeats. It feels more gimmicky than slick combat. One of the biggest gripes though is after only a few hits Age is dead, and the checkpoints are very few and far between. So, while combat is not that hard, during fighting one hundred robots between checkpoints it is inevitable to get hit and possibly die, effectively resetting thirty minutes of mindless fighting.

Screenshot for Ultra Age on PlayStation 4

The story has the trappings of some cool Sci-Fi plot but never goes anywhere. Age sounds like a seventeen-year-old boy who has far more brawn than brain, and is horrendously stupid in his grasp on the action. Furthermore, the voice acting is so laughably bad it harkens back to the Playstation 2 era where voice acting was first hitting the scenes, in all of it cringe-worthy glory.

Regarding equipment swords have a fixed life span, after a few hits they break. It is supposed to give a type of final 'break blade' attack, but oftentimes it is just a mere annoyance. Levelling the different stats and skills is interesting, but it does not feel that rewarding because combat, as mentioned earlier, is kind of dry. For sure there are a fair number of moves, but anything remotely long in execution catches a hit and throws the player back to most recent checkpoint.

Screenshot for Ultra Age on PlayStation 4

Cubed3 Rating

5/10
Rated 5 out of 10

Average

Clearly a budget title, even looking past some of the obvious flaws like the laughably bad voice acting or the older console generation looking characters, the core game itself - fighting - leaves a lot to be desired. Enemies largely are punching bags with annoyingly large HP pools, but the game is unforgiving with how long there is between being able to save. Ultra Age had some clear potential but it really needed its quality spread across all aspects, the bad parts drag the rest of it down making it largely passable.

Developer

Next Stage

Publisher

Intragames

Genre

Action

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  5/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now   

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