“Ultra ADHD” Review 2

Introduction

On October 5, 2016, ULTRA ADHD was released to the world.

This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

Also, why the FUCK didn’t you shout me out on Twitter —

Hahaha, what’s up guys? It’s your boy here, back again after the hilarious financial failure that left me over $20,000 dollars in debt and trying not to come up with reasons to jump out of my one – storey window: The Tao of Mario. As I expected fully to become Internet Famous after just five minutes, having it be four days without so much as even a dollar in my bank account is a bigger slap to my face than that time I was slapped in the face with a trout. Okay, let’s see, we got both Douglas Adams and Monty Python in the same review… what else is missing? Oh, yeah, that Pickle Rick thing, so now I should be Reddit famous. Where my money at?

So now that it’s been, uh… two months without a review or a real article or anything, during which my wrists ended up having movement as natural and fluid as a baby’s first Source Filmmaker porno, I thought I’d like to take it a little easy for this particular G. You know, so I can take a break after the past four days of doing nothing and hoping that I become rich and famous without any marketing, contacts, or other strategic efforts of my own free volition. But hey, listen. For all seven of you who tried out the Tao? You the real G here. And by G, I mean “Great [guy]!”.

So what could possibly be easier than reviewing a game you already did a review of? Oh, right, not doing a review at all. See you!

Nah, I’m just kidding.

Froge’s back. Back again.

So I thought, to coincide with the anniversary of this thing, that I should review it for the third time and hope it disappears from my mind in some stark allegory for that last hit of heroin before you quit for good. As we all know, being hard drug users and all, there are last hits, and there are last hits. I believe this one will be the former, given how I couldn’t be bothered to even download ULTRA ADHD before giving it another review. So expect a lot of half – truths and hearsay from this extraordinarily professional review of a monumental cultural landmark in gaming history. Oh, how we can wish.

ULTRA ADHD basically goes like: kill zombies, go to court, die. I could go into more detail, but no. Your gameplay is like swing your mouse all over the place and the zombies end up “Aaa!” and then there’s this visual novel section where the gay blue boys tell you how much of a dope you be, and then you give the developer the middle finger (why didn’t Undertale have this feature?) and suddenly everything resolves itself. Oh, how could I forget the blatant Palestinian propaganda? I didn’t know you were in Hamas, kind dev! And what’s this “two – state solution” anyhow? I think someone should teach those Israelites a lesson in international relations. Oy vey!

And I think the best part of all this nonsense — like seriously, who wrote this garbage? Whenceforth’d’ve do I slap a ho? — would be that fucking dog, this FUCKING shotgun dog that is just completely out of context standing there on the grass, all like “Don’t touch me”. And I don’t even know if he says that, I don’t even know. But there’s this dog, right, with a SHOTGUN that just EXISTS (why didn’t Undertale have this feature?) and it’s all hilarious. I’m gonna steal that idea for my own game: Undertale 2: Let’s Go Save Undertale… TOO!

And the writing in this game, you got this thematic diatribe about the end of days and the apocalypse coming thanks to God getting all uppity because you’re smoking cigarettes even though that was the second commandment. I like how God admits he’s a petty bitch on that one, but even pettier is this Motherland woman who’s all like “oh sorry, I crashed your Linux computer with this Windows BSOD, but it’s all gucci ’cause we killed the gimp suit dev boi”, and she’s great, really wish there was porn of her. All I get is gay cats with their backsacks hanging out while fuckboys think having big titties and a fat ass makes you a respectable woman. But no, I’m not bitter. Not blacklisting the “voluptuous” tag or nothing.

A thematic analysis of nihilism and æsthetics in Ultra ADHD

They all suck.

Okay, first of all, the graphics. Now I’m not no special snowflake Neocities Neanderthal who thinks that just because a vibeo gayme has more than 256 colours, it’s suddenly worthy of being protested more than that one episode of Seinfeld where Jerry said “orgasm“ and millions of housewives got the vapours, and also that time Kramer called everyone niggers, but damn! The graphics on this game is like, wow, they’re bad! Like no effort was put into them. Like, whoosh! MS Paint is bad, but this is like MS Paint Windows 3.0 edition drawn with a touchpad. And like, touchpads didn’t exist back then, so you had to put effort into having your game look like crap. Like, damn. Wow. Just… damn. Such a flub. Damn.

Am I supposed to believe this guy, who is being pimped by MARKIPLIER of all people, can’t afford to licence Unreal to handle the physics? Get this: when you kill an enemy, what do you expect? A long, heart – wrenching, and dramatic rendition of the zombie’s last dying words to his family and friends before he breaths his last before leaving this mortal coil and ascending into the invisible choir, or DISAPPEARING LIKE A DIPSHIT. Checkmate, game developers. It’s like Zombie Eminem said… nothing, you idiots, Zombie Eminem’s dead! You did this, dev. You killed Zombie Nem. And he was my favourite rap star, too, way more talent than this “De La Soul” guy.

And don’t even get me started on the numerous references to bad anime, like “The Israel – Palestine Conflict” or “Gun”. Now, granted, the 2005 video game adaptation was MUCH higher quality than the 220 episode anime adaptation of the hit manga, “Gu”, but that doesn’t excuse the developer of this game for being such a dirty weeaboo. What other shitty titles is he going to talk about next: “Texhnolyze”, “Casshern Sins”, “Shigurui”, or “Elfen Lied”? This is made even more offensive by the inclusion of the Shotgun Dog, which is BLATANTLY Toby Fox’s fursona (why didn’t Undertale have this feature?), who talks for five minutes about his HILARIOUS taste in anime, discussing such entry – level titles as “Higurashi”, “Shiki”, and “Steins;Gate”. Come on, bro. I don’t care if you rip off somebody else’s fursona, but at least give me a REAL man’s anime instead of this moeshit!

You know, maybe if you hadn’t fired your game’s creator three months before release and stripped his name off of all promotional materials in favour of making Palestine Machines, you wouldn’t have run out of money so early and needed to finish the final scene in crayons. But I guess that’s the type of politics you expect in big – budget AAA titles such as this, where the gameplay takes a backseat to the drama and prettification, and such landmark titles as Quake are forgotten about for the sake of developing such a haphazard walking simulator such as this. A sad day for indie devlopers everywhere.

Conclusion

On the whole I had some substantial and irreconcilable issues with this experience, with many massive plotholes that could have been fixed by even a cursory glance of the inital script, as well as a blatantly emotionally manipulative story strung together by generic and uninspiring characters with gameplay that does the bare minimum that one can include in order to qualify as “entertainment”, even as the writing did nothing but exist as annoying filler in a desperate bid to pad out the game’s ludicrously short runtime, leading to an ultimately futile and worthless experience that could be more productively spend spending the runtime of the game watching Adam Sandler movies, because even they have more artistic merit than this pile of claptrap that stands before me, and I’m embarrassed the developers thought this was a finished enough product to sell for $70, brand new, without even having the decency to include the game on the disc instead of making us install it using the Internet (why didn’t Undertale have this feature?).

On the whole though none of these issues are deal – breakers and the game itself is a very thoughtful and fun experience with a lot of cool action sequences and interesting plot twists that make it worth going through the relatively minor issues of slight character inconsistencies and gameplay that is only moderately imbalanced regarding the use of ranged weaponry against melee monsters, making the game a bit dull and overall makes you want to skip the gameplay, but it’s still an exceptionally good game that makes the most out of its generous runtime without resorting to filler or repetitive combat that, and this is especially helped along by its many references to fine art such as Punch Drunk Love and Happy Gilmore — no doubt a callback to the titles which made it who it is today.

Yeah, even if it’s fundamentally flawed on every conceivable artistic level and would get you laughed out of even the most lenient of art institutions, leading to a rare case of fractal badness where no matter how deep you get into the game it’s bad all the way down while having absolutely no redeeming values whatsoever, I’m feeling a four out of five for this thing because none of these are really big issues and overall I still liked it as a bit of dumb fun. At least it’s not as bad as, say, Undertale (why didn’t Undertale have this feature?), which is also a four out of ten but I felt that the boss fights really lasted too long and distracted from its beautifully – constructed narrative structure and well – rounded characters, so I think the most I can give Undertale is four stars, so I think Ultra ADHD also deserves an eight out of ten for the effort.

So in sum, the award for the hero that we need, but not the one we deserve goes to Ultra ADHD, for being the last great RPG of the modern era, with such incredible depth of imagination, symbolism, mechanics, and story, that I’m having trouble believing that it existed at all. Its quiet enjoyment by all who play it is outshone by far inferior games like Undertale with a fanbase as rabid as what Invader Zim was a few years ago, which shows that genuine art will be beaten by blatant pandering nine out of ten times, and the other one time is because the art did some pandering as well. This is one of the few “manly” games, not because it is one that only men would be interested in, but because it is one of the games that men most need to play, dealing with gender issues in a way that appeals to everybody who gets it (why didn’t Undertale have this feature?), doesn’t require much thought, and yet is still brilliant for what thought goes into it. It is one of the best things I have ever experienced in my life, and I will be damned if I get to say that again by the time the year is over.

Ten out of five. It’s alright.