I really want to like this game so much more than I do.

//N.P.P.D. RUSH// - The milk of Ultra Violet is friggin' weird, man. Set in a hellish cyberpunk future, you play the dying, limbless head-and-torso of a Nox junkie, freshly amputated and installed into a police-issue battlemech and sent forth to rescue 30 unfortunate women from the industrial dystopia that is Nauseous Pines before your life support systems fail or you simply get shot to pieces by drugged-up mutants and murderous nuclear snipers. The setting alone was more than enough to get me interested, and the gameplay certainly sounded compelling, but the final product is a whole lot more unpersonable than I'd hoped.

The game consists of five levels, each of which is filled with monsters, a number of women, and an exit that takes you to the next floor and offers you a chance to shop for upgrades. Killing opponents along the way earns you coins, which you can spend to delay the inevitable onset of time death, upgrade your weaponry, or rent a hooker for a health boost. More dubious services available include selling your "excess" organs for cash or getting a Nox hit, greatly healing you but causing your perception of time to get slippery. While there aren't too many enemies to encounter, the levels are randomly generated, so each game layout is at least a suprise. Unfortunately, that's exactly what you don't need in this game.

The visuals are heavily glitched out, resembling an NES game undergoing severe and likely fatal errors. Each foe you kill smears the screen with an opaque haze of red; each injury you sustain stains the screen blue. Every encounter leaves you semi-blind and hoping for the best. Even worse, your field of vision is intentionally so short that you'll be blazing along at high speeds, only to crash into an opponent and take heavy damage. The reaction time needed to not get mangled is inhumanly fast, and since the game has a timer, you're not exactly willing to go forward cautiously. The interlevel shops certainly help somewhat, but money's a scarce commodity, and spending time killing every opponent you come across is two kinds of suicide. In the end it winds up being a manic, stressful, anxiety-laden experience, and the lack of any sort of unlockables or achievements leaves you feeling that your 30 or 40 agonizing deaths served no purpose. Admittedly, you'll get better with time, but the game is still NES-title unfair and actively tries to aggravate you into quitting. It's a neat little art project with some gorgeous visuals and an enticing knack for authentic old-school agony, but if you're looking for a game you'll actually want to beat, look somewhere else.