Tights, chainmail, and plate armor may be the most appropriate garments to wear into a mighty battle, but blue denim feels the most spiritually correct. A new soulslike from an unexpected dev team dares you to unleash your inner fleshy beefcake. In Ultimate Drummer, the anticipated gaming debut from Cool 3D World, only you have the fortitude, drum skills, and skullet to reunite the kingdom.
If you don’t recognize the name Cool 3D World, you’ll likely recognize their strange visions. Animators and real-life musicians Jon Baken and Brian Tessler have been creating short, surreal videos since the Vine days. Crude, computer-generated grotesqueries of bodies unbound by shape or logic, feverishly screaming, consuming, and transforming. You may recall their big ham-loving boys from an episode of Smiling Friends. The two artists have long conquered the digital plane but had never made it interactive, until now.
The realm of Ultimate Drummer is torn asunder. When a supergroup of gods once found a most excellent harmony, they exiled their drummer for growing too powerful. The vengeful deity only honed his dangerous skills, returning to banish the other gods in kind. As a new hero with the divine powers of the sticks, you must rescue each member of heaven’s band to rid this world of blight.
Gliding around the landscape on your drum set, you will conquer treacherous platforming, leaping through deathtrap dungeons, Sonic-like speed boost rings, and atop mountains of white plastic lawn chairs. Janky cave perverts and surprisingly intense boss battles await in the darkest depths. Incredible feats, all accomplished without skipping a beat. During all the action, your hero is playing an uninterrupted drum loop, which you can customize, save as presets, and unlock new samples for. If your hero needs a third arm to lob battle axes at exploding vultures, so be it.
You can also unlock the latest fashions for your hero and new skins for your kit. That’s on top of a character creator that is capable of rendering many miracles, except for delivering a normal skull shape.
Is it the most tightly composed soulslike out there? Who cares. It’s an opportunity to dive face-first, hollering, into the manic Cool 3D World. A chance to square off against large Steve Austin-like heads dropped on you like Elden Ring’s Silver Spheres. Ultimate Drummer is filled with non-stop surprises, a twist for every beat. Be it a new kind of gun-toting ogre or some earnestly great battles. It’s like jazz, y’know? It’s like how you can call anything unstable jazz.