Cyberpunk themes of futuristic organizations, dystopian regimes and dark city streets full
of thugs and criminals is a perfect match for ultraviolence, and Ruiner does just that
-- with an electric color scheme with blood-red neon lights painting every corner, killer
sound design and fast-paced action.
It's a spectacle to behold.
But is this just a poor man's Hotline Miami with a shiny 3D skin, or is it something more
unique and innovative?
Let's find out in this episode of Cyberpunk Curated.
Quite some hype has surrounded the style and aesthetic of this game in marketing and trailers,
as well as the main character's now-famous LED screen mask which displays violent messages,
video clips or even anime references.
And I have to say that the hype here is deserved.
This game just oozes style.
From it's comic-style cutscenes with wacky character designs, an emoji-abusing hacker
girl and anime-like dialogue sequences to the 1980's dark action movie lighting and
set design.
Often entire rooms will be soaked in red from a single flood light, silhouetting the player
character and enemies in an ominous glow.
It really is gorgeous.
You play a cybernetic masked warrior who is mind-controlled early in the game to become
a suicide hitman and then left for dead, but something goes wrong and you're snapped
out of it before you can finish the job by a shocking twist and the help of a seeming
friend.
Your search for who set you up starts a dark and brooding story to find your imprisoned
brother that acts as a backdrop to the plentiful and gratuitous action scenes the game puts
you in.
Ruiner doesn't spend too much time detailing the worldbuilding or reasoning behind the
game's universe.
With limited but enjoyable text dialogue and virtually no voice acting (a little odd in
contrast to the AAA-quality production values), there are minimal dialogue options from your
character, instead it's hyper-focused on what the game does best: Killing.
And lots of it.
Gorgeously high-contrast and colorful visuals combined with a soundtrack is something to
behold.
Whether it's abstract vocals over ambient pads in the hub areas or dialogue, the music
of the game gets your blood pumping with an array of high-energy electronica.
Sometimes it will sound like a lost Nine Inch Nails track from the 1990's, while others
will resemble electro-house music thumping as if timed to your slaughter, to occasionally
breaking into synthetic tribal beats like you're taking part in a blood-soaked rain
dance of sorts.
It's just sounds and feels so energetic.
It's catchy, high-energy and gruesome all at the same time.
Frenetic battles leave metallic-plated scenes splattered with blood -- and it strongly resembles
Japanese cyberpunk fiction like Akira and Ghost in the Shell.
It's a cyberpunk fan's dream to witness.
Watching Ruiner's gameplay for even just a few moments should remind you of 2012's
surprise indie hit, Hotline Miami.
And it's a fair comparison.
Both games have overhead fast-paced and deadly combat where you're regularly switching
between melee and guns.
Each weapon has but one clip of ammo, so once you've expended that clip the weapon's
gone.
So you're on a constant run from weapon to weapon.
Unlike Hotline Miami though, Ruiner offers a much wider variety of weaponry, and allows
for more complex combos and mobility.
This game also has two weapon slots: one for melee, one for guns.
You'll always have a basic SMG and pipe melee weapon to fall back on, but pickups
are always more powerful.
You can blast guys to pieces with powerful shotguns, roast them alive with flamethrowers,
perforate them with fast-shooting machine guns and also pick up brutal melee weapons
like fiery maces or deadly katanas that break after a handful of hits.
It's all very fast-paced, with calculated shots, zooming around the battlefield, trying
to get out of the line of fire and in a good place to plow through multiple enemies at
once.
The game supports both controller and keyboard and mouse and both setups are intuitive, but
fast and accurate aiming is key here so in the end the mouse was my preferred tool of
justice in the streets of Rengkok.
There are two resources in the game: health and energy.
You don't die in one hit, but you are far from invincible.
Much of the game is about lightning reflexes, but nearly an equal amount is about resource
management.
Killing enemies drop health and energy pickups, and at points helpful drones will drop resources
for you as well.
You're going to be using dashes a lot to avoid damage, but you can also use energy
to activate your shield which deflects and eventually can reflect projectiles back at
your enemies.
The game seems pretty easy even on Normal difficulty early on, but Ruiner has a way
of throwing challenge at you in waves.
I could clear some segments with an easy S+ Rank, whilst others threw a curveball so hard
I had to retry a dozen or more times.
Mini-boss battles are usually placed after a checkpoint and a few waves of enemies, so
you will often have to replay whole set pieces again and again trying to beat them.
But Ruiner is designed with the attention-deficit in mind.
Every cutscene and death screen has a big red skip button right there waiting to be
pressed, so you're always back in the action sometimes before you realize it yourself.
Not all Ruiner's depth is apparent at first, but as you level up and start unlocking more
advanced techniques.
The amount of fighting styles become apparent.
You can plot and chain multiple dashes together to quickly get to an enemy, drop a grenade,
then get to cover.
Or circle strafe with shotgun blasts and SMGs.
You can enable shields then dash for a charge attack.
Or zip around to hit the vulnerable side of shielded foes.
There's a lot of variety here which inspires experimentation, especially on Hard mode.
The actual boss battles are more akin to Diablo III though, in closed arenas, with AI patterns
that switch up after a quota of damage has been met.
Though unlike normal combat, these fights seem to prefer one style over others.
The charged up melee attacks seem to deliver the damage over whittling them down with bullets.
Due to the more forgiving but still visceral combat mechanics with a slick, modern graphics
style and difficulty options, I believe Ruiner could have a much wider appeal than Hotline
Miami's relentless twitch gameplay.
It doesn't have as much of a puzzle game feel as Hotline, but it doesn't throw as
many cheap and instant deaths at you either.
Each fight has specific enemies that spawn in specific places each time, so eventually
you can learn the pattern and take them all out methodically like a prophetic bad-ass
if you replay the segment enough times.
Ruiner has a skill progression system with shield upgrades, ammo boosts, increasing the
durability of melee weapons, and active abilities such as stun splash damage, grenades and more.
There's a lot of options to upgrade and unlock, and these upgrades seem like a must
to tackle the higher difficulty settings.
There is a between-mission hub world which feels like a really simplified Deus Ex.
You're not going to be doing any complex missions here and despite its interesting
and beautifully rendered vistas it's pretty basic and feels like an afterthought.
There are minor objectives during combat missions that finish quests started in the downtown
hub, and there are other minor activities like hacking into cats… it's a long story.
A little underdeveloped here, sure.
But it doesn't negatively impact the rest of the game.
Depending on how much you like replaying games or what difficulty you normally play on, a
playthrough of all 14 levels of Ruiner could take you about 6-10 hours the first run, and
I feel the $20 US price tag is just right for the quality and content you get out of
it.
Like Hotline Miami before it, Ruiner is one of those rare games where the tightness of
gameplay and controls, the sheer brutality and energy of the hyper-stylized graphics
and heart-pumping music just come together in moments perfectly that remind me of why
I love video games.
It doesn't have deep roleplaying or Hugo award-winning storyline.
But its exciting and engaging fast-paced combat with some interesting world exploration in-between
will leave you chomping at the bit for more.
If your reflexes aren't as fast as they could be or the gameplay shown here doesn't
excite you, the game just might not be for you.
But Ruiner is easily one of the best games I've played this year, it scratches that
trigger-happy itch and scores in my arbitrary rating scale, 5 Surveillance Cats out of 5.
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