We Were Never Friends

Devolver Digital has announced that the Nintendo Switch port of hyperactive shooter Ruiner will launch on the Nintend??o eShop June 18. The isometric action title previously launched on PS4, PC, and Xbox One back in 2017.

Developed by Reikon Games and dripping in neon-tinged ultraviolence, Ruiner is a cyberpunk tale of a loner who embarks on?? a nihilistic mission to take down the ruthless corporation Heaven, who are responsible for the disappearance of our protagonist's brother. Guided by genius hacker "Her", our non-hero run 'n' guns their way through Heaven's hi-tech, high-security office blocks, taking on waves of enemies with an arsenal of futuristic weaponry, whilst learning the truth about themselves, their brother, Her, and Heaven itself.

Like many titles that spill out of the Devolver catalogue, Ruiner is soaked in weird style and suffocating atmosphere, heavily emphasising speed, tactical-thinking, and efficiency. Similar to games such as High Hell, My Friend Pedro, or Ape Out, Ruiner is a game that is built to be run and re-run as the player hones their mas?tery of its mechanics, resulting in a ballet of blood-stained carnage.

Ruiner ??launches on Nintendo Swi??tch June 18. It is available now on PS4, PC, and Xbox One.

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'Soon'

Ruiner excels at everything it sets out to accomplish. It's dripping in cyberpunk futuristic dystopia aesthetics, a visual assault of deep reds and neons. It's also a tough-as-hell action game, one that Anthony described as part twin-stick shooter and part bullet-hell in his review.

Now this Devolver-pu??blished gem is making its way to Switch. Develo?per Reikon Games announced the port this afternoon via this tweet:

YOU CAN NEVER ESCAPE.

RUINER IS COMING TO #NintendoSwitch

WHEN?
01010011 01001111 01001111 01001110

You asked, we deliver. It took a while, but we're almost there. Get ready. Help us and SPREAD THE NEWS!#RUINER #ruinergame #nintendo #switch #cyberpunk pic.twitter.com/PuAmj1g4SJ

— RUINER (@ruinergame) February 21, 2020

There's no set date for the Switch release, but that binary code translates to "soon." It'll be a good holdover while you wait for that other cyberpunk game to come out -- which, by the way, probably isn't ever coming to Switch.

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Pump up the jam

Reikon Games' cyberpunk twin-stick shooter RUINER is worth a second look this week.

With today's Annihilation update, the studio has added a 10-stage Arena: Colosseum mode with online leaderboards, four? new finishers, and two unlockable outfits. It's available now on PC.

PS4 and Xbox One players will get Annihilation "in the next few days," and it'll come with previously PC-only?? bonuses like New Game+, Speedrun mo?de, and new weapons, finishing moves, and outfits.

Anthony reviewed RUINER for us last September. He dug the "exceptional gun and melee based combat" and said it would "fit perfect?ly in a dark room with your? headphones cranked to maximum."

If you originally passed the game up but are feeling more open to it nowadays, it's half price right now on PC and PS4 (with a similar discount planned for Xbox On?e in March).

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Adrenline fueled future

In recent years there has been an uptick in the number of games that wear their difficulty on their sleeves. Countless games on Steam right now talk about how hardcore they are and how they will beat you down to the point of quitting and crying. Most of these games do it by stacking the deck against you o?r not really giving you the tools to properly defeat your foes. It's the good ones that giv?e you the tools to win, but also give those same tools to the AI as well as the skills to use them well.

RUINER, I'm happy to say, is one of those good difficult games. But hard gameplay alone does not a great game make, there needs to be more to round out the difficultly and keep you coming back for more. You need a world, a story, a character, or something that gets its hooks into you and makes you pick the controller up off of the ground that you just threw it onto. RUINER ??will have that masochistic pull for some but for others, I wond?er if they will not be as easily hooked.

RUINER (PC [Reviewed], PS4, Xbox One)
Developer: Reikon Games
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Released: September 26, 2017
MSRP: $19.99

RUINER at its core is a cross between a twin-stick shooter and a bullet hell that is slathered to the hilt with futuristic science-ficti??on overtones. The combat is kinetic, varied, and most of all fast. You always need to be moving or else you will face a quick death.

To stave off your own death while bringing it down upon your enemies, you will have at all times a pipe and an upgradable machin??e gun with unlimited ammo. Better and more varied weapons can  be procured in each level but everything outside of your base equipment has limited uses. This can get a little annoying when you finally find a gun you like, but it never really feels unfair as the base weapons are formidable and at? times I found the base gun more useful against certain enemies.

Along with weapons you also have abilities that really give you the upper hand against your enemies, until they can start using the same ones. The abilities are about what you'd expect for a twin-stick or bullet hell: you've got a dash, various shields, stun grenades, berserker mode. Nothing really out of the ordinary, but you can tell the combat is designed a?round ?you mastering the abilities given to you.

Abilities are unlocked and upgraded using skill points that you gain from leveling up as well as doing side quests in the hub world. One of the things I really love about the game is the fact that you can change your abilities and skill points assigned to them at any ?time. It both feels very appropriate for a world filled with transhumanism and is also integral to your success against ever-changing enemies. The game never really lets you stay with one ability set and instead forces you to adapt to different situations by throwing enemies at you that have different strengths and weaknesses that can be exploited with your av??ailable abilities.

There are a few abilities that I found kinda useless such as one that increases your power as your combo level grew, which would be good if RUINER threw enemies at you at a quick enough pace to string combos. On the flip side, a few becam?e a bit overpowered as I neared the end thanks to the ability for me to lock up enemies and breeze through the final few levels and bosses.

That's not to say that the game isn't difficult; when played at the developer-suggested level it is. There are two levels below that though if you don't feel like wanting to scream at the top of your lungs from your 50th straight death. I chose to go with the suggested level and I can say while it is difficult, the curve is gradual and leads you into increasingly difficult enemies at a comfortable pace. There were a few bumps in the road but ultimately I got through them all and found that I fared much better after I took into account that I was not invulnerable. After that, I started treating RUINER more like a bullet hell while still finding ways to attack and the combat just clicked in my brain. I also found the game more enjoyable on a controller but ?the option to play on a keyboard is a bonus for those of you who prefer it.

Throughout the game there are three differing types of encounters you will face. Your usual horde encounter, mini-bosses, and as to be expected, boss battles. The horde encounters are nothing really special where you face down a bunch of basic enemies thrown at yo??u incrementally. The mini-bosses are the ones that I found to be both the most difficult and therefore satisfying to conquer. These encounters were usually a single souped-up enemy that had powerful guns and abilities that rivaled your own as well as much more health than your usual enemies. The bosses were interesting at first but as the game wore on they reused mechanics from earlier fights and I don't know if it was done out of bad game design or to fit the narrative of an overarching enemy.

As far as story, it starts you off with a character called Your Master giving you one single objective: KILL BOSS. After you kill Boss, the story devolves into your usual cyberpunk tropes. Double crosses, corporations as powerful as nations, missing siblings that weren't mentioned prior to you being betrayed. Overall the story was kinda w??eak which I wouldn't mind if the game didn't try to market itself as story driven. There were some enjoy?able and funny moments but they mostly came from the supporting cast of characters instead of the main story.

It really disappoints me that the story is so bland too because the world that RUINER takes place in feels so vibrant and well fleshed out. While walking around the hub city of Rengkok you can meet all the usual characters you'd expect to see in a cyberpunk world. Anarcho-hackers who wanna burn the world down, sadists who admire how much pain you put yourself through, state surveillance robotic cats, it's all here. All of these characters and the rest of the world are fleshed out through an in-game database that rivals the one included with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I took upon these entries with great voracity and upon reading through all of them it just feels like they left so much on the table with regards ??to using that world well. I suspect some people will get more mileage out of the story than I but this is clearly a subjective issue.

Aesthetically the game looks and feels amazing. The use of red as a prevailing color really aids in creating an atmosphere of paranoia and danger. At times the levels get a little dark but thankfully all enemies are outlined in red so you can see them even in the dark. The soundtrack is just where it needs to be for ev??ery part. In the hub world, a song of almost sad longing plays that you could swear was being sung by someone on a nearby roof. In combat though, the music is filled with just the kind of adrenaline electro music you'd like to hear as you drive a pipe into someone's head.

The only technical issue I have is at the time of writing this review you could only have one save slot. I don't know why this is a problem in games all of a sudden but I lost all of my progress trying to recreate a patched out glitch that I had found in an earlier build and it's a little more than annoying. As far as endgame content, the lack of a leaderboard or arcade mode feels like a missed opportunity but it's nothing major and doesn't detract from the ??base game in any way.

When all is said and done, you ultimately have a solid cyberpunk action game that has exceptional gun and melee based combat taking place in a beautifully fleshed out world that it, unfortunately, doesn't utilize to its full potential. It may not be perfect but I can wholeheartedly recommend RUINER if you are looking for a good challenge or a game th??at would fit perfectly in a dark room with your headphones cranked to maximum.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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Cyborg minotaurs are my jam

Ruiner has looked darn good for some time now, and it won't be much longer yet before we're all able to go hands-on with the top-down shooter/slasher. It's out September 26, 2017 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One by way of Reikon Games and (who else?) Devolver Digital.

Today's trailer got me to poke around the game's website, which has?? gifs and the story setup as well as a look at the foes: brainwashed Creeps, semi-synthetic Heaven Security guards, Triad Killers, and a Cyborg Minotaur. What's the deal with that last one? "The bosses like their toys personalized and often inspired by mythical beasts to pump up the intimidation factor. This one is big, heavy, and as strong as they get outside of military grade cyborgs." I'm so into this.

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Impressions from PAX South

Do you fancy a challenge? Do you long for the thrill of near-death and the subseq??uent feeling of satisfaction perfectly accentuated by the sinking rag doll of your enemies? Are you like me? If you are, then you want that challenge. You want yo??ur enemies to feel the pain you've been dealt and ten-fold. You want to kick their cyber bottoms into submission and make them cry for their cyber mommas. 

However, if you're like me, getting to that point will take precious time. I was psyched for at least a bit of a hillclimb with Ruiner, but my signature underestimatation got the best of me yet again. My aiming needed to be quick, I had to hone my abilities quicker, and I had to "gi?t gud" in the span of just a mere half hour. 

That wasn't happening.

I have a newfound appreciation for journalists/bloggers willing to embarrass themselves in front of dozens of live spectators and, eventually, hundreds or even thousands of others online. They will inevitably face the brunt of commenters proclaiming such nonsense as "Why do you let someone so awful preview a game that is clearly meant for REA?L GAMERS?", but until you've tried pressing for questions and making conversation while simultaneously trying to overcome a very difficult game, surrounded by noise overwhelming the screen in front of you, you have no idea. 

The enemies in Ruiner are da??ngerously accurate and can easily compensate for whatever it is you throw at them. If not very careful, you can lose health at an alarming rate. It's one of those experiences where you initially wonder if it's actually feasible to even meet the game halfway. Slowly, though, you find yo?urself going over intricate step-by-step processes to succeed and attempting to hold on to several important mental notes.

Ruiner isn't anything tremendously special aesthetically, conceptually, or mechanically, but where it makes its mark is in its intricate balancing and polish. This is a game that you will spend a lot of time with and come away from feeling leaner, meaner, and probably a lot happier.&??nbsp;

The basis of Ruiner is that it is a twin-stick shooter set within the grim, cyb?erpunk distant future of 2091. The inhabitants of Rengkok are assigned "Karma" acco?rding to local officials and government, similar to how our real-life China handles gamifying citizenship where some get preferential treatment (in ways both subtle and overt) for things like paying taxes on time, talking about specific products on social media, and so on. Our fictional Rengkok takes this several steps further and tells a story of oppression and personal identity. 

Our nameless main character is a cybernetically-enhanced killer being chauffeured by a skilled hacker known only to you as "Her." Your motives seem somewhat one in the same, but it felt almost as if she was conditioning the not-so-protagonist through patronizing flattery and possibly even hacking his probably very robotic brain. The self-described "wired sociopath" angle of the main character is one the developers assured me wasn't merely a ??device used to rid the game of any potential dissonance between the action and narrative. There's plenty of room for meta commentary and exploration of what exactly makes a person who they are in an age where technology is becoming quite literally a part of us. 

There is a surprising focus on narrative in Ruiner. Approximately one fourth of the game will supposedly consist of downtime and strolling about the various Akira/Blade Runner-inspired hubs of Rengkok. There are people to meet, niceties to purchase, and, of course, troubles to find. I wouldn't expect a full-fledged open world from such a small team, but you can definitely get a decent sense of place within Ruiner beyond blasting th??rough stage after stag??e at a bullet's pace. 

By that same token, naturally, you will be required to mov??e pretty fast and sho??ot a lot of bullets. 

In the early days of development, Ruiner was just shooting and dashing. Soon enough, players could multi-dash, slow time, and conjure protective barriers. Taking inspiration from Hotline Miami, they began to add melee weapons and the lightening-fast enemy movement/precision. The audio-visual punch was also clearly out of Hotline Miami's playbook, only much heavier and more synthetic. Imagine a T-1000 blasting through an army of elephant-sized subwoofers. It is loud, intense, and incredibly satisfyin??g. 

Before, I briefly mentioned the brutality of the gameplay. Once it gets going, it barely lets you rest. Approaching Ruiner with the intent of beating it like most games is a fool's errand. I had to make very precise and liberal usage of bullet time, dashing, shielding, and weapon switching. Let a mistake hang for too long and your health will swiftly deplete. Even with health and power recharge stations spewn about, the game is only just kind enough to make you feel like you can engage in your own slightly unique fashion and that things aren't entirely impossible. Ruiner wants you to focus and learn it?? inside and out. 

It did not, ever once, feel unfair. I just simply was not good enough yet. I was impressed with how much the game did with so few tried-a??nd-true concepts that games have arguably taken for granted over the years. It uses these concepts and its difficulty not to just challenge you, but encourage you to use everything at your disposal to get the most out of the experience possible. 

Ruiner's graphical fidelity is similar to that of Housemarque's works, such as Resogun and Alienation. A fidelity not achieved by most indie developers. Sparses of sharp neon and a coating of superb lighting go a long way in making the world around you feel all the more tangible. What is a good cyberpunk dystopia without successful mood lighting? Thankfully, the game also runs smoothl?y at all times. 

Outside the 3D art, you'll also be treated to static 2D character splashes during conversations. No less expressive, mind you. Specifically, the main character has a pool of numerous still images and texts that appear across his LCD helmet akin to Zer0 from Borderlands. For someone so stoic, I got plenty of good chuckles out of even his most trivial of exchanges. Ruiner might be pretty dark, but it d??oes still have genial?? doses of humor. 

I sat up from my time with the game thinking there was no way I wasn't giving this a shot. It's about time I delved into another twin-stick shooter with a focus shifted away from high scores and more towards? engaging the player with its mechanics and narrative?. 

If Ruiner is something you aske?d for, it releases later this year!

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With music by Susumu Hirasawa

Reikon Games is taking us to 2091 with its upcoming top-down action-shooter Ruiner, and base?d on the cyberpunk imagery and snappy combat shown?? in this trailer, I am down.

Where did this come from? It's being made in Warsaw by folks who previously worked on games like The Witcher, Dying Light, This War of Mine, and Shadow Warrior. That explains a lot.

It's worth pointing out that you aren??'t solely sliding around to shoot dudes (though, again, I am a fan). There are also melee weapons, and you can "Employ state of the art gadgets like energy shield, dash augmentations, and the switch gun stun or hack the opposition onto your side of the fight."

If you're in Boston this weekend for PAX East, you can try this out. It's Devolver Digital, ?naturally.

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