Joe Jones
Daily Stormer
October 8, 2017

Ruiner is a game where you are living in a dystopic future world where technology has allowed people to become hard-wired cyborgs.

Needless to say, this leads to over the top violence and explosions.

At the start, you get a cut scene showing Puppy (you) entering a giant fortified arms and tech center called Heaven with the only goal being to code 187 someone named The Boss. After a short tutorial you’re ready to begin your murderous rampage which will have you fight cyborg corporate security agents, drugged up psychos and brutally beat your keyboard during boss fights.

The Good.

Looks:

The graphics are simple but absolutely beautiful, and each scene captured the idea that you are a psychopathic cyborg beating a bunch of goons to death with a metal pipe in a futuristic factory.

Crack these assholes’ skulls open.

While you progress through the first level, you’ll be hit with flickering overlays from Master – the possible Russian who hacked your brain to make you want to MDK The Boss – and another unidentified individual trying to stop you. This all adds to the aesthetic of you being a bio-mechanically augmented weapon of war seeing the world through a computerized mask.

This display continues to follow you throughout the game and does not interfere with the gameplay in a negative way.

Audio:

While you’re shooting, stabbing, bashing and exploding your way through the game you’ll be followed by a futuresynth soundtrack, which is good enough to just buy on its own.

The in game ambient and combat sounds pair extremely well with the soundtrack, and combined with the graphics set the tone for a fast-paced, dark experience. Some of the tracks even sound similar to our own Fashwave, like this one for example.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is extremely challenging. Extremely so, especially on higher difficulty levels.

Goons being blown to viscera and gladiatorial arenas in every section.

There is no hand holding, and the game will mock you if you die by politely suggesting you “Try doing some push-ups if you feel weak.”

If you want to not die or wish complete the levels with any reasonable time, you need to move, kill and pick up new weapons fast. If you get a gun, you cannot reload it (except for the standard pistol) and when your magazine is empty, you lose it. This also adds an aspect of strategy where you need to decide when it is worth using your guns over your melee weapon, which I would personally only suggest with either really tanky or high damage ranged enemies.

Well timed use of your dash and action abilities will be crucial.

Overall, the gameplay mechanics are simple but with a high skill cap leading to this being a title that you wont get bored with after the first level.

The aiming can be a bit of an issue sometimes however, it’s far from game breaking but with projectile speeds and how the look mechanic seems to be very sensitive you will notice you may lose crucial ammo as a result.

This issue could probably be easily overcome with some skill and changing your mouse settings, but there is a bit of a wall there.

The Bad.

Dialogue:

The dialogue during cut scenes and in between levels leaves a bit to be desired, it’s not the worst but a lot of the text from your allies seems forced, and random NPC dialogue in safe areas is poor and two dimensional.

Enemy dialogue is an exception to this, the voice lines in combat and the text lines when you meet some BBEG are good at adding depth to the characters instead of having them be random goons.

Storyline:

The story line is a cliched “They took your brother and are going to kill him so go blow them up.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this kind of story, but it seems like they could have been more original with your characters motives, especially considering the world being set in a cyberpunk dystopia full of bio-mechanically augmented people everywhere.

Keep in mind all of this is just first impressions, it may get better in the later game.

Is It Worth Buying?

I would certainly recommend getting the soundtrack if nothing else, it is well composed and aesthetic as hell.

The game itself however, I would wait until it’s on sale unless you really like the setting or top-down murder simulators.

You can pick it up on Steam and GoG. You will need to get the GoG downloader if you buy it from them however.