Ruiner

4Cybernetic PunkStyle is an important thing. Sure you can have all style and no substance… but when you add great style to substance you get a very impressive combination. Fortunately Ruiner has that mix of both. I would describe the aesthetic as Daft...

It demands you face waves upon waves of the same enemies and mini-bosses before you can even see the final, incredibly trite cinematic. Are you the ruiner or the ruined? I won’t spoil the answer that the game offers up, but I will say that I sure didn’t feel triumphant when I finally set the controller down.

Despite a bit of a hurdle when it comes to difficulty at the beginning, Ruiner is quite the addictive action game, one with a lot of variety in its combat that packs a lot of experimentation into a small package. The visuals are amazing when it comes to depicting the grittiness of Rengkok, the characters and enemies are well-designed, and the speedy gameplay works exquisitely, perfectly capturing the feel of a futuristic action film.

Fighting my way through Ruiner felt like work, and if I weren't obligated to finish it for the review I probably wouldn't have bothered. It's too bad it focuses on being difficult over being fun, because the combat totally works when you're given access...

For only £15/$20, you really are getting your money's worth with RUINER. I finished my first playthrough of the game in just over four hours. It's important to remember half of this playthrough was on Easy (meaning I rarely died) and I didn't attempt...

Over-the-top and frequently overwhelming, Ruiner might be the first cyberpunk game to give an inkling of what it'd be like to have a deluge of sensory stimuli downloaded directly into your head. A guilty pleasure, and a damn good twin-stick shooter to...

Ruiner is a profoundly ugly game. That isn't necessarily a mark against it, in itself - Ruiner actively sets out to be ugly, after all, and the result is one of cyberpunk's more memorable dystopias. The problem is that its ugliness doesn't really go anywhere save down, ever deeper into its own iniquity.

In the end, Ruiner feels like a fantastic slice of action orbited by a bunch of mediocre elements, so the experience never coalesces into something truly exceptional. However, that gameplay is solid enough to prop up this bloody sci-fi adventure, even if it never amounts to anything more than forgettable fun.