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nobody. nothing. nowhere; broken souls drifting like ronin in a blood-red neon hell of capitalist dystopia. the only meaning to be found is in the adrenaline rush of pulling a trigger against nameless bodies, or the swing of a blade against human flesh; if you can even call the bucket of bolts wired together with skin, human.

wake up puppy, we have a city to burn.

not exactly groundbreaking or all that thematical engrossing; one can't help but feel the cyberpunk genre is used here as a sort of pastiche for cool design and setting, however, that design and setting is undeniably cool and well crafted. the hub world of rengkok south is filled with interesting detail down to every little neon LED that lights up the back alleys; plenty of neo-punk styled characters to interact with as well that make for a bit of fun. the strongest aspect of this game is its ability of immersion and atmosphere. side note: the soundtrack goes so hard, like holy shit, sidewalks and skeletons are awesome! plus some great head-bangers by zamilska

in my opinion, the gameplay feels mean and overly brutal, which is totally the point and 100% a compliment. not as satisfying as others in the top-down action shooter genre but definably more hard-hitting; some enemies take more hits than one which exemplifies the visceral intensity of the action and adds difficulty. also, a really neat skill-tree that allows the player to build upon and easily switch between different playstyles on the go. the last hour or two of this is probably the best part as it constantly adds new elements to the fights, switches environments, and combines many different bosses/enemy types to result in a blistering finale of gladiatorial-like combat. i will admit that it can get a little tedious in the middle, especially in the boss department; there's like three different boss fights that you repeat multiple times; the mother machines, a bunch of like high-ranking guards, and a tank-like enemy.

if you can swallow a bit of tedium and some awkward mechanical controls, you'll be rewarded with an immersive and enjoyably bloody affair of cyberpunk ethics. take this review with a grain of salt because im a cyberpunk junky and will overlook A LOT in order to plug my soul into the net, altar my body with pervasive tech, and bask under the spellbinding lights of a futuristic city.

Stellar art direction and soundtrack but very little beyond that.

Rushed and barebones story with no voice acting, general clunkiness, cheap enemies that are both frustrating and easy to defeat, unnecessary amount of weapons and skills and a very shallow hub world between missions.

This game should've been way simpler and focused on snappy gameplay instead of trying to be something so bloated and unpolished as a consequence. Kind of a shame honestly.

I didn't play this game for long but I already know it's a banger. At least when it comes to the story which I consider to be fenomenal. But maybe that's because I'm a fan of Hotline Miami and this game reminds me alot of it. The soundtrack is amazing and the visuals looks fucking sick. A lot of the characters looks terrifying and just pure evil. However what I feel like this game fails at is that the narrator voice gets annoying quick. I'm talking about the one saying "KILL BOSS!" over and over. I also consider the game to be challenging right of the start the game and that the different skills makes the game hard to learn. Would love to pick it up again whenever I have the time.

An okay game that sadly falls short of being great. It's cyberpunk aesthetic is pretty well realized, though if you are at all familiar with the genre you kinda know exactly what to expect in the visuals, the music and maybe even the story. There's nothing wrong with wearing your influences in your sleeve, but at the same time I feel like the game doesn't do anything in particular to stand out besides its very liberal use of the color red. Even if all these aspects aren't that remarkable, this game is one of those that lives or dies on the combat. Said combat can be loads of fun here, but I struggle to put it into words why it doesn't feel quite right. Its like it needed some extra months in development to have its proverbial screws tightened up. Guns do have a nice kick to them, the sound design is punchy and the resulting explosions of blood and funny ragdolls flying away when you shotgun a poor bastard point blank or vaporize someone into a skeleton with electric guns are very fun to watch if you can spot them in the chaos and really sell their lethality. Melee is not quite as satisfying, none of the weapons have enough impact and the range feels shorter than it should be. However I am weak to ragdolls, and seeing the bottom half of a goon fly away when I bisect him with a katana folded a billion times never stopped being funny so it gets pity points. To add flavor to the combat, you get a series of skill trees full of abilities and passives and enough skill points at a quick enough pace to be able to try out a lot of things. You can even refund any skill acquired and get all of the points back to respec into whatever else you want at any time which is very welcome. These skills didn't all feel very useful, and I felt obligated to spend into the tree that gave me more health and energy to use on abilities and the one that improved my dash. This game feels built with you dashing like a lunatic in mind, so handicapping yourself by not investing into it probably makes several sections a lot harder.

Ruiner is a top down arcade style shooter set in the beautifully rendered cyberpunk city of Rengkok, you play as PUPPY a mysterious psychopath with cybernetic enhancements from head to toe on a mission to save his kidnapped brother.

The art style is iconic making use of simple strong tones that resonate with the silent-ish protagonist who projects short simple statements and gifs on his holo-mask in an inspired evolution of the 'television head' character design. The game wears its Akira/anime inspirations on its sleeve from the detailed harshly lit environments, character portraits, and intensity-first animation which work really well together but fuses it with contemporary gamer culture in a way that feels fresh and authentic. The music is suitable but not especially memorable.

Gameplay is very fast and very violent capturing a satisfyingly ultraviolent feel, even simple attacks paint the level with blood while finishers turn foes into a fountain of gore. The slow-mo mechanic helps to reign in the intensity for moments but the focus on reactive dashing keeps things frantic no matter how slow you want to take it. There's a variety of gadgets to use and upgrade like the energy shield, powered-up 'overload' mode, or bullet-deflecting kinetic barrier, but despite everything - Ruiner is at its heart repetitive.

The game is fast, violent, and that's it. Enemies function purely as reaction tests with harsh punishment for failure and their design toys with a single idea rather than providing more nuanced ones. 2 hours in enemies are still glass cannons, bosses are bullet sponges, and the gameplay is still 'hit stuff first' and 'don't get hit'. It just wasn't enough to sustain me how short the game is. It's a shame because it's all very pretty to look at.