On the foggy streets of Rengkok South, destitute cyborgs loiter around flickering neon lights, spread thin under the towering headquarters of the HEAVEN Corporation. Painted in the rust of body mods and neurotechnology, bodies are thrown into the cybernetic grinder, a new coat of inescapable sickly red floods the alleyways and crosswalks. Bound to black market contracts and transhumanist dehumanization, the denizens of this neo-Purgatory live cheap lives and meet horrid ends.
Cut whole cloth from the script of a thousand cyberpunk stories, RUINER’s world isn’t a unique one. Biotech gone amuck, Capitalism encroaches on it’s hellish end state, and the only person willing to stand up to the one watching over it all is a faceless, nameless psychopath. A story sold to the tune of “whoa, cool robot”, the game wears its influences on its sleeve. A dash of Akira here, a slice of Ghost in the Shell there, some odd Berserk nods to taste. RUINER isn’t an original story by any stretch, but in all reality, you don’t come to it expecting some groundbreaking plot. You expect hyperviolence; grindhouse extremity backlit by LEDs, a crimson wash from a lead pipe brush, to the head splitting tones of weapons-grade darkwave and witch house.
A surface level comparison to Hotline Miami is obvious, I mean, same publisher, same gorehound vibe, same top-down arcade pastiche, complete with timers and letter grades, and a high dose of difficulty to put it above its contemporaries… RUINER and it’s 80s tinged buddy are close, but where the comparison falls apart is in the feel. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a load of mechanical similarities connecting the two, but whereas the former thrives on the minute-to-minute tension of quick, unrelenting death, where a single mistake will spell a splatterhouse finale for our favorite Drive wannabe, RUINER rips through swaths of nameless corporate goons and extremist mercenaries, flipping through an endless array of weapons, blasting, cleaving, and crushing anyone in his path, packing frag grenades, reality bending energy shields, and flash-steps out of a shonen anime. It’s comparing a sociopathic mad lad with a mask fetish to a literal murdering machine, who… also has a fancy mask. Maybe the comparison isn’t so unheard of.
Gameplay wise, RUINER doesn’t stand out as exemplary, sitting somewhere between mediocre and alright depending on the moment-to-moment twists the game throws at you. The one and only area the game fully strives on is it’s presentation. The moment the feel of the world clicked for me was wandering the streets of Rengkok South, a wall of fog casting a smoky haze. As I walked by Time’s Square-style LED billboards, the mournful wails of Susumu Hirasawa’s Island Door cut through the mist, a second of harmony between the soundscape and the world that Reikon Games built out of an obvious love of the genre. There’s very little I loved about RUINER, but the style of the game deserves mention, especially in regards to the soundtrack.
RUINER is deeply flawed, and I don’t see much reason for anyone to stick through until the end: I mostly did because I found a single character cute, and anyone who knows me will guess who in about zero seconds. But as a replication of a setting that’s been done to death and patched together again, it shows such an obvious love for the inspirations surrounding it. That’s not enough to make an interesting game, but it’s enough to make me think fondly of this weird, messy, flawed shooter.
Cut whole cloth from the script of a thousand cyberpunk stories, RUINER’s world isn’t a unique one. Biotech gone amuck, Capitalism encroaches on it’s hellish end state, and the only person willing to stand up to the one watching over it all is a faceless, nameless psychopath. A story sold to the tune of “whoa, cool robot”, the game wears its influences on its sleeve. A dash of Akira here, a slice of Ghost in the Shell there, some odd Berserk nods to taste. RUINER isn’t an original story by any stretch, but in all reality, you don’t come to it expecting some groundbreaking plot. You expect hyperviolence; grindhouse extremity backlit by LEDs, a crimson wash from a lead pipe brush, to the head splitting tones of weapons-grade darkwave and witch house.
A surface level comparison to Hotline Miami is obvious, I mean, same publisher, same gorehound vibe, same top-down arcade pastiche, complete with timers and letter grades, and a high dose of difficulty to put it above its contemporaries… RUINER and it’s 80s tinged buddy are close, but where the comparison falls apart is in the feel. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a load of mechanical similarities connecting the two, but whereas the former thrives on the minute-to-minute tension of quick, unrelenting death, where a single mistake will spell a splatterhouse finale for our favorite Drive wannabe, RUINER rips through swaths of nameless corporate goons and extremist mercenaries, flipping through an endless array of weapons, blasting, cleaving, and crushing anyone in his path, packing frag grenades, reality bending energy shields, and flash-steps out of a shonen anime. It’s comparing a sociopathic mad lad with a mask fetish to a literal murdering machine, who… also has a fancy mask. Maybe the comparison isn’t so unheard of.
Gameplay wise, RUINER doesn’t stand out as exemplary, sitting somewhere between mediocre and alright depending on the moment-to-moment twists the game throws at you. The one and only area the game fully strives on is it’s presentation. The moment the feel of the world clicked for me was wandering the streets of Rengkok South, a wall of fog casting a smoky haze. As I walked by Time’s Square-style LED billboards, the mournful wails of Susumu Hirasawa’s Island Door cut through the mist, a second of harmony between the soundscape and the world that Reikon Games built out of an obvious love of the genre. There’s very little I loved about RUINER, but the style of the game deserves mention, especially in regards to the soundtrack.
RUINER is deeply flawed, and I don’t see much reason for anyone to stick through until the end: I mostly did because I found a single character cute, and anyone who knows me will guess who in about zero seconds. But as a replication of a setting that’s been done to death and patched together again, it shows such an obvious love for the inspirations surrounding it. That’s not enough to make an interesting game, but it’s enough to make me think fondly of this weird, messy, flawed shooter.