RUINER

A sci-fi sociopath crusader with no remorse and no regrets

In a dystopian future, Heaven is a place for the rich and amoral

Before I started playing Ruiner, I was told that developer Reikon Games had tweaked the difficulty to make it a bit easier on the player. So, when I tell you that there are points during Ruiner’s tutorial that will kick your arse, you’ll know how punishing this isometric action game really is.

Ruiner is like the Crusader (of the No Remorse and No Regret varieties) games of old have been thrown into a screaming blender with a healthy serving of Hotline Miami’s brutality and a smattering of the Dark Souls series’ unforgiving ‘death is the best teacher’ approach to design.

In terms of its look and feel, it’s more Blade Runner than any of those game examples, with cult cyberpunk anime cited as the spiritual influence. You play as an unnamed Daft Punk reject whose internet-connected mask reads like the kind of tweets that are sent to game developers when highly anticipated titles are delayed.

The tutorial is quite methodical, taking its time to teach you the core mechanics and reiterating the harsh reality that standing still is a death sentence. Ruiner is a high-lethality game where that reality cuts both ways. Enemies that wield metal pipes, bladed weapons and sharp sticks swarm you, and it doesn’t take many hits for you to visit (or revisit) that respawn screen.

Throw some ranged weapons into the mix and Ruiner is positively punishing, especially considering our antihero starts with a metal pipe and seemingly has to collect all other weapons (including the allimportant ranged ones). The playable character has some nifty tricks up his wired sleeves to help combat this punishment, though.

There’s a forward-facing energy shield that blocks incoming fire and can be used to bash enemies to the ground when combined with the dash ability. That shield doesn’t last long, though, and alongside health, appears to be only rechargeable on fixed energy pads (and separate health pads for staying alive). Those pads don’t hold unlimited energy or health, either, so your best hope for survival in Ruiner is to master hit-and-dash techniques that leave you unscathed.

You have to dash to avoid swarming enemies. It’s also handy for giving you some breathing space, dodging deadly floating mines that chase you before detonating, and avoiding environmental hazards that’d otherwise leave you gibbed. You can tap the key for an instant teleportation, or you can hold it to slow time and grab some (likely) wellneeded breathing space.

For purists who’d prefer to keep the challenge insanely high and everything in real-time, treat this feature as supplementary. For everyone else, it’ll likely feel essential for stopping yet another visit to the respawn screen. In fairness, despite Ruiner’s punishing difficulty, Reikon did seem to be generous with the checkpoints, so I never felt like dying was overly frustrating. Still, there’s always the chance that could change

for the final game, or possibly higher difficulty levels.

The neat thing about the timeslowing dash option is it works offensively and defensively. That’s true of the real-time version, too, but buying a second or two to plan a multi-path teleport where you can bludgeon enemies at the teleportation points before moving on is as satisfying as it is tactical. Alternatively, as is highlighted in the tutorial, as armed goons swarm into a room, you can use it to teleport to a conveniently placed machine gun, then teleport back to some partial cover.

Then there’s the armed fiends to take into account. Pistols aren’t so bad, because their shots are relatively easy to avoid. But machine guns and shotguns are positively brutal. It’s not so much that the on-screen madness is hard to track in Ruiner, it’s just that the tactical possibilities can feel overwhelming when the screen is filled with blood-thirsty foes.

Teleporting behind a box might buy you a second or force flanking foes to split up, but there’s a cooldown on the dash, and there’s the feeling that the shield should be saved for ballistic baddies. The good news is that caving in the skull of a firearm-wielding grunt makes them drop their weapon. Ammunition doesn’t last for too long, though, and you end up playing it Last of Mohicans, emptying one weapon before hastily snatching up the next.

Those same ballistic bastards become your best friends when the shoe is on the other foot: shotguns shred (especially ones with fiery Dragon’s breath-like rounds) and fully automatic weapons mince. I get the impression they’re in short supply for Ruiner’s boss fights, though. One such fight puts you up against a similarly powered katana-wielding boss who has an intimidatingly long health bar and intermittently leaves the fight to carpet bomb the arena you’re trapped in.

Sure, you receive timely health drops at certain points during that fight, but you need to have that hitand-dash trick down pat if you want a hope in hell of defeating him. I was originally handed a controller for my demo, but Ruiner really does seem better suited to keyboard/ mouse controls.

The limited ammunition coupled with the time-slowing (note: not timefreezing) dash ability pretty much necessitates the need for the precision of a mouse, both for ballistic accuracy and placing pinpoint teleportation waypoints. Even then, your eyes will likely be bouncing between nearby cover, incoming enemies, and the cooldown of your dash ability as you make on-the-spot combat decisions.

As someone who avoided the masochistic Dark Souls series, I was genuinely surprised that Ruiner’s often punishing difficulty didn’t deter me from coming back for more. The sci-fi setting and contemporary isometric gameplay complement the sense of onthe-fly decision-making that slaps you when you get it wrong, but feels oh so good when a plan comes together.

the tactical possibilities can feel overwhelming when the screen is filled with blood-thirsty foes