This was a game I played a while back due to me liking the way it sounded. A twin shooter with over the top glory kills? Sign me up. I decided to play the game again just to see if I still would and I still do enjoy it. If anything, I consider Ruiner so much fun to play that I wished it was longer since the 4-5 hours it takes to beat the game can breeze by so quickly. Maybe 7-8 hours would be fine for me.
Ruiner is quite the charming game. It's an overly violent cyberpunk twin shooter that can almost resemble various cyberpunk anime. It even has Susumu Hirasawa of Berserk fame doing some of the tracks in the game. Speaking of that, they are quite good especially the overworld theme. It has much of his singing you can find in the 90s Berserk soundtrack although it shares some resemblance to the tracks of the Dreamcast game. The end credits theme is also quite good, I'm a little surprised I didn't spot him the first time I beat it.
The story is quite minimal but it does try to have more going on with it having what is seemingly an unreliable narrator. It's sort of vagely intriguing. There was one part of the game where a boss was called "TrafficKing" which can be almost too on the nose for me.
Gameplay is what is you'll primarily doing. Shooting and blasting your way through hordes of enemies. It does share similaries with Doom 2016 almost to the point where it feels like what if that was a twin stick shooter. Ruiner does have a dash mechanic a few years before Eternal would adopt it.
You can attack through melee and shooting. Attacks are mostly projectile with melee users. Battle are a fun ballet of using your Ruiner Gun which is similar to Robocop's Auto 9 with it's burst fire. You'll be switching between many guns with no reloading or two weapon limits either. Similar to how Neo was using firearms in The Matrix. That and constantly dashing and eventually doing the glory kills on downed enemies like I mentioned earlier. This is encouraged to get back health and be more aggressive in combat.
I did wish melee played a bigger role, I mainly did it occasionally on normal difficulty.
There's also a skill tree system that allows different for play styles and abilties. Not a big fan of this since I prefer to have it be structured in a more linear and universal way. This can sort of create "replay value" since I went with abilities I didn't get in my first playthrough. In this one, I unlocked and put points into a slo mo bullet time style ability similar to Max Payne and FEAR. It can help moving away from projectiles easier and aim shots with the sticks since I played on PS5.
You can also pause the screen and time and chain dashes but considering how fast and frenetic combat can be partnered with the bullet time ablity, actively using does feel like it would slow things down even more.
There also random deaths because a dropship landed and it instantly kills you.
Bosses are just okay and kind of feel like spongey fodder enemies.
With all this said, my only big issue is the length since it all this can feel so quick and breezy. This could be me having so much fun that I wish the game was slightly longer. The issues I mentioned are just minor in the grand scheme things especially with how enjoyable the action is. Since the pacing is so fast and it checkpoints so often that the super annoying parts never last long enough to feel insufferable.
Overall for a game I decided to just randomly feel like playing again. It lived up to my initial thoughts I had about it which is always a sigh of relief for me since it tells me I know my tastes well.
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