Welcome to our review of Ruiner, a twin stick shooter that just got ported over to Nintendo Switch.
RUINER is a brutal action shooter set in the year 2091 in the cyber metropolis Rengkok. A wired sociopath lashes out against a corrupt system to retrieve his kidnapped brother and uncover the truth under the guidance of a secretive Hacker friend.
Sophisticated & Brutal Combat: Become the boss of the battlefield acquiring deadly supplies, enhancing your tactical senses and mastering other mind-breaking skills and gadgets that will leave your foes confused and powerless.
Cyberpunk Inspired Arsenal: Employ state of the art gadgets and abilities like energy shield, kinetic barrier, or grid converter. Dash augmentations, reflex booster, or overload will make you uncatchable while with ghost break you can hack your opposition onto your side of the fight.
Story-Driven Action: Violent confrontation is a means to an end and trust is a devalued currency in Rengkok as you navigate a senseless world and dismantle the corporate titans of virtuality dealers at HEAVEN.
Ruiner might be one of those games you love to hate or hate to love. As a twin-stick shooter, it does get plagued by some of the standard defaults of the genre but the entire cyberpunk atmosphere and the darkness that propels itself throughout the game, it does set it apart in its very own way.
Like a lot of twin-stick shooters, the way that you move around the playing field is an issue in my humble opinion. Unless you are moving your second thumbstick to the point you are moving, the running around will feel awkward at best. I often felt this to be the case as it just does not feel natural at all. This is also the only thing I really found to be off with Ruiner, everything else pretty much just rocked my socks off.
In short, you got a gazillion options to beat or fight off enemies, from a melee weapon to hundreds of weapons you will find along the way. Each gun, big or small, has its own ammo and once you are out, the game drops back to the basic weapon so you are not bugged with the mechanic of having to drop your arms and waste time doing so.
I often found myself amused by this and I randomly picked up weapons to find them either overpowered or even outright underpowered for the situation. I would still empty the clip and then go for the next or even switch to a swift melee beating. That melee weapon is very nice to use and abuse. I would go as far as saying it was among my favorite moves to just go for a swift rush into the enemies and take out some instantly to finish up shooting my way through whoever survived.
Graphically, this game has cyberpunk graphics written all over it and the at first annoying overlays that remind you of the mission get less and less annoying as you go. I did prefer playing this game on TV and not handheld. No real reason rather than being able to see the action more clearly, a classic problem of the Nintendo Switch maybe?
In conclusion, Ruiner is a game that will take your breath away and once you get past the awkward controls while running, you are left with a brutal game that is tons of fun. The Easy mode is incredibly easy so the game is very accessible for everyone, even if you are not accustomed to games of this genre, which is a real bonus! For some pure hardcore action, pump up that difficulty level and enjoy the pain in your fingers, haha… I loved Ruiner more than I expected to.
