Ruiner Catch-All

I am liking this resurgence of isometric action games and cyberpunk. And now some clever people have mashed these two great tastes together.

Announcement Trailer

And some extended PAX gameplay from Polygon:

What we know about it so far:
- Developed by new Polish studio, Reikon
- Fall 2016 release window
- Available for Linux, Mac and Windows on Steam
- CYBERPUNK!

Even the official site is slick.

Looks great, I'm certainly excited to see how this turns out.

Just saw this.

Sold.

Doesn't it look great? I like how you can explore a small city hub in between levels, shallow as it looks but +1 for ambience-building.

My only concern is the game is so difficult and I really want the gamepad support to be up to snuff.

I also get a very, very slight hint of Crusader: No Remorse. Maybe it's the helmet and isometric view thing.

Yay, I can finally update this thread with something, sorta...

From the Devolver E3 showcase/performance art thingy:

If the time code skip doesn't work then the actual trailer starts at 3:48

Aw, phreakin' finally!

Ruiner Release Date on Steam - September 26, 2017

I've had a rekindled passion with Neon Chrome lately so you could say I'm very much primed for more cyberpunk action on the PC.

Hmm kind of disappointed in this so far.

The intro level is oppressively dark and sometimes masks important enemy animations and even attacks. The feel of the movement and aiming is way off for me. I don't like how the mouse aim shifts the main camera along with rotating the character's axis. The feel of actually killing enemies is also not as satisfying as I had hoped. Some of the early guns like the incendiary shotty are pretty cool but all weapons operate on a limited ammo and auto reload mechanic which really sucks for a twin stick shooter as fast paced as this one.

The first boss? Ridiculous. Just a frantic cluster fudge of being surrounded my goons and dying in 3-4 shots.

Playing this for a little over a half hour made me miss the tight, deliberate controls and mechanics of both Hotline Miami and Neon Chrome.

Will plug in a DS4 tonight to see if that improves the experience for me (I'm already not liking how I white-knuckle my laptop's keyboard while playing this). But my finger was hovering perilously close to the Steam refund button.

Maybe that's for the best, as much as I dig the overall aesthetic they're going for.

I was hoping for diablo-esque cyperpunk arp when this was first announced, gameplay videos are showing it more as a twitch shooter though :/

I'm still okay with a twitchy twin stick shooter, but if the controls suck...

The movement feels quite a bit better with the gamepad and I don't need to worry about crushing my WASD. The aiming? Can't say it's all that much better or worse than using the mouse.

I was still getting rekt in the tutorial level boss fight (!). Dropped it down to Easy. I was able to win on the next attempt. I imagine Easy is like Normal on any other game that isn't trying to be That Hard Game. Anyway, got through that boss encounter and thought...maybe I could get used to this playing with the pad? Something is still seriously wrong with how the aim, camera and combat feedback works. Hmm, thinking.

Got to the hub area (Bangkok?), talked to some folks, assigned a couple skill points and... I may have stuck with it for another mission but I got hitched up on the hacking mini-game. With KB/M-only input the mini-game requires a sequence of directional arrow key presses within a time limit. With gamepad connected the arrows are replaced with face buttons mapped to the Xbox controller. I'm using the DS4 and know the equivalent face buttons but the mini-game would auto-fail me no matter what I pressed. Switching on the fly to KB/M didn't automatically convert the mini-game to accept arrow key inputs.

Aaaah, so I was stuck. I guess I could unplug the DS4 every time I came across a mini-game like this...I'm pretty sure that would've solved the issue. No, no I was out. Refund requested and finalized.

Got other games to play. Still: disappointed!

I decided to give this another chance on GOG and picked it up during their Black Friday sale.

Some developer patches, a switch in control input and my own different state of expectations has really improved my impressions of Ruiner.

The camera movement calmed down a lot and somehow the general movement felt smoothed out. A major update brought in a couple new modes like NG+ and Speedrun. There's also auto-detect of graphical detail options after you start playing the game.

All in all, they've made some subtle but smart refinements to the core gameplay, addressed some glitchyness and now I'm enjoying it. I'm a lot less hung up on odd gameplay quirks and actually absorbing more of the hokey cyberpunk atmosphere. I managed to blast through the prologue level without dying using the gamepad where before I must have died 20 times on KB/M before restarting on Easy.

Looks like this is going to be my New Hard Game for the next couple weeks!

I also forgot to mention: Executions have been added!

These work exactly as you might imagine. Very useful for getting back some health in the heat of battle.

Reinstalled this last night and finally finished off the last couple boss fights. I had been stuck on the Sisters and over thought the solution when all I had to do was... well, do what I’d always been doing: strafe around like a maniac and never stop shooting.

The final boss fight wasn’t even a proper boss battle which was pretty disappointing.

Overall an awesome action game with sexy cyberpunk window dressing. After all this time I still can’t believe the camera is so janky and gamepad controls have become quite buggy. Doesn’t look like the developer is doing much in the way of updates.