How about we build up some hype for the upcoming, pretty sweet looking cyberpunk game, coming all the way from Poland? And no, I'm not talking about Cyberpunk 2077.

It didn't make it's intended summer release, but now it's finally coming out on the 26th of September next week, unless something real drastic happens...and I'm very excited!

I've been following this game since it's reveal and the visuals hooked me right away (even if it's not your typical neon sign hell with constant raining), along with the brutal-looking and hopefully very slick gameplay...and if this recent interview's to be believed, the story is taking the backseat and it's the supposedly challenging gameplay that's the main focus with Ruiner. Not concerned about that, as my other favorite cyberpunk game Syndicate (shout out to those five other people who liked it) also didn't have such a memorable story to it, but that action sure was fun!

That interview also states that the PC-version will have a 120FPS cap, while it's "over 30" on consoles and "full HD". As stoked as I am, that little piece of info is probably going to hold me back from pre-ordering business...well, that and the fact that there's no pre-order option available on PS4 for some reason.

I want to know what kinds of legs it has, but sure, I thought this looks neat. I'm also unapologetically a fan of that E3 Digital Devolver thing with this.

It looks good, but i'm still not sure if the game play will be engaging enough.

Looks pretty neat, not sure what it has besides pretty graphics to set it apart from the zillion other dualstick shooters out there. Im a sucker for the vibe though so I'll probably give it a try sooner than later. The weapons etc look like they could feel very good to use as well.

The style wins over everything else for me. Even if it's a pretty standard shooter the look is so on point. Happy it's finally coming (god this year is going by quick).

One of the games I've been looking forward to most this year. Happy to see others are hyped for it as well. This game has all the tools to draw me in.

Also, the soundtrack is shaping up to be incredible as well. It features songs by famous Japanese composer Susumu Hirasawa, known for Berserk, Paprika and Millenium Actress, as well as some other notable artists.

It looks so fucking cool.

Pipe: It hurts.

As opposed to all the other tools of death at your disposal, which apparently merely tickle.

Yeah, this game does look cool, but I tend to get real bored of these kinds of games real fast. If I don't get it, I'll have to find the soundtrack somewhere because the music does sound pretty cool.

I was just checking the Steam page to see if there's any mention of game modes (hopefully there's more than just a story mode) and saw that they got Susumu Hirasawa and came here to post "holy shit they got Susumu Hirasawa."

Holy shit, they got Susumu Hirasawa. That's fucking great. They're not original songs according to the devs on the Steam forums, but that's A-OK with me.

The one dismaying thing about this game that I've seen so far is that it appears to be a series of tight rooms you get locked into and are then tasked in surviving increasingly numerous waves of enemies coming at you from all sides. I was kind of thinking this would be more of an open-level game, but maybe it gets there later on? Everything I've seen so far is very much in the vein of a classic character-action game of being suddenly walled off from going forward until you kill all the baddies the game throws at you.

That said it still looks stylish as all hell and as many have mentioned, the soundtrack seems awesome. This looks like a true spiritual successor to Hotline Miami with tremendously upgraded graphical fidelity that didn't seem to come at a cost of speed in the slightest.

I LOVE Digital Devolver, and this game looks really cool but I've just never been able to get into 3rd quarter perspective shooters like this.

Played a bit this morning, not sure if I like how this game feels. The walking/turning speed felt weird to me, I constantly missed my shots. The snap aim is also really awful on ps4 but thats luckily something you can turn off.

It looks and sounds even better than I thought though holy hell is this game's style polished.

• Destructoid 9/10
• Eurogamer
• Gamespot 8/10
• IGN 6/10
• PCGamer 84/100

Seems promising enough. Going to grab the PS4 version.

@glots: I am really liking the cleaner look the game has in this launch trailer compared to some of the earlier trailers, colour me more interested.

I just realized especially from the launch trailer this strongly reeks of a gender swapped grittier Transistor.

I've played a couple of hours so far and I am really, really starting to like it now as I unlock more abilities. The combat gets very intense and it feels very rewarding to play well.

Definitely feels like a contender for best style so far as well.

Anyone know if it has any longevity after you beat the game? In terms of time/score attacks, endless waves, harder difficulties, etc.

Was wonderin this myself, and word from the dev is they'll be implementing additional game modes post-release.

Curious about how this thing feels with a controller, but I may not actually have a choice there. This thing's basically a lock for best style at this point. Maybe the later stuff in Echo will really resonate, but for now everything about this game's vibe is so thoroughly my jam.

Played bit over an hour earlier, it sure's oozing with style. Got my ass kicked several times on normal difficulty so far, but I'm getting better. It does get real hectic almost right from the start already.

Sheesh, Captain Bogdan is just kicking my ass. Having a really hard time telling how his attacks work. Feeling like I'm doing fine and taking a decent chunk of his health down, only to die instantly to a bunch of explosives. Guess I gotta start mixing around my abilities.

Besides hitting my head against the wall, the game keeps getting better. It took me a while to get adjusted to the movement, but I think I've got the hang of it now. I imagine it'd naturally be more precise with a mouse, but dualshock is working fine too.

@glots: I was surprised about how it was less about precision shooting and movement and more about ability management. No matter what powers I have equipped I am always using almost all of them. Very engaging.

I'm having a hard time figuring out if I'm having fun or if I'm constantly frustrated with this game. When things flow it works beautiful but when they don't it's rough. I feel like a lot of it is really imprecise. Dashing towards an enemy and doing a melee strike will sometimes completely miss. Your guns shoot inaccurately. Dashing itself either chains really quickly or it doesn't work at all if you're not dashing in the same direction.

The above mentioned Bogdan fight is going pretty much the same way for me. I got him down to 1/5 of a bar with my own health full only to die nearly instantly from one of his volleys. Then the same strategy of running rings around the arena and shooting at a distance is proving not nearly as efficient as before. It all feels really fast but weirdly awkward.

I bought it on GOG.com and I'm loving it. The controls take some time in getting used to though. The atmosphere is brimming with Cyberpunk goodness.

Holy fuck, this game is hard. I feel sorry for Brad for picking up the hardest difficulty, I probably would've deleted the game by now. The bosses can still make it frustrating as hell even on normal, though. Mother was difficult because I literally couldn't see what the hell was happening for half the time. Currently stuck at Shadow with low energy, which really doesn't make it any easier. I try juggling between the different abilities, but at times just end up being overwhelmed by trying to remember what I have in use, not to mention not having enough energy to use them all in a fight.

Might switch it to easy at some point, just to feel like a badass mowing down all the enemies and not doing +20 times in a single fight.

Also fuck any asshole character in a game, who tells you that you suck and you should do better each time you die. Maybe that motivates some people, but I'm not one of those people.

Style, atmosphere, soundtrack, it's all so incredibly well done. The actual game feels imprecise. Guns don't quite feel right, melee doesn't feel as impactful as it probably should. Sometimes it seems like I should have taken damage when I didn't, and vice versa. Visuals sometimes cross into the messy territory, where it's aiming to be gritty, and the gameplay suffers from that. I was debating playing this on Hard, but I can see now that would have just been more frustrating than rewarding. I'm sure I could handle it, I'm getting S ranks on all my fights on Normal. But I think it would ruin my enjoyment of the game. I'm having a good time, I'm just mostly in it for the atmosphere. It's basically cyberpunk Hotlime Miami.

@doctordonkey: how do you even get S ranks? I got one but I'm not quite sure what the criteria is. Sometimes I get through fights real quick and still get D's. I agree that the core gameplay feels inconsistent. It's a lot more punishing than the controls allow. A game like Hotline Miami which I feel this game is a sort of successor of manages to be a lot more consistent about the way it flows. In Ruiner I'm often confused as to why some enemies die instantly from melee attacks and others take several hits. The boss fights especially have so far been mostly tedious.

@humanity: I'm not sure, but it certainly is not related to damage intake. I've gotten S ranks after almost dying. Although there is a S+ rank that I'm pretty sure requires not gettting hit.

I just got Overload, and it seems to make the boss fights trivial. The energy drain is based on enemies killed, so when you are just facing a boss and not much else, it lasts for the entire fight. During which you can basically spam dash and be invulnerable for the duration of the fight.

I struggled a lot on my first play through, but now I got better and breezed through it on hard. I died 1-2 times on most bosses.

Key to this game is really using the teleport, I upgrade it so it gets 100% reduced cooldown ASAP. After that I basically just spam on the teleport, you can use 6 of them in a row and they recharge incredibly bast. Basically I just teleport around the screen constantly, getting the fact that you take 60% less damage when teleporting with a skillpoint. Also the stun grenade is ridiculously strong, especially against bosses. You can just keep using it whenever they are released from stun, and keep meleeing them. My most used combo was stun + holding and doing the big spin attack, and then stunning and keeping doing that. For big regular enemies I also like to get the slow-mo ability, so you can use it and put a long burst into them much more easy than when you are aiming in full speed.

Getting the ability that makes shield do damage/knockdown and just teleporting like a madman among enemies is sooooooooooo fun.

Really, really have fun with playing the game. I cathartic in the same way that Hotline Miami is no doubt. Actually think the way the weapons handle is kind of key to the way you play. You often pick up a gun with 8 rounds, but each of those 8 are immensely lethal. So you actually have to be a bit more deliberate with the aiming.

Wish it ha some kind of survival/score mode/daily challenges. I would really want to play this game quite a bit more but I kinda am bored with the structure by now.

@ripelivejam: Just walking into the thread and watching these videos, you stole the words from my mouth. I'd add some Hotline Miami in there too, and with that I'd say I'm pretty okay with the direction. Hotline Miami and Transitor are two of my favourite games, story- and atmosphere-wise, so I don't mind someone else taking a crack at it with their own twist.

Definitely having my ups and downs with this game. On the (assumingly) final fight with the Trafficking at the moment and can't say that I've ever been the biggest fan of multi-phase fights *with* unskippable blaabering from the bosses sprinkled on top of it. Plus few times where I've seemingly died for no reason, but I guess it's been the AoE after it has already disappear from the screen or some other fun thing like that.

...alright, can scratch some of that text from above, now that I read few of the comments and remembered the melee ability and added skill points to that. I guess it's both good, but also kinda stupid that you can trivialize some bosses if you happen to end up in the fight with a really powerful melee weapon. The first guy with the rail gun was a complete joke and I didn't even use the charged up melee stuff on him.

I wonder what's taking them so long with the QL. Guess Brad really wants to beat it on the hardest difficulty first and then show the gameplay properly, eh?

Say no more, not interested in the game anymore.

Another piece of shit sprinkled with flashy advertising.

I guess I was just around the corner from the ending. The game definitely shines because of it's style, which got a wee bit overwhelming during some of the boss fights. Few parts towards the end were especially cool due to the combination of music and visuals. The gameplay itself grew on me the more I played, but I feel like the targeting made some things way more difficult than they should've been. Not sure if it's way easier on the pc then, played on PS4 myself.

The story was mostly whatever, not incredibly bad but didn't draw me in either. But since even the developers said that their focus was on the gameplay, I wasn't expecting anything amazing either.

I really liked the look of the downtown, so it was a somewhat shame that the levels were mostly industrial hellholes, instead of outside environments. I really wish the gameplay would feel more tighter and there would be a little more "oomph" to combat, aka, all those hits having a more impactful feel to them. If those things would be there, I could feel myself coming back to this frequently like I did with the first Hotline Miami. Not too sure about it now. Still a fun little game regardless.

The first boss is kicking my ass.

@howardian: ehh well "piece of shit" seems like a pretty extreme reaction. I'm not a fan of the room structure but it's still a pretty good game albeit with some flaws.

After 20 years of playing games I kind of became very harsh on lazy game design. Zero tolerance for games that don't respect my time or my right to have a proper challenge for the money I spent.

Bought it on GOG as well, are you using a controller or keyboard? i personally stuck with the controller as it just seemed like this game would fit that better. But maybe kb/m is abetter combo.

Beat the game last night, nothing really interesting happened in the story, pretty predictable stuff that could be seen coming 100 miles away. Still enjoyed everything else besides the story and to an extent the combat. I guess I sort of did this to myself as I always do, but I kinda broke the challenge about halfway through the game. I spec'd into the Overload, Resource and Dash trees with Supply Drop so I could always have the weapons I wanted. The Vis Carver is the most damaging melee weapon in the game, so when I did a charge attack with Overload active it chunked about half a bosses health on Hard. So basically Overload never runs which means I have infinite dashes which in turn means I'm basically invincible at all times. My left index finger just about fell off during the final level(s), but I was in no danger of dying at all. Even without all the other buffs and talents, the second you have access to Overload you can basically strip the game of a lot of its challenge. Same thing with the infinite stun grenades, I wish things were a little more balanced.

I'm using mouse and keyboard. Perhaps I should upgrade to the Xbox 360 controller as boss fights can be quite a biatch to defeat.

Yeah might be a good idea, i think the controls are mapped well to the controller. I took a quick glance and the keyboard controls and they do seem a bit more involved.

I decided to restart on normal difficulty because I was just getting wrecked on hard.

@meierthered: I'll have to try as well. I think the mouse and keyboard controls are mostly fine but dashing feels weird and I'm not sure if it's me doing it wrong or the game. Maybe it's smoother on a controller since I won't be using cardinal directions for movement.