2017 is the year of Ruiner. And I will now tell you why is that.
If there’s an added value to the pleasant surprise of 2017’s machine-gun delivery of excellent video games, it’s its abundance of some of the best twin-stick shooters I’ve gotten to play, probably ever. And do I love my twin-stick shooters!
The orgastic Nex Machina lead the thumb torturing charge for a while, to be shortly followed by the amazing Cryptark (well, technically a side-scroller but very much twin-sticky). And where Cryptark‘s ingredients included a tactically-approached roguelite, the next, X-Morph: Defense, has sown some tower defense into the dual analog mix. I knew I was in for a hard time come Race to GOTY.
Until the screen started to flicker wildly and said, ‘Kill Boss’.
Ruiner didn’t just click with me. It knocked my socks off, gave me an enema, cocked that shotgun and blew my brains out. Its breakneck, dash-heavy combat, cartoonish, epileptic slow-mo butchery in quintessentially cyberpunk nastiness of an environment is truly something. But the confidence with which it lets you play your way, that’s something else, and that’s why it’s here.
