Recent reviews by Ruger

Utterly fantastic game design, the entire industry should be taking notes. 11/10 every day is a good day to die for democracy

An absolute masterpiece of an action game. Easily a 9/10, some of the best money I've ever spent even though the game is relatively short. I slept on this one for a long time, went in completely blind, and was utterly floored by the game design excellence on display here. If you like high-octane action, buy this.

Ghostrunner features a vast number of improvements over similar action-adventure or platformer games, each one of them gracefully solving a problem that has plagued these games for generations.

First, I'll talk about the health system: there isn't one. If you get hit, you die. Now, that sounds intimidating -- and it can be frustrating at times -- but I think it's a good choice here for two reasons. The first is that it forces you to keep moving; enemies never lead their shots, so as long as you keep moving, you're generally not going to get hit. Needing to stay moving keeps the action alive -- you're constantly bouncing off of walls, sidestepping bullets, or grappling across the room. There is never a dull moment in Ghostrunner because the game always pushes you into the excitement. The second is that it lends itself well to the story of the game and cultivates a nice power fantasy. When the game design forces you to go through every encounter hitless at lightning speed, you come out the other side truly feeling like the invincible badass all the characters say you are.

That said, dying to every single hit is still daunting to think about. If this were a more conventional game, that would be ridiculous and rage-inducing beyond belief. Ghostrunner, however, is not conventional; it uses a number of mechanisms to make sure that this design choice is always fair to the player. The first of these that I already mentioned is that enemies never lead you, so as long as you stay moving, you're generally alright. Every enemy (except bosses) also dies in a single hit just like you do, so you don't feel like the harsh rules only apply to you. Your standard attacks also have great range and a massive area of effect; regular sword slashes can hit enemies who are behind you, next to you, or several feet in front of you, so you have considerable leeway to manage your position and never feel constrained by the game or screwed over because you had the wrong camera angle. Never once did I feel like a level was impossible or that the game was being unfair to me; it was always my own lack of skill that got me killed, and I could always immediately see the mistakes I made.

Apart from the superb encounter balancing, Ghostrunner features a lot of small innovations that every other game dev should be taking notes on. When you inevitably die, you just press a key to immediately return to the checkpoint and get back at it. No loading screen, you're just suddenly back at the checkpoint ready to try again. To augment that, checkpoints are placed very often and at fair positions; you'll never get shot at right when you spawn in or have an unfortunate autosave. You'll never need to go back through a challenging platforming section tens of times just to get back to the fight you're trying to win because the checkpoint is always placed exactly so that you can immediately get right back to the problem you were trying to solve when you died. In addition, I believe that the single best innovation in this vein is that DIALOGUE DOESN'T REPEAT. If you die after a dialogue sequence started but before it finished, it simply continues where it left off when you restart. Once a dialogue sequence is done, you don't hear it again, no matter how many times you die or pass the same spot. No more going insane because you have to listen to the bad guy monologue every time you start the boss fight.

The story, while it isn't anything super new and is a bit predictable, is a nice grayish morality take on a classic trope. It's written and executed very well, and while it's no KOTOR, it's leaps and bounds better than I expected from a game so focused on its action.

The cybervoid sections -- essentially puzzle sections -- seem to be a point of contention, although I personally liked them. The game is pretty high-octane and the pace of most platforming and combat sections tends to be around Mach Jesus, so these slower sections serve as nice breaks when they show up. The puzzles, like the story, aren't going to break any records, but they are fun to solve and do feel fair. There's always just enough information given so that you can figure them out without too much trouble if you look around and pay attention, and there's a new puzzle format in every new cybervoid section so that they don't feel repetitive.

There's so much more that I want to say but I feel like this has already become an entire essay and I should probably stop here. If you like action games, buy this one.

Amazing game. It's more or less Ace Combat but different enough to stand on its own and at half the price. Gameplay is simple and arcadey but very fun and is kept fresh through unlocking new planes with differing stats, playstyles, and ordinance options. Graphics are gorgeous for an indie game, if a bit orange.

The campaign overall was a wonderful experience. Though the voice acting can be hit-or-miss, the characters are generally likeable (or unlikeable as appropriate) and the missions involve diverse enemy and terrain types (though they can be a bit... orange). I played through the game the first time on hard difficulty using mostly an F-14; although things can certainly be hectic, I never found the difficulty unmanageable. The story won't break any records but is solid and the experience is tied together beautifully by the absolutely incredible soundtrack. I can't compliment the soundtrack enough.

Conquest mode is a nice addition but could be more fleshed out.

Overall, if you like Ace Combat or flying, Project Wingman will be one of the finer additions to your collection.

A note on difficulty: some say the boss squadrons are too much or that enemy count can be too high, but I found that using the appropriate mixture of tactics and playing to your plane's advantages was enough to take everything down in a reasonable time. That said, I was playing with TrackIR and a HOTAS; while by no means necessary as Project Wingman offers good keyboard and mouse controls, they do make things easier. Your mileage with the difficulty may vary depending on your setup and relevant experience.

10/10 would brutally demolish friendship with hockey pucks again

10/10 great game to play for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles

10/10 would play New York post-apocalyptic animal control again.

Dear God. This is EXACTLY the game that I've been looking for for a long time. A friend and I recently started playing, and already it is evident just how fun this will be.

Clandestine is a stealh game where one person plays as the operative (Katya) and another person plays as the hacker (Martin). It pretty much takes the TV shows and movies like Person of Interest and turns them into an amazing game. Both the operative and the hacker depend on each other to complete the mission - Katya does the ground work like knocking out guards and grabbing written documents and pieces of intel but she can't move through the map without Martin's help in getting past things like lasers, code-locked doors and cameras. Martin sits in his van and connects to the security network that controls elements that surround Katya - he can control cameras, call pagers, hack computer systems, remotely retrieve door passcodes, shut down lasers and knock out guards with pulses of electricity from nearby power lines but he can't access any written documents or ledgers or closed networks and so he needs Katya.

That's enough regarding what this game is about. Moving on to my personal experience and why I recommend it so highly:
This game can get very intense very fast. VoIP of some sort is a fundamental necessity if you're playing with a friend (which I highly recommend doing). Every minute that the mission goes on Katya needs to be constantly checking her surroundings, looking ahead and behind, timing her movement so she isn't spotted, judging situations and communicating with Martin about any obstacles in the way while Martin needs to be checking cameras, marking guards, hacking e-mails and door codes, clearing Katya's path, avoiding the system administrator and alerting Katya to anything that might be trouble. One mistake by Martin could lead to Katya walking into a bad situation or being spotted by a camera whereas one mistake by Katya could incite a chain reaction that ends in her death. Both roles are intense and require concentration and reasoning. On the higher difficulties, guards can see Katya from across parking lots and the system admin moves fast, requiring the skills of both players to succeed.
It can make for some fun, interesting and memorable experiences - for example, my friend and I were playing recently and things got wild. A special ops team started moving in on our mission AO, forcing my friend to start making a quick exit and me to start checking all the cameras in the building to find out the locations of the enemy team members. My partner was waiting behind a corner to knock a guard out when one of the team members that I couldn't see burst into the room and saw him. He quickly turned around and shot the spec ops guy, but the guard down the hall saw what happened and moved forward, calling for backup. My partner took the guard down just as I alerted him to more spec ops coming up the stairwell. One of them walked in, my partner shot him, sprinted down the hall and ducked into cover just as bullets from the rifles of more enemies whizzed by. The enemy team split up, some going one way and the others going a different path. I tagged part of the team heading down to my partner's far right so he knew they were flanking him. He got hit but killed the guys that came through and not half a second later the other part was about to round the corner when my partner performed a takedown just in the nick of time.
That whole ordeal happened over the course of just a few seconds, believe it or not. It was probably one of the most nerve-racking experiences that I've ever had and it was insanely fun.

The only downsides to this game are that the singleplayer mode (to me) is not very doable. I've tried it a few times and on the difficulty settings I have, it took me an hour to get past the tutorial mission. Being just one role like I did with my friend required concentration and trying to switch between them both as needed simply wasn't efficient enough. I'd be switching cameras or hacking a door as Martin and Katya would get found by a patrol officer or I'd be running between cover as Katya and get spotted by a camera because I didn't have enough time to switch over. Although being spotted isn't a game-ending event, it makes the mission much more difficult because alarms summon reinforcements from outside the AO. The voice acting also could have been better and the graphics and animations are a bit sub-par but if you can see past those things the gameplay is truly great.

TL;DR Great game, asymmetrical co-op is very well done. Voice acting and graphics aren't great but the gameplay more than makes up for it. 9.7/10 (My opinion).

Space Engineers, despite the bland title, offers a nearly contless number of creations ranging from a small fighter or mining drone to the most sophisticated multipurpose structure man has ever dreamed of. I'd say this is a good game to play with friends as things can get pretty hilarious when you manage to put ten rocket launchers on a fighter the size of your household toaster, or if you're a more serious type you can build and crew an entire multi-deck starship. Or perhaps you're not much for multiplayer and just want to go solo which can also be a truly fascinating experience. Any way you play it, this game is definitely worth the fifteen dollars.