Monthly Archives: April 2017

Tuesday, 4 April 2017 10:20 GMT By Matt Martin

Devolvers latest will take you down hard.

Ruiner really nails the cyberpunk aesthetic, the cold inhumanity of technology, stylised oppression and brutal violence.

So I said to the dude at Devolver show me your most violent games and he did exactly that. I sat down and smashed heads in with a steel pipe.

In Ruiner, your job is to kill the boss of Heaven. Heaven seems to be a steel-cold, clinical, neon industrial escape from the trash city of Rengkok below. And really theres only one thing to do here: kill.

So I turn heads into lunch meat. And then I graduate to increasingly devastating firepower, although crucially the pipe remains shockingly effective long after the bullets have ran dry.

Ruiners hero is faceless, concealed inside a helmet that flashes single bite-size mission statements. Someones giving him orders but theres someone else trying to hack into his perception, to subvert commands. While you keep killing the cyberpunk story begins to unroll; a missing brother, manipulation by The Man, a mysterious girl. But really during the early stages of the game the point is to just keep killing. I like a game that gets on with things.

The violence is chained together as you combo deceptively simple moves. Although the first level feels big, its really just about moving from one area to another, pausing to kill before moving on again. Confrontations consist of linking a dash, shield and brutal attack as pre-emptive strikes or risk being overwhelmed. The shield and dash use energy, so the combos cant be infinite. But chain them together quickly and you can devastate multiple enemies before theyve fired off a shot. Then you try to avoid more goons as you pick the rest off. Rinse and repeat.

Confrontation is quick and almost clinically effective in its violence, triggering an adrenaline rush of relief and revulsion.

Its tough to begin with, but once you make the shift from single actions to timing combos together youre an effective killing machine. You zip across the screen leaving clouds of blood drifting in the air. Confrontation is quick and almost clinically effective in its violence, triggering an adrenaline rush of relief and revulsion. I took them all down, they didnt get back up again, and Im a heartbeat away from collapsing. Overwhelming odds are shattered if you keep moving and make every action count.

There are comparisons to Hotline Miami, but only in the swift violence. Hotline is more tactical, giving you options when it comes to tackling enemies and approaching rooms differently. In Ruiner in the first large level Ive played, at least theres only ever one way to go, and the goons approach you, boxing you in. Youll have to beat them down before moving on.

The first level ends with a mini-boss fight but with added pressure. A timer counts down to zero and death. The only way to keep alive is to execute enemies, adding vital seconds back to the clock. So you need to balance time as you whittle down the boss but also quickly crush his goons to keep the clock in a safe zone. Dont get carried away pummeling the villain or youll aide your own death.

With the opening level finished, bathed in blood, youre introduced to Rengkok, a kind of hub where you can interact with a bunch of darkly comic citizens. Its like a snapshot of Mega City One or Geof Darrows Hard Boiled, used as a way of pushing you to the next level. If thats all it does then its a welcome break from the ultraviolence, but maybe itll offer more as the game opens up.

Ruiner really nails the cyberpunk aesthetic; the cold inhumanity of technology, stylised oppression and brutal violence all set to a heavy electro soundtrack. The action is quick and unforgiving and you can kill or be killed in a heartbeat. Every weapon picked up is bittersweet it will tear apart but only for a limited time so you need to tactically drop back and calculate your next victim before the last body even hits the floor. Its encourages you to play with confidence, ruthless efficiency and to not hesitate. Because to hesitate is to die.

Ruiner is out for PC this spring.

Read the rest here:

Cyberpunk thriller Ruiner is here to smash you in the face - VG247

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CD Projekt Red's Witcher series has passed a new sales milestone. As part of the company's newest earnings report today, it announced that the franchise--comprising The Witcher, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt--has now passed 25 million units sold (via PC Gamer).

The Polish developer did not provide a specific unit sales breakdown by title. Whatever the case, this figure is up from the 20 million number that CD Projekt Red disclosed a year ago this month.

During a Q&A session as part of the briefing, CD Projekt Red management offered an update on Cyberpunk 2077, saying development progress is "quite advanced" at this stage. Management said the game is very ambitious and stressed that the developer will not rush the game to market.

Cyberpunk 2077 is scheduled to launch sometime in the 2017-2021 window. Don't expect to see more of it until CD Projekt Red can prepare an impressive showcase for it.

"Right now it's the end of talking about Cyberpunk until we can go out there and show stuff and say, 'Hey, here it is,' because that's how we do games," CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwinski said earlier. "There is too much talking about what it possibly could be, and how big, and...

"When we show it, we should show it and explain it. So I'm going to have people not read anything about Cyberpunk probably for the next... time, whatever the time will be."

The game is set in a dystopian future and is being made in partnership with Cyberpunk RPG designer Mike Pondsmith. Platforms have not been announced, but PS4, Xbox One, and PC seem likely.

In terms of financial specifics, CD Projekt Red's revenue and profit for 2016 dropped year-over-year. You can watch the CD Projekt Red earnings briefing above (it's translated from Polish to English), while you can read the full written report here.

Here is the original post:

Witcher Series Passes 25M Units Sold, Cyberpunk 2077 Development "Quite Advanced" - GameSpot

(Last Updated On: April 3, 2017)

A lot of people are interested in CD Projekt Reds upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 and want to know more about the gameplay aspects. And speaking of gameplay, what will the game have players doing and how will it let folks go about completing objectives? Well, given that many gamers are combing over every morsel and bit of detail surrounding the game, another piece of info thats not official yet regarding the games rating recently caught the eye of gamers offering a glimpse into what the game could sport.

Upon doing some more research on Cyberpunk 2077, Ive recently stumbled across a new thread talking about the title and how one particular user is concerned about the game. Upon reading the discussion it lead me to the bottom of the post where theres an ESRB listing for all of CD Projekt Reds titles: the ESRB rating at the bottom of the screen carries an M for Mature label, listing off each of the things contained within CD Projekt Reds games.

As of now, we might have an understanding as to what the game may contain when it does come around to fruition.

Although other rating sites like the ESRB do not list the game with its rating just yet, youll notice that on the official website the Mature label is listed for all of CD Projekts games. The first image comes from cdprojektred.com/forum (very bottom of the site) and details the following content.

Yes, on the official website the label lists all of the content that theyve notified the ESRB about for each of their games, this contains: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content and Use of Drugs.

Looking over to official Witcher store page (at the bottom of the site), youll see the ESRB rating where it rattles off what the game is rated for.

The image clearly reveals: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content and Use of Alcohol.

The difference between the two is that the former label sports Use of Drugs, while the latter contains Use of Alcohol. This is because in The Witcher 2s ESRB rating does contain Use of Drugs, but its interesting that its not featured on the official shop page for The Witcher . So clearly theyre compacting all of their ESRB labels into one label and have it slapped on their official website at the bottom.

Whats interesting, however, is that the only other websites showing Cyberpunk 2077s rating is a summary over on IGN and MetaCritic that both still show RP. Again, its interesting that Cyberbunk 2077s official site used to show RP, but now it just has the Mature label that seems to represent all of CD Projekt Reds games. It would seem like they would have both a Mature label and a Rating Pending label to represent The Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077, since the latter game hasnt been rated yet.

Its almost as if they already expect the game to get an M rating for all of the things listed at the bottom of the site, so they just have the label there as a placeholder, or it could be that theyre expecting ample amounts of gore, nudity, strong sexual content, language and violence, and are giving people a heads-up before the game actually gets rated. Theres also a pretty high expectancy from those on the CDPR forums that the game will get the M for Mature rating based on the aforementioned adult subject matter.

Itll be interesting to see if the above is all true and how the game will be on release seeing that CD Projekt Reds visual effects artist, Jose Teixeira, revealed that

Cyberpunk is far bigger than anything else that CD Projekt Red has done before. Far, far bigger. Were really stepping into the unknown in terms of complexity and size and problems we encounter.

Cyberpunk 2077 is said to come out when its ready.

Read more:

Here's Why Cyberpunk 2077 Could Feature Gore And Nudity - One Angry Gamer (blog)