Ronin or Mark of the Gunpoint

[SignorSuperdouche]

I thought I should start a thread about Ronin, because it's one of the best games I've played in ages and feels like Thumbs would appreciate it. On the other hand I'm not sure I actually have a whole lot to say about it other than "It's rad". We'll see.

 

Superficially it's somewhere on the locus of Gunpoint and Mark of the Ninja, but that doesn't really do it justice. The meat of the game as it's turn based combat which bears little resemblance to either and is totally awesome.

 

There's 15 levels that basically look like gunpoint levels. There's computers to hack, windows to leap through and guards to not be killed by. As the game starts you have a jumping mechanic that is identical to Gunpoint's, a grappling hook that's very similar to the jumping mechanic and a katana that you can slice dude's in half with if you're close enough. If you're spotted by a guard the game pauses and the turn based mechanics begin. The guards have laser sights on their guns so you can see where they will shoot when you've had your move and it's their turn. Based on this you have plan to your swings and pounces, in about 1 second increments, to get you close enough to an enemy to chop his legs off without getting shot by other guards while you're doing it. As the game progresses you gain new gadgets and abilities and new enemy types are introduced but this the basic idea.

 

I played with a 360 controller and it wasn't the best the be honest. Sometimes the controls were finicky, sometimes they flat out didn't work. Navigating the menus with a controller never worked properly for me. I encountered occasional bugs too where I was teleported through a walls - particularly frustrating when in the middle of combat. Don't worry about any of this though - it's really, really worth it.

 

Even though it's turn based, the game feels fast and frantic, similar to Hotline Miami. Also similarly to Hotline Miami, when you have murdered every body and completed your objectives you'll silently backtrack through blood-splattered hallways or perhaps you'll take the elevator back to the ground floor while bland elevator music plays and the carnage you've wrought scrolls by. It's an unsettling juxtaposition.

 

The game plays with your expectations a lot too. You'll internalise the rules of the game only for it to turn around show you it doesn't always behave like that. This never feels unfair, just unexpected in the best possible way. Frequently I was left with a massive grin on my face.

 

It turns out I really didn't have much to say about it. There's a demo on Steam, so there's that I guess. Man, I'm rubbish at this. Well, I'm hardly the most active forum member these days so hopefully the fact that I was compelled to write anything at all is an indication of how much this game is worth your time.

 

On that note, hello to anybody who doesn't remember/never saw me. I'm SignorSuperdouche and I'm almost always a prick. But not this time.

[Vasari]

When this first got announced there was a big commotion about how it was a "ripoff" of Gunpoint. I think part of that came from the developer himself saying that he was inspired by Gunpoint and wanted to make a game like it. I think it does the game a disservice just to think of it as that though, because it's really unique in alot of ways.

 

I actually got stuck at the point I left off from playing last night. I'm on the level where you have to kill the Officer, and there's a wide open area surrounded by two buildings with 11 guards scattered about. I can't see any way to stealth kill more than one or two and with that many guards it's hard to lead their shots to set up an attack on someone. I'm going to go back tonight and get through it.

[tberton]

When this first got announced there was a big commotion about how it was a "ripoff" of Gunpoint. I think part of that came from the developer himself saying that he was inspired by Gunpoint and wanted to make a game like it. I think it does the game a disservice just to think of it as that though, because it's really unique in alot of ways.

 

This is how I heard about the game, ironically from Tom Francis himself who streamed the game and was like "actually, this is way different from Gunpoint and super cool."

[Bjorn]

I wishlisted it, thanks for posting about it, as I had never heard about it before.  It certainly looks cool, and while clearly inspired by Gunpoint, it at least appears to riff on that design plenty enough to differentiate itself. 

[Ben X]

Hello SSD, good to see you again!

 

It does seem to be a regular knee-jerk response to new (indie?) games - "this is a clone of X!" rather than "this looks similar to X".

[Professor Video Games]

I watched the GB quicklook of this and it looks super fun. Once I get through my current backlog (haha) I'll probably pick it up.

[Erkki]

Yeah, looks very very similar to Gunpoint at first glance (I opened two google image searches in different tabs and at one point got confused about which one I was looking at), but if it plays differently enough and even Tom Francis says that then who cares.

[Vasari]

This is how I heard about the game, ironically from Tom Francis himself who streamed the game and was like "actually, this is way different from Gunpoint and super cool."

 

Yeah, the whole thing was really silly, I think people were trying to hard to spin it into "an evil jerk is ripping off our indie darling, what a monster!"