Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Rip and tear, it's time to dismantle some mutants! Taking you through a first-person shooter through overrun spaceships full of mutants, Ripout is a weird combination of FPS, horror, and a co-op functionality.
Now in Early Access after the demo that Pierre-Yves and myself covered, we get to take a look at a more fleshed out (pun intended) version of Ripout.
Ripout is set in a world in the future, where a mutagen has proliferated through the human race, forcing them to take to the stars to escape. Unfortunately, outbreaks start occurring on the spaceships. What you need to do is discover what went wrong while making your way to Sanctuary. In order to do so, you need to explore the derelict spacecrafts in order to find clues on how you're going to survive.
Your task won't exactly be the easiest, but luckily you'll have an assortment of tools at your disposal. Traipsing through the overrun spacecrafts take place as a sort of roguelike-ish deal, as you'll be able to collect enhancements as you make your way through a series of rooms, performing the requirements to "clear" the room, until you end up back at the ship you rode in on. There are certain required missions you need to do, as well as a certain number of "free" missions, before you can progress to the next sector, leading up to the end of the campaign. You can select from a number of missions, more as your sector progresses, and clearing one will introduce a new one.
While you're out going through the procedurally generated ships, you will be shooting your way through mutant creatures, capable of having smaller mutant creatures attach themselves to the larger mutants. These smaller critters can either be torn or shot off the mutants, or collected for yourself with your very own pet gun! Now, what is a pet gun you may ask? Well, of the three weapons you can bring, one is your primary weapon which is a pet gun of some type, another is a sidearm, and the last is a melee weapon. The pet gun can be sic'd on enemies, stunning them and biting them for damage as well as to rip off attachments. Alternatively, you can use it on lone small mutant creatures to turn them into attachments for yourself that you can use until they run out of energy.
When you send off the pet gun however, you are restricted to your other weapons until the pet gun comes back, and then there is a recharge period before you can send the gun out again. Now, an interesting point to this is that there are roguelike type enhancements. When you enter a room, you can find an upgrade terminal that offers three possible upgrades, and you can take one. Sometimes this is really handy, like reducing cooldown for pet attacks, or causing an explosion on a pet attack.
Enemies are a very interesting type, as they are mutants with weak points and limbs you can shoot off. If a small addition type creature attaches to them, you can also rip those off or shoot them off, meaning that enemies can be a weird amalgamation of different parts. The ones with a shield, claw to prevent pet attacks, and the sticky web combo are wretched though, so keep your eyes on those. On the plus side, all the attachments the enemies can get, you can too! Only one at a time though, so sometimes it's tough to choose what the best partner for the current situation is.
So, now that you're aware of how things are gonna go down, how does it feel playing through the game? Well, I can definitely say it's a lot more fun with friends, especially since you can revive your teammates, but it's still pretty fun on your own. Point and case, each room you go through has a different objective, sometimes involving killing things, and sometimes finding things. Now, if you turn on the lights, which help visibility a lot and allow you to open certain doors and access the enhancement stations, it also activates electrical wires on the ground. These things will shock the life out of you in less than 2 seconds flat. Like, good god man it's brutal if you stand on them by accident. Luckily, if you're in co-op, a buddy can bring you back up.
As you're exploring the areas you're running through and killing mutants, you'll find that enemies, as well as boxes found around the area, will contain health, ammo, as well as materials and sometimes blueprints. The materials and blueprints can be used after finishing a mission. In your spaceship hub area, you can use the materials and blueprints to make weapons, garments, and mods, and then you can equip them in your loadout before heading off on a new mission. Also, pro tip but there's a revival token dispenser in the hub ship. Don't forget to renew that. Also, on the top floor there's a gatcha machine that will dispense random blueprints for you. Duplicates return some cash for you, but the price will go up as you continue to roll for blueprints.
Fair warning, there is a bit of jank to go around in Ripout. While most of the time it runs alright, there are the occasional lag, sometimes corners and hit detection are not very player friendly, some railings you can shoot through and some you can't. Also, reloading can decide to not complete fully, especially for sidearms during a pet attack, and explosive barrels have a weird tenuous grasp on what their effective range actually is. Enemies are not immune to this either, as they are sometimes super smart or aggressive, and sometimes just sit there and let you kill them without a struggle. Hopefully most of this will get sorted out as Ripout progresses through its Early Access phase.
One thing Ripout does quite well is its atmospheric horror aspect. The grotesque monsters, vents exploding, enemies popping out of nowhere, or sneaking up on you, only to turn around to find a mass of flesh barreling towards you, definitely gave both me and P.Y. some startles while we were playing. Pretty sure P.Y. got a good chuckle out of me freaking out occasionally. The atmosphere and monsters really do come together in a horrifying way that's sure to give you the occasional start!
The whole game doesn't take too long to get through, somewhere between 8 to 10 hours, but does have multiple difficulties and you can reset the campaign. Admittedly it does get pretty repetitive pretty quickly, but it's still a lot of fun, whether with friends or by yourself. There are a bunch of different weapon types to try as well, which can add some much-needed variation to the mix. It's an easy game to pick up for a few rounds here and there, making it a nice title if you don't have a lot of time, but still want to do something with friends.
Score: N/A
