RIPOUT

My gut reaction walking into RIPOUT was that it had more personality than its mixed reception suggested. The Pet Gun is not a gimmick slapped onto a generic FPS skeleton. It's a living biomechanical critter clamped to the underside of your primary weapon, and you can hurl it at enemies to tear off their acquired upgrades, have it grab Critters from the environment for temporary abilities like shoulder-mounted plasma fire or a bio-shield, and use it to scan for points of interest in the dark. The catch: while your pet is deployed, your primary weapon is offline. That creates real tension around timing and positioning that most co-op shooters in this bracket don't bother with. Starting weapon types cover assault rifle, long-range rifle, and shotgun, each upgradeable between missions using crafted schematics. Character specializations layer on top of that, letting a squad lean into complementary builds. The atmosphere deserves credit too. The ship interiors pull from a very specific lineage: dead analog monitors, biological growths on corridor walls, things shambling toward you in poor lighting. Movement is deliberately slow-burn rather than strafe-and-spray. Stamina drains fast on sprints, the flashlight is weak enough to keep you on edge, and enemies can dynamically attach smaller mutants to themselves mid-fight to gain new abilities. If your pet is ready, you can rip those attachments off them before they become a serious problem. That back-and-forth is the best version of what RIPOUT offers, and in co-op with two other players it can produce some genuinely tense moments. Here is where I have to be straight with you, though. The 66 percent positive rating on Steam is a real signal. The game shipped with a repetition problem that reviewers at full release were still calling out. Individual ship layouts shift between runs via procedural generation, enemy placement and loot rotate, and missions clock in at ten to twenty minutes each. But the rooms still look like the same rooms. The objective loop, go to derelict ship, find resource or clue, extract, is what you will be doing from the second hour through the tenth. Solo play is actively rough: difficulty appears tuned for at least two players, larger enemies hit hard, health items drop inconsistently, and the crafting grind bottlenecks meaningful progression behind repeating side missions that all feel identical. CGMagazine and Analog Stick Gaming both flagged this, and Steam user sentiment lands in the same place. The co-op framing saves it from being a write-off. With a full squad you can create your own momentum, split angles, call targets, and paper over thin objectives with the social energy of three people trying not to die in a dark corridor. The PetGun system gives everyone a shared language for coordination that most games at this price point skip entirely. If you have a reliable crew of two or three who enjoy short mission loops and sci-fi horror aesthetics, there is a foundation here worth a few sessions. If you are a solo player expecting a Dead Space-adjacent experience, you will bounce off the difficulty balance and the grind inside of two hours.

Fred · Scout Team

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