Cruelty Squad (2021)

Cruelty Squad is a disgustingly joyous game, chock filled with secrets, fun builds, and idiosyncrasies that make this nightmare far more than meets the eye.

The game starts as a first person shooter reminiscent of something like Deus Ex - take a mission, kill various targets, escape. As a biologically augmented killer you can find and buy implants to bring with you as well as keep any weapons you find in a level. Helmets, armor, death goggles, high jump legs, foot fart double jumps, grappling guts, goo blasters in the back, corporate insight - a whole wealth of wacky items with varying effects make every run an adventure, more often than not with ridiculous trade-offs. Weapons consist of regular-looking guns like submachine guns, silenced pistols, rocket launchers; after that you get DNA splicing pistols, radiation charge rifles, and the soul of the stock market. Creativity is on full blast here.

The aesthetics and world of Cruelty Squad is also a big sell. Taking place in a capitalist dystopia where the only way to get forward is to kill and work the stock market, you get to see a whole bunch of examples of the cheapening of human life. Speculative biological currencies (read: organs), wasting seed capital on Chunkopops, accidentally calling a hit on your apartment, playing sovereign on a fancy cruise ship, billion dollar membership fetish parties, capitalist gods of transactional forces... you name it! This game has it.

The game is intentionally horrifying to look at, with chunky textures and grotesque amidst pools of blood and gore. The music sounds cacophonic at first but some of the noise I've heard from this soundtrack is some of the finest I've heard in 2021. Apartment Atrocity is a masterclass in video game soundtracks.

Past the capitalist horror themes and zany and grotesque gameplay there are even bigger secrets to unfold. Difficulties that unlock walljump augments, secret levels hidden behind paintings, the mighty 640x480 resolution, breaking the stock market in two and then some - Cruelty Squad is an absolute trip, with difficult levels that become ridiculously fun with the help of augments and carefully designed environments with plenty of secret backdoors. It's easy to judge a game by first glance or even first level, but people that like what they see will love what lies at its fetid core.

You'll either love it our hate it, but the disturbing industrial setting, biomechanical aesthetic, low resolution gorey imagery of Cruelty Squad is distinct if not unique. I would describe it as a mashup between the writing of William S Burroughs, the biological horror of Cronenberg, and the attitude of a Snog album, all this is trying to express itself through a video FPS with light stealth elements (i guess?) overall gameplay is basic and maps are nothing special, but Cruelty Squad works as a game because all the elements mesh and fit well. You have unlockable upgrades and weapons, and difficulty modes (making what replays of what would otherwise be very static levels with nonchanging replays interesting and different) you have not just an in game stock market to spend your mission success moneys but three separate markets which tie into the game. You have all sorts of secrets which make you want to not just get through a level but go back to explore every inch. IT combines the lightning fast style of arcade like gameplay of Hotline Miami, where you just want to keep playing that map one more time and go in guns blazing or do something slightly different... Al of this together make for an addictive formula that is hard to put into words on how to explain what singular aspect of what it is about this game that is good or appealing. Because with one glance you can see that It's a hideous grotesque wreck that hooks into your eyeballs (one that you can't look away from) Its garish and ugly, and it doesn't try to pretend anything different, because it never had any motivation to do so.

Not really the sort of thing i'd recommend unless it looks interesting to you, but if you like 90's graphics shooters, this is worth consideration... I managed to 95% the game and though it was cool and worth the time. Just wish I could beat that final level

Can someone please explain to me why this game took off and has an overwhelmingly positive score on Steam?? I can totally digest overbearingly disgusting visuals but there's just nothing here besides that? It's not funny. It's not smart. Neither the writing nor the visuals. The gameplay is boring as heck. You get dropped in a level and have to kill x targets. That's it. Civilians and enemies are in your way. There are always multiple routes but the level designs are so uninteresting they make me wanna hit K (the suicide button) more than anything else. It's not ugly in a way it looks kinda nice again. It's just vomit-inducing nonsense. Same for the music. Look I Iove tons of experimental stuff that a lot of people might think of as random bullshit. But this is too much even for me. Why is this popular? Just for the memes? Am I too old? Am I too young? I don't understand. Please dear god I just wanna play Outer Wilds for the first time again.

If you wanna play a crazy FPS with colourful LSD visuals go get Post Void instead. It's actually great.