an insane kaleidoscopic nihilist view of late-stage capitalism, the gig economy, and the current zeitgeist. beating you down with just the utter horror of the biopunk augmented future, every action you take getting you closer and closer to losing every part of yourself and becoming nothing more than a frothing at the mouth killing machine.

with that in mind i must also say that the game is actually fun! a lot of these more artistic projects sacrifice gameplay for thematic cohesion (see gone home), but this game uses it's systems to create artistic comments. the stock market fluctuating based on player action, the varying difficulty system reflecting loss of humanity through continuous genetic reconstruction. and each objective can be performed in a seemingly limitless amount of ways, a lot of games state that the player has control over the way the play but none of them feel as fully free as this one does.

i've completed the main storyline, gonna take a break before coming back to it so i can hold onto some semblance of sanity, but there's still so many secrets to find that i'll need to come back to it. and the amount of ways to tackle each scenario really adds an immense amount of replay value

Cruelty Squad Isn't a game for everyone, It's purposely Ugly in a style that of early 2000's webpages, it's soundtrack makes you feel on edge at all times, the game is very unforgiving in terms of difficulty and to top it all off, the very little story it shows and its mechanics of the stock market of human organs that encourage you to mow down innocent people so you can sell whatever organs are still intact, paint the world of Cruelty Squad as a bleak, hyper-capitalist nightmare where human life is worth less than the bullets that take it.
Depending on your reaction to the following statements, Cruelty Squad might be a game you'll never touch, or, like myself, one of your new favorites.

this game is for a very specific audience and i dont think thats me

it feels unfair to rate it but i did not like it

What possesses a person to make this?

Regardless, it's good. A surprisingly intricate immersive sim tactical shooter... thing, as portrayed through some combination of team fortress 2 community servers, deep fried shitposts, quake, geocities websites and pure abject horror.

It must be said that it's really the tone that carries cruelty squad. From start to finish, it is intensely uncomfortable, in both its visual design, music, and what i was able to actually gleam of the context of the game's events. There's two missions in particular, one near the middle, and the other being the penultimate, which have just fantastic atmospheres and are probably where the game veers most into the horror side of it's absurdity.

The gameplay is pretty alright. The closest comparison I can think of it is probably dishonored of all things, and it frankly has similar issues. The level design is great, creating little sandboxes for you to tear shit up in, and you get some particularly interesting upgrades like your intestines becoming a grappling hook that can latch onto everything - but the balance isnt quite there and it has the classic mini-sandbox-murder-game problem of the route of least resistance - i.e, running up and shooting your target right in the face, or sniping them from a distance - has little to no downsides. There's some levels that mix this up a lot and later in the game the emphasis becomes far more in getting to to the target in the first place, which is nice, but it's still an issue. Also must be said that the AI is dumb as a bag of rocks, which feels mildly deliberate but also means they're not that engaging to mess about with and have nothing in the way of interesting interactions.

Aside from that, my only real issue is the escalation, or rather, for the most part, the lack of it. The two levels in mentioned earlier are fantastic and really kick it up, but aside from them most of the game retains this very constant level of bizzare intensity. The game arguably starts at 11, but it never quite getting to 12 means it's kinda easy to get used to the atmosphere by the time the game is wrapping up. If the main story maybe had a few levels less it would probably be better off. Also, the last level is absolutely awful. It might be making some sort of statement with it's awfulness but the one prior is immensely more cathartic and would have been a good way to go out.

Overall though, this is very neat. One of the more effective horror games I've played in a good while, and a decent immersive sim murder simulator thing to boot.

Special mention for the soundtrack, by the way, it's fantastic and the game would not be nearly as effective without it.

probably one of the best biopunk games out there. resident evil and parasite eve often lean a little bit into anti corporatism and punk ideology but can usually be ignored. cruelty squad makes its disgust with eugenics KNOWN. visuals are the perfect amount of abrasive, but each aspect serves a purpose and you get used to it...eventually. gameplay is a mix between immersive sim and hitman, and some of the later biomods break the game into pieces (the grappendix allows you go gain so much momentum ive been able to beat almost every level without touching the ground) and the level design is as confusing as its visuals (in a good way). really solid game to add to the ever growing list of retro style “meat games” alongside golden light and the dread x collection

How many of the following points apply to you will determine your suitability for this product:

1: A proclivity (past or present) for drugs
2: Overworked and underpaid
3: Depressed
4: Fantasise about the return of Guy Fawkes and/or billionaires toy spaceships burning up on re-entry
5: Tell people Bela Tarr is your favourite director when really its David Lynch
6: Feel the last remaining shreds of optimism for the human trajectory leave your body every time you open Twitter and yet another sickeningly bad faith talking head swings downward and is met with a resounding cheer
7: Proselytise experimental indie games providing there's some familiar mechanics
8: Have frequently tried to radicalise moderate friends and family by demonstrating any number of tangible examples of oppression and inequality the world over
9: Worry you may actually, permanently lose it one day, whatever "it" is
10: Have sat in a gallery staring at a Rothko or Pollock or anything similar that people call pointless, pretentious, not-art, whatever and F E L T S O M E T H I N G

If you've scored 6 or above on our Hypercapitalist Revenge Fantasy Suitability Test TM, may we offer you our most heartfelt sympathies, and welcome.

A constant loop of suffering. A world coated in hateful flesh and pain. Cracks permeate the surface. This is the Cruelty Squad world, the CEO mindset. Adapt or die a thousand deaths. 
I was like you, doubtful, jovial, considering this game as “random shitposting” and “overly weird”. I went into this game looking for a laugh. I came out a new man, one who looks the grim reaper in the eyes and makes them a deal. I am a successful man. Look at me in wonder. 
After a brief tutorial where you learn the basics of how to operate this software, this game plunges you into the deep end. You walk up to a tall bright building, the walls looking as though they were constructed in MS Paint. You walk in. Assault. Gunfire. Flashing symbols. Combat cocktail. The guards are inhuman, you only recognize the automatic guns they use to pump you full of lead. You glance at your health bar amidst the chaos– “-15 LIFE”. A countdown begins as you hear the bomb in your skull beeping. In one last flurry you panic and shoot and run, smashing into a vending machine to try and buy yourself a few more seconds, it’s all in vain. The bomb goes off. Divine light severed. Welcome to Cruelty Squad. 
This is the first impression the game grants you. This is the welcome mat. Some may scoff, roll their eyes, and request a refund, like God of War designer David Scott Jaffe in his infamous tweet, a vitriolic tweet that, ironically enough, convinced me to take the same steps he had. Only in my case, I continued stepping forwards. To life. To wealth. To destruction. Divine light severed. Time to traverse the grid of death. 
I won't spoil how your journey goes from this point onwards. Part of the painful bliss of this game is the overwhelming confusion, the feelings of insignificance and disgrace, followed by understanding, acceptance, and profit. Know this, the end is never the end. Go home. Sleep well. Condition yourself. Invest everything you own. Become divine. Eradicate hope. Confront life. See the world. Break the loop of suffering. This is Cruelty Squad.

Internet humor has long since devolved into an endless feedback loop of irony-poisoned remixes of popular culture. Image macros have mutated into political statements. Capitalist hyperrealism has killed the generational zeitgeist and is wearing its skin like a fucked-up monster from a horror movie pastiche in a cutaway gag of an unrelated work.

If [imsim you’ve played] is Neuromancer, then Cruelty Squad is Snow Crash. It is a storage unit wasteland of garbage-built landmarks and Geocities vomit. Each level is a Roblox level from 2008 reimagined in LSD: Dream Emulator. It is web art fully realized in a violent interactive space. I love the scathing, sensory overload aesthetic of Cruelty Squad.

I could paint Cruelty Squad through comparison and contrast alone; I could continue to painstakingly draw comparison and contrast, as many reviewers have tried and (basically) succeeded; any review to Cruelty Squad inevitably tends towards drawing on familiar examples to illustrate its points (as will this one). Cruelty Squad is like hundreds of other games, yet there’s nothing truly similar to it; the emulsified, processed sludge of Cruelty Squad’s influences come together to create a wholly original experience, unlike (almost) anything that’s come before.

One night, I told my friend Garrett I’d started playing Cruelty Squad, and he said, “Yeah, I’ve heard of that game, what’s it about?” I told him I’d recently finished a mission where I killed my landlord and sold his organs on the black market. He said, “That sounds awesome.” The simple fact is that, yes, it was and is awesome!!

The Apartment level remained a high point for me, and I don’t think the game ever really exceeded my expectations afterwards. Even the mission Bog Business, with its Dark Souls-esque level-wide poison swamp, never shocked or surprised me. Although the gimmick was new, I felt that Cruelty Squad didn’t have much left to offer (GOATed OST btw).

Gorbino’s QuestArchon Grid, the final level, was nothing if not unexpected. Although more linear than previous missions, there’s a lot of fun in every encounter being a problem needing to be solved.

From start to finish, around five-and-a-half hours. I learned later there was plenty of optional content I'd missed, including two additional “endings” and a handful of secret levels… which is cool, but I feel like I’ve already gotten my fill.

I missed the fishing rod on the fourth mission, and spent basically my entire playthrough wondering when I was going to be able to fish. Also apparently there’s a bunch of doors that only unlock after you restore your divine light in the final mission? That’s cool, too, but I was already half-checked out by the end. I feel bad because I really wanted to like this game more, but the obfuscation of the cool stuff was a little too much.

I think the weird keybindings and the way you use right-click to reload is weird and hilarious, and it definitely adds to the janky charm that Cruelty Squad’s systems are going for; but then there’s the swimming, which never felt good to me; there’s enemies that can beam you from a mile away and blend in with civilians; there’s the fuck-you death traps; shrimpdick rodents that can easily drain half your health if they bite you once; some of this stuff is really annoying. I’ve played Silent Hill 2, man. I get that the jank adds to the experience, but you also gotta admit that some of the stuff here is just bad on its own, and isn’t good just because it aims to be awkward.

It never clicked for me, not the same way some games do; Pizza Tower’s brevity encouraged me to start aiming for P ranks; Tunic’s clever obfuscation of core mechanics until the late game really made me want to return to earlier areas to discover new secrets; Cruelty Squad never enticed me in the same way. It was almost un-artfully obtuse, demanding a Google search or two before unraveling its final challenges. I didn’t aim for the second or third endings because I didn’t even know they were there. Now that I know they’re there, I’m not itching to reach them, either.

Maybe, like Doom Eternal, this is just another game I can’t fully appreciate at this point in my life. Maybe one day I’ll come back to Cruelty Squad and finally “get it,” or maybe it’s just not for me. It’s worth a try either way. Maybe you’ll fall in headfirst.