Cruelty Squad Review

DIVINE LIGHT SEVERED; YOU ARE A FLESH AUTOMATON CONTROLLED BY NEUROTRANSMITTERS.

 Cruelty Squad is, rather infamously, one of the most bizarre pieces of media to come out of 2021. An immersive sim with so little care for common gaming conventions or design that most screenshots and video are incomprehensible at first glance. A world that looks like a half-life troll mod made using MS Paint and gameplay that down to the reload system is utterly bizarre and unnatural to play.

And it's fucking fantastic.

What we end up with is essentially a piece of outsider art made by someone who is, in fact, very much the opposite of an outsider. With well crafted satire, endless parody, intriguing level design, a relatively solid core movement and gameplay system focused around assassination, while having secrets and hidden unlockables that rival the best of New Bloods boomer shooters.

I'm not going to go in depth on the specifics, both because I think this is a game best experienced fresh, and a more nuanced summary has already been made by Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation. To paraphrase, this is a game that bubbled to the surface from the modern world we live in. Made with passion and a desire to evoke emotion in the player first and foremost.

I don't think it's an approachable game, like many more abstract artpieces like it, you need an appreciation for the medium and even genre to get the most out of playing it. Familiarity with traditional Immersive Sims in your Prey, System Shock, or Deus Ex mold being perhaps a primary recommendation. Similarly, many of it's aspects and smaller jokes are deliberate references and homages to existed media or real life aspects. Like it's choice to base most of it's weaponry on stranger guns as often seen on Forgotten Weapons. As well as some old school internet nods that I only know of now due to my Vtubing mate Dagda being a 4chan local back in the day.

But as a game, it's immensely rewarding to play, with a similar energy to something like Breath of the Wild in the "I can't believe the game didn't just let me do that, it planned for it and had a secret" side of things.

To anyone who is into enough of these things that it sounds interesting, I cannot recommend enough that you play this game. It's utterly unique and extremely well put together despite all visual and audio indications otherwise. If you're interested, but are not an experienced immersive sim player. It's perhaps worth trying other more user friendly entries first, or if you do go in, just be prepared to ask for some help along the way. But don't panic, I will say now it's a good game in that you can never permanently screw yourself over. There's always a way out, eventually.

Oh, and don't go in the front door. Trust me on that one.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A dumb post about some skulls

    Pictured: Amnesia: The Dark Descent I had to sit and think about this for a moment. So I'm playing Amnesia cause it's been on my backloggery since it came out and I need a short game to play through to kill that "next game" paralysis. This little goddamn cabinet filled with skulls sent me on an emotional rollercoaster and I need to talk through it for a second. Okay so first, the buildup, you're in a taxidermy room and it's clear the dude has been doing it for less than wholesome reasons involving torture etc etc. You step through into this little study and, thinking you have a breather, begin the routine of looting the drawers for tinderboxes and drugs. Boom, open the cabinet, skulls start tumbling out and the music sting hits. You weren't even prepared for a small monster so your brain starts panicking until you realize it's just some skulls. Okay, still unsettling. But a fun little spook. Then, as I was sitting, pondering how wonderfully effecti...
Read more

Madou Monogatari Mega Drive Review

I did it, I graduated from Magic Kindergarten! The originator of the popular Puyo Puyo puzzle games. Madou Monogatari on Mega Drive is a remake of the original Madou Monogatari 1. The various ports are different in both design and execution, so I'm going  to be avoiding direct comparisons in this review and grading the (recently translated) Mega Drive version on it's own merits. The game plays like a sort of JRPG fighting game, you cast spells by holding the A button and entering a button sequence before releasing, use items, and can block, dodge, or jump to avoid incoming attacks. As well as that, the spells have some interaction and level of randomness. Meaning it's often worthwhile to charge up a powerful attack against a deadly foe. Basics attacks cost no mana, but anything beyond that drains a relatively limited pool. Healing and Mana items are plentiful however, so for the most part, combat is a fun, "practicing DP inputs" sort of affair where you're try...
Read more

Trails in the Sky FC Review

Trails in the Sky FC complete. An Interesting little JRPG, relatively small scale and character focused. With Combat that's a mixture of grid based tactics and FFX's turn order system. Solid combat, a great cast and well paced story beats definitely give it a lot of strengths. Though it's nothing spectacular. The game is not done great favours by time, as I think it's initial english release platform, PSP, would have been the most impressive platform to experience it on. As the state of portability at the time dramatically changes one attitude to several aspects. (Like, for example, the fact I played basically the entire game on fast forward) If you're a fan of Falcom games, I think you'll find a lot to like. It very much feels on par with Ys, being nothing spectacular but still nonetheless very good at what it's setting out to do. Just be careful, cause spoilers galore for the series if you start to google anything.
Read more