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Will you enjoy Cruelty Squad? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter how ugly and jarring the game is to witness it still managed to trick me into getting very, very involved in my one-man war. Cruelty Squad delights in both making me feel like an untouchable tactical god and a ham-handed fool. But it also inspires some great “oh shit” moments, like when I’m mid-mouse pull and I see a guy come around the corner. In Cruelty Squad, I have to pull my mouse back to reload, which is a slow and awkward process. In most FPS games, when I reload my gun, I hit one button and I’m treated to a smooth animation with satisfying sounds to accompany each bullet being fed into the chamber. I can also augment myself to jump higher, move faster, and otherwise body-mod myself into a better and more refined killer.Ĭruelty Squad rejects a ton of modern design sensibilities. There are secret weapons I can only find by fiddling with slot machines or exploring every inch of a building. If I feel especially spicy, I can grab an enemy’s corpse and use their guts as a grappling hook, or throw their head like a projectile. I can toss a small prop to distract one of my foes, or try to take someone out by chucking an industrial barrel at his head. If I run out of ammo, I can throw my gun at a guy’s head. Everything can be picked up, and at the very least, used as a distraction. Luckily, the guards are equally fragile, and the environment is my greatest ally. I start out quite delicate, and I can’t take much damage. I can sprint through the level with assault weapons blazing, or sneak my way through vents and hidden paths. Oops!Īssassination missions are the main thrust of Cruelty Squad, and they’re really fun. For instance, if I kill the owners of one company during an assassin mission, the stock is going to plummet. Some of the volatility is random, but some can be predicted. There’s also a stock market, which is so volatile that it can easily leave you either broke or a billionaire. However, I do get to keep my cyborg implants, and fish. These missions are out in the field, away from handler HQ, and if I leave, I leave behind the weapons I found and progress made. There are other objectives in the level as well, so I’m not just getting in and out as quickly as possible - I need to touch all the bases and explore a little. I head into a new level, where my handler gives me a briefing to read about the target I need to kill and the explanation as to why they need to die. I hang out at assassin HQ until I’m ready to tackle a contract. The basic gameplay loop of Cruelty Squad is simple. Despite the fact that Cruelty Squad is opaque and unpleasant, it’s still one of my favorite games of the year. Cruelty Squad places its warped aesthetics above all else, including accessibility. The menu text looks like it was scrawled in MS Paint with someone’s non-dominant hand.
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Everything is painted in bright, jarring colors. Yeah, there’s very clearly some good stuff in there, but for now I’m gnawing on this weird, hairy shell and starving.Īll you have to do is look at the game to understand my trepidation.
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Playing Cruelty Squad can feel a lot like trying to eat a coconut with your bare hands. It’s also - and there’s no polite way to say this - a complete assault on the senses. It’s a brilliant entry into the immersive sim genre that critiques capitalism and the military-industrial complex.