Cruelty Squad

I cannot believe I slept on this game. A couple of months ago, I was impulse-buying many games that I thought had either eclectic or fascinating art styles, and I came across Cruelty Squad. I bought it and didn't touch it until this month, and I have not put it down since then. I have yet to beat it but I cannot help myself but scream to the world how great this game is.

The controls are strange, holding down the right click, looking towards the ground to reload, and holding shift to aim. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it still feels very intuitive. I've found myself in other FPSes trying to reload like I was in Cruelty Squad.

The main allure for me is the art style, chaotic yet orderly, it feels human but the dark underbelly of humanity. It doesn't look cool or badass but leaves you with a queasy feeling, an uncertainty where you don't know what went wrong with the world. The philosophy the world Cruelty Squad extolls is one of sacrifice and coldness, and that's reflected in the structures.




The lore it throws at you paints this world of cruelty but doesn't spend so much time on exposition, allowing you to fill in the worst with your imagination. There are clear influences though from the Philosopher Georges Bataille and Gnosticism, so if you're familiar with those two you'll start seeing terminology from it crop up in dialogue or mentioned in passing in level descriptions. Concepts like human augmentation, cannibalism, and harvesting organs are all made mundane, parts of life. I spent a couple days just massacring a mall with poison gas to harvest organs to make some money.

That desensitization of humanity worked into the mechanics makes the game so much more enjoyable. Like the difficulties, there's the three main ones: Divine Light, Flesh Automaton, and Power in Misery. Divine Light is the default, the normal; there isn't really anything special about it besides opening a few doors. But once you die with Divine Light you are demoted to Flesh Automaton, which means the enemies are easier but nothing special happens. Die 4 more times you're put into Power in Misery, which is becoming the lowest form of life, you can cannibalize the dead for a minuscule amount of health.



I'm assuming most of y'all on here are already familiar with the game, it was and is really popular but I wanted to ramble and rant about it for a bit, thank you so much for reading!