Cruelty Squad Video Game Review - The Absurd Corporate Techno-Future from Hell

The title menu of the game Cruelty Squad

Warning: Mild Spoilers for Cruelty Squad

Cruelty Squad is probably one of the best games I’ve played in a long time, and probably one of the most original and unconventional things that I feel like more video games should be like this. Simply put, this is one of those rare games that feels so precise and where it tests the absolute boundaries of what can really be done with a game. People often get the impression from the screenshots that it’s just not a good game, that its reception just feels like part of an elaborate joke, just with all these garish and unpleasant visuals – like the initial presentation and the visuals of it is of something that no good game designer would ever think of making, but the whole game really feels like some sort of strange vortex, the type of thing where you find yourself lost in a trance and you just keep playing it for whatever reason.

The visual design itself is actually incredibly inventive, often very particular and not just feeling like something out of a palette swapped Doom clone where there was no thought put into it other than making it look as incredibly garish as possible. Quite a lot of it seems stripped of any of its underlying humanity, with character faces that are incredibly distorted – and this contrast where the graphics can seem bright and vibrant, but often either sterile or like the environment is somehow inexplicably fleshy – and the levels themselves make such an incredible usage out of the unconventional art-style that they’re all incredibly distinctive in their own right. Even the UI is jarring, with a rotating face that moves every time you fire a gun, a health meter which is represented by this pulsating, slimy blob of mass, and a surrounding outline which indicates the difficulty you’re on – which ranges from appearing fleshy, mechanical or divine. There’s a distinctive feeling this game creates where it feels like booting up a game you’re incredibly unfamiliar with, only it winds up sucking you in and making you venture deeper and deeper into it.

Hell, this channel produces the same effect as watching an eight hour video essay on the Fallout games. Where has this been all my life?

I’m fairly certain that one of the influences of this game was the works of the late underground artist Morgan Vogel – who made quite a lot of underground artworks that were often intentionally garish and well in your face to the point of almost straining the human capacity of sensory perception, such as the videos Mary Dismembered and Screaming 2 or the ending sequences of Google Project Glass: the concept prototype. It’s kind of hard to find a lot of her work because it’s often so scattered and labelled under a number of pseudonyms (such as Tracy Auch and Caroline Bren), but it’s a very distinctive style – there’s definitely something about the style that’s both remarkably and often intentionally crude but also where there’s a great level of precision and shrewd intelligence behind the work. There's also shades of artists such as CBoyardee and PilotRedSun on display here, especially with the weird, abstract, dream-like atmosphere this game creates. Cruelty Squad is definitely its own thing, but there’s something to it where it seems so steeped in the irreverent culture of early 2010s underground Internet artists – whilst another obvious influence are the surreal landscapes drawn in the 1998 PSX game LSD: Dream Simulator, with the vibrant colouring and the low polygon graphics definitely being a distinct feature in Cruelty Squad.

The gameplay itself is incredibly straight forward though, literally where the only two objectives you’d get are to either pick up certain items or to assassinate a target before going back to the exit – with stealth and tactical shooter game elements, making it seem like a mix of the Hitman and Tom Clancy Rainbow Six series. The levels themselves are incredibly short, but then they also require a lot of precision to get through with tones of trial and error elements that are all but expected – with how your character can die incredibly quickly if caught in the line of fire. There’s something to this though that creates such a disorientating mood to the whole thing, and honestly, I think this game really kicks off the very first time you die in this game (which would probably be very soon into the first level) – and as the game goes on it does wind up revealing a slew of more complicated game mechanics, and new and inventive ways of progressing through levels with various upgrades, implants, and weapons that you can use if you manage to take them out of the level.

I would also mention that large portions of this game seem like an abstract puzzle of sorts, and there’s something to it where there’s so much of the game that’s just hidden in plain sight. The fishing mechanic, for instance, is something that most players wouldn’t get to the first time – but it also winds up playing such an important role to progress forwards in the game. There’s a stock market mechanic that is pretty basic, but it also intersects with the fishing mechanic with how there’s a bunch of companies with fluctuating values – which also includes certain types of fish, as well as the fact you can liquidate a company by killing certain people. There’s also a string of secret levels which can typically be accessed by exploring the outer limits of a map, accessible through paintings reminiscent of the classic Super Mario 64 – and it’s something where there’s so many clues scattered around the game as well. It also feels like the type of thing where you’d likely give up and look up a wiki on what to do – but even then it has this sort of feeling like you’re looking up obscure, out of reach stuff that doesn’t quite make sense until you come across the mechanic yourself, and even then it feels like all a part of the experience.

A quick peak into the game's fishing mechanic, where any source of water is somehow a bountiful source of fish

I think this is also the type of game that can be completely incredibly quickly if you know exactly what you are doing, and it’s one of those things where there’s so many different ways to complete a level – and some of them can wind up feeling like you’ve cheating the system in some way. Although, the game does also reward you more if you go into missions with your starting pistol and assault rifle. One of the missions I received was to kill a target who was stuck amongst a crowd of dozens of people – which I managed to do by unloading a gas grenade into the crowd, killing all of those people including the target. At least it got the job done, and really that’s all the game seems to require from you during these missions. You can kill civilians at will if you so desired to.

Actually, I think one of the most intriguing aspects of this game comes from the way it handles player character deaths – where it’s set up that technological advances have allowed people to be easily resurrected after suffering would-be fatal injuries. This sounds like something that would be a main feature in a utopian environment – but it’s something that only winds up being exploited by companies and is pretty much used as an excuse for allowing everything else wrong with the world. When you die enough times, you are actually put through an unpleasant experiment as a punishment for hogging company resources – and there’s just a relentless underlying cynicism throughout which undercuts anything that would be positive. Most of what would be deemed ‘fun’ in this universe is something where it’s framed like it’s just this dry stimulation and people basically only doing things out of compulsion, and there’s a lot here where there are all of these underlying systemic problems – but there’s a lot where it’s clearly less conspiratorial, and just more done out of stupidity, incompetence, and just accepting that this is the way things are.

There’s a mission where the Cruelty Squad headquarters actually turns against you, where upon you have to escape your apartment before killing your landlord. This turns out just to be an administrative mistake and the whole game basically continues on as normal without ever so much as mentioning that segment again – and it’s part of a key aspect of this game which is just how much people are willing to accept things as normal. That, and I think the most cutting aspect of this game comes from how the main crux of the storyline comes from massive advances both in terms of technology and what human beings are now capable of doing – only it’s definitely showing a side where this sort of thing becomes heavily exploited and just feels stripped of any sort of meaning. Basically it’s the techno-future of hell where technology is king and any sort of prospects of social progress has been jettisoned out of the window.

The cops are after you and you must escape from your apartment and also kill your landlord (Why? Because they're annoying, I guess. I don't know.)

The game has a heavily nihilistic, often absurd tone to it – but I feel there’s definitely an underlying sincerity behind what’s being shown here, which is blended so much with ironic, bleak, postmodern mockery of living inside a corporate hellhole – but even then that’s sort of a simplification of what this game is truly about. There’s almost a dreamlike atmosphere created in this game where so much of it feels like you’re walking about in a never-ending trance – where so many things just seem off in this game. Human beings aren’t defined here by any sort of higher purpose, rather just intangible prospects of mortality crossed with this state of just bags of flesh wasting away, goop transporting all over their bodies, and a bundle of neurotransmitters that tell you what to do and ultimately just trap you and confined you into your limitations, and you’re only really defined by a set position and a string of numbers representing your apparent accomplishments.

There’s definitely a response this game is making towards perceiving a reality that seems so stripped of any sort of meaning – that there’s just this endless, literal contemplation about the human existence, which is the main sort of thing this game is getting at. It’s also the thing that you kind of have to explore for yourself, but I think what’s great about this game’s storytelling is just how it digs at all of these underlying disparities – and just how they are allowed to exist in an environment like this. A non-conclusion might seem inevitable in these sort of circumstances, which conflicts so much with this desire and possibility that they’re might be an answer to everything you’ve experienced – the kind of thing where it all but compels you to keep digging at it, even in the face of how relentlessly bleak everything else seems to be in this world.