Cruelty Squad

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One thing I've realized about the game is that it's far more appropriate depiction of dystopia to our time in comparison with the rest of media that's stuck in the 80s version.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
One thing I've realized about the game is that it's far more appropriate depiction of dystopia to our time in comparison with the rest of media that's stuck in the 80s version.
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It makes me think of 7-11 Slurpees because it's the same color as them.
 
SITHRAK! said:
This game is definitely giving off Xavier: Renegade Angel vibes to me. Going to look into it.
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Completely ignoring the art style and implied social commentary, this game is fucking fantastic.

It's like a cross between Deus Ex, Rainbow Six (the old ones 1-3, not Vegas or Siege), Perfect Dark and Hitman (again, the old ones) with some modern QoL updates and a wacky setting.

Each mission features a fully open-ended level. You get to choose the equipment and augmentations to bring with you. You're only assigned your assassination targets, the rest is up to you. However much you wish to explore, find alternative routes, kill creatively, you're free to do so. It's all optional. Exploration grants additional rewards, but to clear the objective and move on to the next level you're completely free to do as you wish. There is no arbitrary score meter or XP rewards softly ushering you into a specific "optimal" playstyle. Your only limitation is health, which you can overcome simply by aiming good, if that's the playstyle you choose. Did I mention this game also has gunplay reminiscent of a late-90s/early 2000s shooter, unhinreded by modern "realistic" chest-height wall simulators?

As long as you finish the mission by killing the targets and reaching the exit whatever goes. There are no marked paths or required checkpoints to follow.

Again, ignoring the presentation (which I like btw, because it feels like someone's vision for a game with a message behind it, rather than generic photorealistic textures and assets interchangable with any other modern game) Cruelty Squad executes its core gameplay better than any other contemporary entry to the genre. Admittedly there haven't been many to challenge it, but all the more reason someone with a soul made a new one. Trying to clear a level for the first time has just the right amount of challenge without becoming frustrating, with aspects borrowed from modern rogue-lites as in the ability to quickly restart the level, or freely re-configuring your layout in-between attempts. You keep the weapons you manage to walk out the level with, regardless how that ended up happening. After beating a level you can always come back to improve your time, which is like a whole another game mode (without actually altering anything) as the concept of beating an open-ended mission as quickly as possible creates its own fun challenge even if you aren't generally into speedrunning. It requires a mix of strategy and precision, as the gear you bring can completely alter your ability to traverse the maps. Oh, and the level design actually had a lot of thought put into it. It's not just an open sandbox with "freedom".

I unironically love this game. Not as an example of rebellious counter-culture, but as a game. I also love it as a piece of counter-culture, but that's just the cherry on top.
 
For me Cruelty Squad was finally a first game in a long time that was fucking amazing and fun. I didn't want to complete the full game in one sitting but I just couldn't take a break. You can see developers having a shit ton of great ideas and mold them into this game.
I really love how they invested and gave back to the community, their discord is full of promising indie devs all working on new immersive sims and other indie games.. It really reminds me of the pre-GamerGate scene where it isn't all for money, It's just friends that want to make some good fucking games.
 
Having played through the whole thing at a friend's, I think I finally understand the game's plot (such as it is).

Cruelty Squad's world is an incredibly fucked-up place where Death has ceased being a thing because people have access to resurrection technology. The overarching narrative of the game is that there's currently so much life in the world that it's become a serious problem, and is reflected in things like the meat-objects all throughout the setting, flesh augmentations, and other hideous things which are essentially implied to be recycled people and animals unable to die properly. The game makes clear on several occasions that the targets you're gong after literally will come back to life when you leave a level, and you're basically murdering them to annoy them/make a point for some dosh.

Because Death has been suspended, everything has gotten fucked up. The economy is more-or-less meaningless. People waste their money on stupid shit, and the architecture and environment designs reflect that no one gives a damn anymore. NPCs in the game are obsessed with human sacrifice in an ultimately fruitless bid to restore the value of life by trying to get Death to come back.

In ending one, the protagonist effectively finds himself trying to make the most of this weird setting, accepting it for what it is. While hopeful, it is ultimately the worst ending because the problem that is the world still eminently exists and won't go away, condemning the protagonist to wind up trapped in the cycle forever.

In the second ending, the protagonist successfully reaches the door of life after receiving the Death surgery, which effectively makes you an artificially dead being. This allows you to not only better take charge of your own existence but push towards breaking the cycle entirely.

In the third ending, you shut down the Cradle of Life, the universal Death blocker of Cruelty Squad, which is quite literally the reason everything got so fucked up. The implication is that the protagonist doing this has restored the balance by effectively tearing out the core of the sewage-filled garbage world he inhabited, leading towards a new future in which people can once more die.

TL;DR: It's Bioshock as done by Space Funeral.
 
Thanks to stealth marketing my life has immeasurably improved.
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Why search for happiness when buying things is within reach?
 
MooseGump said:
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The guy behind it has the same feelings about it, according to him it's practically a huge shitpost of a game and I do see it even with the sorta anti-capitalist theme but it's supposed to be cyberpunk (more than CP2077) which always has that as an underlying theme

Whether this is actually the case and it isn't just something to keep people from bothering him about it, the game itself is fun and stupid enough that it never really bothered me
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he defends his work by saying it's meaningless, but that seems to be the criticism.
 
MooseGump said:
View attachment 2372786
The guy behind it has the same feelings about it, according to him it's practically a huge shitpost of a game and I do see it even with the sorta anti-capitalist theme but it's supposed to be cyberpunk (more than CP2077) which always has that as an underlying theme

Whether this is actually the case and it isn't just something to keep people from bothering him about it, the game itself is fun and stupid enough that it never really bothered me
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I keep seeing people (including Civvie) mention some "great revelation" that involves this all being a metaphor for wage slaving to buy a house or something. It'd be hilarious if it was provably false.
 
Finally manned up and finished the game (thanks god I looked at Civvie's video and found there was a million dollars in one of the levels, though it would have probably been faster to just restart the game and use the stock market than the amount of time I wasted on fishing). Maybe it was intentional but it's clever the avatar of life is killed by either having enough money or cancer.

My thoughts: The game is amazing, I fucking hate it and I never want to play it again.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Finally manned up and finished the game (thanks god I looked at Civvie's video and found there was a million dollars in one of the levels, though it would have probably been faster to just restart the game and use the stock market than the amount of time I wasted on fishing). Maybe it was intentional but it's clever the avatar of life is killed by either having enough money or cancer.

My thoughts: The game is amazing, I fucking hate it and I never want to play it again.
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:winner:
because u won lol
 
Cruelty Squad is one of the greatest games I've played in the last few years, and it's all because of how much of a clusterfuck it is on the surface.
I catch myself constantly going back to try to get S ranks on all of the levels, and it's a lot of fun experimenting with different implants and loadouts to find the optimal path to success. (Excluding using the Bolt ACR or the ZKZ Transactional Rifle, I avoid those when I'm trying to play "for fun" unless necessary.)

It scratches a specific autistic itch in my brain, a special type of player freedom.
Good ass game, I recommend anyone to at least give it a fair shake.
 
It’s good to play something even weirder than E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy. “You have been severed from the divine light” is the new “your legs are broken”.
 
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