I Joined The Cruelty Squad!

The Steam Summer Sale has hit the wallet of every gamer pretty hard however there seams to be a certain gaming that causing a murmur on Reddit...

I checked out Steam this week as I'm trying to make a push to play more games on PC and found myself a strange (that's the understatement of the century) and captivating game called Cruelty Squad. I heard it's name drift into my ears while on some random YouTube sidebar journey a few days ago I was working away on an episode. I glanced up and was genuinely shocked at the surreal images and clashing colours that was forced into my optiballs.

Now you may be shocked at how horrendous this game looks at first glance and you may also be thinking "Hazz... what do you mean first glance... this is horrendous on ALL glances..." and I was inclined to agree with you. But as I began playing I became fascinated. And here's why.

I'd heard that this game had some "deeper meaning", like when you stare into grossly abstract painting and glean that the artists curtains were indeed blue. But I found myself struggling when looking at the images to accept that it wasn't made by someone who just didn't know how to match colours or stick to a cohesive art style.

I went back again though to look through some more information surrounding the game while trying to avoid spoilers (I remembered about the Steam refund policy too) and decided you know what? I'm gonna try it.

The game opens with a bombardment of the senses made up of strange twanging tones that don't loop quite right and surprisingly a cutscene! A weird one but a cutscene nonetheless. Whoever you are playing as in the game seems to have messed up their last job, got civilians killed and is getting offered a job to do it again. You're tasked by your handler in some mish mash of Goldeneye, Doom and Hitman to head out from into the world of corporate manipulation and kill the strange folk who owe the company money.

So far I'm three levels in and things haven't let up with the intentionally grating and frankly unnerving atmosphere... but weirdly I really like it! I'm going to continue through the levels and may even do a full episode about it!

So if you're looking to follow me through another strange world and see where we end up get it downloaded and head over to the Grief Burrito Discord and we can chat about it!

Already played the game? Let me know what you thought!