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Ah good, the stock/organ market, 3D future-retro-future dystopian multi-pathed collect-a-thon loadout/perk multi-ended FPS fishing simulator finally dropped. I *was* wondering when we’d get this.
As a person who has played thousands of games over the years, I try to make it an effort to seek out the odd, bizarre and unexplored. Sometimes this leads to wasted time and effort playing games with half-finished ideas, improperly executed mechanics and squandered potential. It’s worth it though, as when you finally find that odd ball game out there that hits against the grain of the wood but manages to stick—that’s when you delightfully remember that games can be unpredictable. Games can be bizarre, imaginative adventures where one escapes completely from reality into a world filled with a fresh and new set of rules. Games can create a mood, a sensation where one happily resigns oneself to not knowing what will happen next but one is eager to find out all the same. As unexpected as it was, Cruelty Squad is one such game.
At its core, Cruelty Squad is a cross between Hitman and Deus Ex. Each level has you assassinating ~3 targets and then making good on your escape. How you do this, what gear and augmentations you take with you and which paths you take are completely up to you. This gives the player a tremendous amount of freedom and tends to lead to unique playthroughs from one gamer to the next. Some will focus on stealth, others clever level pathing and others still, brute force and big guns. These kinds of games are a blast and their replayability is quite high if done well—and Cruelty Squad does do it well. This alone would probably be enough for me to label the game as a success but well… you see there’s just so many other things that make Cruelty Squad… different. It’s just not quite like those other girls.
Maybe the stock market is the right place to start. Yes, that’s safe enough. It’s at least static enough to describe in concrete terms. From the moment the game is turned on to the moment you close the program there is a stock simulation running under the game’s hood. This is divided into three main sections, with one being the actual “stock” part of the stocks (buying shares in various industries), the second the organ market and the last the fish market. Stocks themselves can only be acquired via purchasing them directly, but organs and fish can be acquired through more… direct means. Of course you could simply buy them in bulk the same way you can regular stocks but it’s fairly straight forward to rip the organs out of your enemy’s still-warm bodies or kick back, relax by the beach and fish for Flounder, Eels, Hydras and um, I’m sorry, “Ballsfish?” (…Psychofish?! BOUNCY CASTLES? You can catch BOUNCY CASTLES in this game with a fishing rod? HUMAN HEADS!? Look, I’m just going to put the link for you here.)
Oh, and if you thought this stock market was going to be easy to game because “video game” and “simulated reality with limitations” etc. think again. Poor investments can and *will* lose money. Certain industries can flatline and you are not getting your money back. Some of the stocks even respond to what’s going on in the game and will go up or down depending on your actions (but good luck figuring that out enough to take advantage of it your first time through). One of my Twitch viewers solemnly shared their tale of how great the kidney market was for them until one day it suffered a crash and never recovered, losing them whatever they had invested. The lesson to learn is that hey man, if you want to participate in the C-Squad you gotta get your stonks on, so maybe brush up on your Wall Street knowledge.
Okay, next let’s go over the collectathon and augmentation nature of the game. While not a collectathon in a true fashion (there aren’t 200 X-Objects that you need to collect in each level) there is a wide selection of unlockables that you must find before they are made available, hidden throughout the levels. These can be as simple as new guns that shoot, new guns that light people on fire, new guns that scramble people’s DNA to make them irreversibly unable to be resurrected, yeah, and uh… uhm… flashlights. Look the flashlight is actually really important, don’t discount it.
Augmentations are the same–you can find fishing hats, body armors, triple jump boots, some kind of device that lets you REVERSE. GRAVITY. AT WILL. Oh, and the one that shrinks you to the size of a mouse. I liked that one. That one was fun.
But I mean, you can also just buy augmentations too. Via that method you can turn your head into a gun.
Look, I’m not crazy. No, I’m *not* crazy, okay I’m not making this game up. No, the pressure hasn’t gotten to me. There’s this kind of meta-acknowledgement of the game within the game as you play it called Gorbino’s Quest. I mean, it’s not like you are Gorbino, but you know, he could be an analogue for the player, except when you actually do get to be Gorbino. Well, not Gorbino precisely but you play inside Gorbino’s quest in the game which *has* Gorbino’s Quest. It’s… well, it’s complicated.
Well, and then one time I bought a house for a million dollars, but it sucked so I broken all the doors and found a blue meth-Kirby in my attic. But like, he didn’t say much because I think he’s supposed to be the will of the outer-span of human psyche or something? No, you don’t get it, this is serious, okay? But fine, I didn’t like the house anyway, so I used my car to drive through the secret cave wall and ran over most of the citizens, but it’s fine you know, because they had guns and they let the horrible invisible pig abominations run free in town and I had to do *something about it.*
And I’m just saying that like, 640 x 480 resolution does give you god-vision and it’s important because without it you’ll only know the lies of Divine Light instead of Power in Misery which frankly is where the world starts looking really trippy man. The horizon starts showing you the truth that way. Unless you go to dark world because that place sucks, even if you have a flashlight.
…what? No, I don’t like white. I don’t like that jacket. Just keep it away. I’m TRYING TO TELL YOU the world is an onion that peels its own layers away man! This game is Tier 1 material okay!? When you finally use your own organ as a grappling hook so that you can climb up to the spinning fan in idiot party, you’ll see the world from a different perspective! And don’t flush the toilet! THERE’S ZOMBIES DOWN THERE IN THE TOILET. IN THE SEWERS. Okay? You *have* to scramble their GENES. THE PIG TOLD ME TO DO IT. THE PIGGG; don’t–you can’t–noOOOO YOU CAN’T TAKE MEeeeEEeee
I DON’T WANT TO WEAR THE WHITE JACKETTTTT
(Shoutout to Homicidal Television for suggesting this game for me to play :D)
