I love how literally every augment is horribly cursed it some way or another. Hell, even the stealth suit has the side effect of making you smell like shit in-universe.
All the body armor is made out of flesh and biological filth, funnily enough. My favorite is the armor that kinda looks like it's made out of intestines.
@Antonio Cartaxo Magalhães well, one of bulletproof wests is described as being made of bioprinter-produced spider silk, so... imagine somewhere in the CS world there's a giant spider ass spitting an endless stream of silky web.
It wouldn’t surprise me if every floor texture was either a stretched out image of child pornography or an image that when viewed by the human eye awakens the Deep Ones and curses the world to eternal damnation.
Fun fact: Armor stats in this game were broken since June of 2021 until last month in March of 2023. For almost 2 years armor granted reduced movement speed but no actual increase to damage resistance. Speed upgrades granted increased movement speed but no reduction of damage resistance. Armor had no upsides and speed upgrades had no downsides, for nearly 2 years. And nobody found out until this year. The entire community experienced placebo effect on a global scale (or they were like me and assumed this was intentional because Ville Kallio is fucking insane)
On one hand, yes, Vile Calio is fucking insane On the other, I don't think he would've made it that way on purpose. If it was on purpose, the speed upgrades would do nothing as well
ville just reads a lot of pretty crazy philosophy he's not actually insane, he's just a poser. real insanecore art wouldn't even be posted on steam anyway
@@jemperdiller animal crossing has a distinct “distorted voice” pattern of saying syllables. they’re not speaking nonsense and it isn’t just a distorted voice. Cruelty Squad is doing that but pitch shifted down a lot.
ummmm Taiwan don'e make malware filled games, unless of course you are refferring to the infamous West Taiwan which is currently under hostile communist occupation
I do think he mentions the grappendix before this mission but neglects that he can literally grappendix along the outside of the office kicking in Windows and nailing targets...
If the dev ever adds an option to enable non-cursed textures, it should be through an in-universe upgrade that you have to buy and it's like anti-depressants or something.
That would be neat, but the Cruelty Squad universe canonically looks like this, the "it's a schizo meltdown of the protagonist" was debunked by the Dev himself. So if there's ever an upgrade to un-curse the world, it should be like "Universe's Reboot" that costs 1 billion dollars or something.
Liked this thread about the game on steam forums: The terribly made wood shacks... People run in fear when they see you... Your life force is represented as a misshapen green lump... The houses on the swamp... The final sentence: "You pick up an onion and begin peeling." So you were Shrek the whole time??
I think the final sentence was the Georges Bataille quote. If you don’t count that then it’s the protagonist “terminating the world life”. Civvie cuts off the ending early.
Realistic graphics will make people go "Wow" then forget the game existed few months later. Aggressive graphics like Cruelty Squad stay with you, regardless of if you want that or not.
@@_marlene You might want to run this past r/tipofmytongue . I know that Reddit has a bit of an odd stigma for some people, but the people there are surprisingly good at identifying strange old things from yesteryear.
yeah, you'd expect that you would need to do something super specific and morbid, like collect a bunch of limbs and build some kind of body part effigy or something that would unlock the level, not just lift the idea out of mario 64
There's a dude in the first level who, if you've died enough times to become a truly fucked up regenerating husk, recognizes that you've gone through the same horrible procedure he has and says that you're always welcome and practically family to him.
Yeah, minus the fact that the border of the paintings uses the skull texture, meaning that they're literally created out of skeletons, or at least skulls.
You missed out on the final weapon in the final level that basically turns everything into a fucking joke with how unbelievably overpowered it is. Even that transaction rifle is fucking nothing compared to its power.
@@bohnzo473 ...Ok, well, first of all, this video literally covers the entire game, including EVERY SINGLE LEVEL, as well as showing off the FINAL ENDING OF THE GAME. If you cared about spoilers, you wouldn't be watching this video to begin with. Secondly, ALMOST every single level, if not EVERY level, contains a unique weapon/item or 2 that you can take with you. It's not exactly a major spoiler to say the final level also has one. Thirdly, even if the above 2 things were not true (which unfortunately for you, they are, meaning that your comment is pretty pointless), the idea of getting a powerful weapon at the very end game is HARDLY a spoiler at all, if it can even be called one to begin with. An absolute boatload of games have that. It's an exceptionally common trope to have an ultra powerful be unlocked for beating the game or whatever. Fourthly... THIS IS CRUELTY SQUAD. Do you seriously think the "story" and potential spoilers of any sort matter even in the slightest amount? I mean, come on dude. Anyone who is worried about spoilers for a game like this is already kind of an idiot, and anyone who actively chooses to watch a 30 minute long dissection of the ENTIRETY of the game, including every single level, as well as secret levels, despite being worried about spoilers, is objectively a mega-idiot. So yeah. That's what I have to say to that.
This game is simultaneously amazing and the most violent and unwarranted assault on my eyes that I’ve ever encountered. Truly only a genius could make a playable game out of memetic kill agents.
You have to have anomalous properties to be ablw to play this game in it's entirety without feeling like you're going to explode from the amount of pain being injecting through your eyes
The SCP Foundation is currently wondering how the heck a Person of Interest accessed their database of cognitohazards and used it to make Cruelty Squad.
@@EmilyTestAccount No devs, it's a fan community, and a small one at that, but there is a talented member who makes some great maps, as well as an artist who did some amazing fanart, through she hasn't been on the server for a while. There's also another member working on a pen-and-paper RPG version of EYE, I believe it's almost finished. As for fan-patches, there' already one that fixes translation issues, but that takes off some of the game's charm and we don't like that. Other than that, we just chill, occasionally discuss lore, and organize games when we feel like it. Would you like an invitation to the server?
I honestly just assumed that the game wanted me to kill all the civilians. I didn't know it brought your score down. Apparently you can play the stock market with human life to make it so that every civilian you kill makes your stock go up. This game is art.
Don't know about score or stock market interactions, but the only thing that affects your level rank is time. Kill whoever you have to but don't waste time. And any targets that don't have weapons are counted in the civilians lost counter anyway.
@@manjackson2772's because in this universe, the human life is completely pointless, since you can just revive yourself, so it makes sense why killing civilians doesn't affect your score.
Oh shit, for a second I thought you were talking about a game title and was gonna say "nooooooo". Lol was going to use it as an acronym in a roguelike if I can get the mechanic down.
This looks like someone played E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy and thought: "Well that's way to easy to play, follow and understand for casual players. Time for a real game!"
Considering EYE is actually a rather hard to follow parallel of Indian religion tales and Cruelty Squad is a really surface level "Capitalism erodes the human spirit" story that's a wild take.
Civvie ya gotta talk to the targets, they’ve got…interesting dialogue. Also, you can strafe jump through Fungus Bogs and it makes it much easier. Finally, the uh……Flesh Suit that costs 99k, it does reduce damage by 40%, but it makes your vision black and white, and NPCs run from you in fear if you try to talk to them. It’s great.
@@kennethwilliams543 The thing you'll see people say 99% of the time is some variation of, "this is what it's like ON drug X, Y, or Z"... Making the comparison to drug withdrawal isn't something people ever really say. It's also pretty accurate in an odd way, so to "those that know", it strikes a nerve.
More than any other influence, Cruelty Squad reminds me most of E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy. An endless cycle of death and rebirth, Set in a nightmarish transhumanist future, level and loadout based design, overtly jank but great gameplay, Bizarre systems for upgrades (stock market and research), and secret levels. Also, try telling my 100 million in biocoin that fishing is better than stocks.
There's something so nightmarish and dystopian about the phrase "I got my death surgery," like it's a dental operation or a boob implant. I've been unable to get it out of my head since this video dropped. I feel like it sums up the themes of the game pretty succinctly. Are you still you after the surgery? How do you function? Do you even have free will if you're dead? Is your mind there at all or are you just animated flesh? What animates it, and to what purpose? What's the difference between life and death if your body only operates according to the will of your employers? What does it say about society that we are willing to surgically remove our own life force to achieve some goal? Anyway, I bought the game seems pretty neat.
Same, that's also something that's clawed its way into my mind. It's further amplified in that the DEATH icon is a virus... i.e. something that skirts the boundaries of alive and dead just like you do once you have the surgery. I think it also ties into the fact that the one trigon mentioned by the homeowners is basically the physical manifestation of decay and rot...
@@andreas4137 It gives me the same sort of weird feeling as thinking about that old meme about the teleporters in Star Trek: do teleporters truly transport you, or do they destroy you and recreate you elsewhere? Do you die when you walk into the teleporter only for a perfect clone to appear at the other side with your memories? In a sense it doesn't matter, because from the perspective of the rest of the world you entered one side and exited the other, even if You, the You who lives in your head, dies immediately upon entry. This is congruent with the lore of Cruelty Squad as well, since apparently people die and are resurrected all the time.
@@andreas4137 That guy is actually talking about Life, not Death. Each of the Triagons is associated with something besides their base element: the Triagon of Malice is associated with viruses and germs, the Triagon of Life with metabolism and biological processes and the Triagon of Death with economics and market transactions. So the Death healthbar doesn't really make sense to be combined with a virus. I assume there's some deeper symbolism I'm missing there. Maybe the combination of your health bar, the representation of your life, being renamed to death and given the shape of a virus is meant to symbolize the power of all three Triagons?
@@Otakumanu death talks about economics and you've got to willingly kill yourself in order to see all the game's content. Seems like a pretty clear message to me, how important is winning to you?
Onion layer one, onion layer two, onion layer three... Onion layer n^n. Aeons have passed and the onion is fully peeled. Nothing remains. It's perfect. You get lost in the point that remains where the onion used to be. Synaptic cascade, neurological catastrophe. The point becomes infinitely dense, the universe condenses into a unicelluar being. It screams sin. It craves happiness. It's done with this world. It tries to commit suicide but fails. Sad pathetic mess. You feel pity and disgust, but in a way only a being of pure grace can. In your violent mercy, you terminate the worldlife.
The last time I was this disgusted by a game, I was playing Postal 2. No, not in that way. I mean the Weekend. The Weekend in Postal 2 where he has the brain injury, is the most disturbing, gross, and terrifying thing to me. So much so that I never finished it. Cruelty Squad reminds me a lot of that, particularly the textures that make you really feel like you're having a stroke
I know exactly what you are talking about, those rooms where they look like they are made of meat with animated floor and wall textures just made me feel all kinds of wrong.
lot of memorable quotes in this game. the flesh automaton one is great, but my personal favorite is a combination of two quotes- "The sun smiles at you with eternal malice, there is power in your misery".
Some idiot on twitter said that Civvie's video on Cruelty Squad won't truly do justice to "Cruelty Squad's Majesty". I can honestly say that he was wrong.
@@Civvie11 oops, I got caught by the man himself. I can't believe I baited you like this haha. GG, You came up with another banger as always, too bad I already watched this on Patreon.
this comment makes me want to try it out lol, just remembering the literal same thing in DoD:S where some modders were implementing hallucinogenic effects. was great.
This game is about the Buddhist concept of samsara: birth, death, rebirth and the "cyclicality of all life, matter and existence". The body horrors that are world's inhabitants and the progressive decay of reality into an unrecognizable void are structured according to the peaceful and wrathful deities encountered while overcoming the stages of pre-death, death and after-death: the concept of the "Bardos" from "The Tibetan Book of the Dead". This is evident from the main menu screen. You're dead, or in the process of dying. You're not fit for the afterlife. You have to earn it through the cycle of death and rebirth in order to reach the Clear Light (dead give away be the name of the level). You have to experience the mundaneness of existence to it's fullness. You see your blown-off face everywhere, because it was blown off and splattered all over the car you're presently dying in. You're missing half a brain, which might be why everything looks the way it does. You have to make peace with your life, and your regrets, before the life drains from your body, to avoid re-incarnation. On a side note, the movie "Jacob's Ladder" (the original not the remake - which was shit) follows the same themes. There's also a reference regarding Temple OS in 640x480 being "God's resolution". This is because the creator of Temple OS, a highly intelligent recluse suffering from schizophrenia, heavily implied to have made a promise to God in restricting Temple OS to 640x480 and 8-bit color.
That's an interesting take on the meaning of the game. Know any good reads about the subject (beside the Tibetan Book of the Dead)? Kinda piqued my interest
Yeah sounds like a great theory but the creator says the way the game looks has nothing to do with the characters mind, he’s not schizophrenic, his brains aren’t splattered. The author genuinely says that this is just how the game world canonically looks.
It's me the ''someone'' from Twitter. Weird to see my own strat being played by someone else but slightly differently. Anyways great video as per usual!
If "boomer shooter" is the term for shooters designed as they were in the 90's, then "zoomer shooter" would logically be how they were designed in the 10's or so. EDIT: I'm basically imagining the definitive "zoomer shooters" to be post-Modern Warfare Call of Duty titles, in that sense.
Should be noted that to reload you have to kick your mouse down pretty hard. It feels weird at first but the movement subconsciously makes you want to play the game faster. Also, the game is made by Consumer Softproducts^TM. It's incredibly blunt in its satire of capitalism and its really funny at points.
I wanna mention that you don't have to yank down very hard at all. There's a line on the midpoint of the reload bar that shows the minimum amount you need to pull to to reload.
not so much capitalism as much as it is the cultural decay brought on by modernity and technology. Considering the machine and not the human that kinda thing
@@discipleofdagon8195 But what causes culture to be consumed / destroyed in the pursuit of new technology? You write, "Considering the machine and not the human" what caused humans to be dehumanized? It's the commodificiation of human life that capitalism requires. And the cheapening of culture created by capitalism's desire to destroy the arts and culture and every other aspect of reality in pursuit of profit above all else. Capitalism cannot value anything other than profit. When culture and human life get in the way, well, here we are.
but duuuude, the soul link has been severed so thats, like, all you are now. at least I pretty sure thats the pretentious idea the game is making fun of
@@AlL-tk6kw I take it to mean some essential feeling of purpose that is lost when you die repeatedly over and over and the hellworld of corporately mandated resurrections brings you back as a zombie. Disconnected from the regular human experience because of forcible immortality. Also probably riffing on Dark Souls a little
i think the grid of death is a mechanism that the corporate overlords made to “catch” souls before they can transcend to heaven or reincarnate or obliterate or whatever and they use it to force you into an eternal servitude where you can earn or pay to have a slightly less torturous existence by using “divine light,” which is also captured and distilled by the grid.
@@Akarayad Ya know, the Literal Corporate Demons. The effects on the living of the background death matrix must be.. overwhelming. And intoxicating to the Demons to consume.
Hey not to be ridiculous, but the voices of the NPCs are really soft, soothing and comforting to me. Like being tucked in by the stalker demon in my closet but secretly we are friends. Its soft like a bass boosted kitten
@@scrambledeggs9801the audio feels like it sticks to you, like greasy food that was only really good BECAUSE it was greasy, but you need that on your ribs in a cold winter.
@@DinsRune hot damn, you just described why I like fast food and processed food during winter in a way I never could've came up with on my own, major props! when the snow's hitting the windows hard and you're the errand boy of the house, expecting to be sent out to the store *again* to get something or other, you really start to crave and, dare I say, appreciate Pizza Pockets.
Right even the weird boss man or whatever the fuck talks to the 1st pov shooter while you look at the mini game icons is... also I miss shrooms they're not safe and similarly effective with smelling the inside of your nose and heart pumping without the sick viauals,you can get that just by working out but man this game reminds me of just being high on weed and playing games, and to get even more nostalgic like the moon game with Zelda where it smiles and the world will do what it's programmed to do *(end). .. anyways it gives me comforting exsistional philosophical questions. Reminds me of ps3 strawberry shortcake mini games but acid. It also reminds me when i would play super Mario on the nintendo 64...seems cool but my eyes literally are screaming kill me whenever I look at it. However visually the chowder pattern moving vibes are gorgeous very inspirational and definitely make me nostalgic for easier times and oddly to draw again I've been in an artistic block for awhile it was much easier to draw when I was younger . Also to add, when i was younger and my heart could handle difficult substances or enjoy video games... interesting because they say screentime is similar to cocaine or meth but dont trust my source its what ive synthesized in my head from random sources on the internet........... thanks for the guide lord knows some day i can play it withmore space for a cpmputer that can handle games. It reminds me billionaire through nonethical definitely brings to light ethical moralistic ideas pertaining to philosophy in the ironic disgusting act s in the game where you can eat organs hate that but other than that this game looks awesome would love to buy and play it but I want to enjoy it on the lowest light settings possible while still being able to play it lol
I'm 4 minutes in and my eyes feel exhausted. My retinas are like 'Go on, we'll catch up'. But they don't catch up but head straight back to the hotel room.
By the time he makes a video on it, it will become a proper retro game, gain a Cult of nostalgic gamers who grew up with it, and probably get a remake from Ubisoft.
i just bought the game last week and it's a blast, i highly recommend it. So many different ways to approach each level it's truly a passion project by this dev. Plus using placeholder textures as the final textures saved his ass hundreds of hours of learning how to do graphic design and he made it fit with the story you learn through talking to the npcs and the targets
@@macksii I argue that's more of the dev intentionally subverting every art theory known to man rather than a delibrate choice to use whatever textures he grabbed from cutting floor (for example, red and green don't mix. yet you see that shit a lot, particularly on your ammo counter and levels like paradise). there's really a lot of cool stuff here if you know your way around arts, could help you appreciate the design way more
I am the DRUG I am DIVINE LIGHT IT'S TIME Let's go where Clip art Dies Let's see flesh Limbo Abandon Hope high value individual Welcome to Cruelity Squad
This game feels like a combination of Deus Ex and Hotline Miami. And weirdly enough, also Dark Souls. Not only is it similarly obscure with lots of hidden areas, but it also has a hollowing mechanic.
@@allicanseeissh1t118 not saying it's bad, in fact, i love how butt ugly it is. But you gotta admit that whole "seemingly dumb shitposty game turns out to have a deep message" is kind of overdone at this point and it's undeniably pretentious.
This looks like if Aphex Twin songs were converted into PS1 game files with a twist of nihilism added. I also had to check out the company that made this. Nice job countrymen.
@@Zontar82 I work for a Finnish game dev(guy behind Blank Frame) and that dude's off his rocker too. Love'm to death, but I think Finland might be on top of some sanity warping meteor that struck it at the beginning of the earth, swear to god.
This is the second or third time I've watched this and I still have no clue what this is about. I just have capitalism and shitty textures swimming around in my neurotransmitter brain soup and it feels like fishing for a million bucks.
the developer seemed to be just venting their frustrations about a chaotic world that no longer makes sense to them, so your observation sounds about right
To me the dev is someone who wants to be edgy. Making a game about how life is worthless and doom and gloom. I feel like the dev is some trust fund baby who had one minor bad point and he made this.
@@blackpillr9kr428 I'm a finn, from a finnish standpoint it seems the game was made by someone who plays video games while on drugs and has bands like Igorrr playing on the background at the same time.
You can look up who made it. It's not being edgy, it's being rather frank in it's hatred of how bad modern society is, even for those supposedly at the top of the money pile. @@blackpillr9kr428
I have no words, no weed or drug jokes, no programming jokes, nothing, there is nothing that can describe how this game looks and feels like, and how confusing and deep the mechanics of this. Thing is.
I fell asleep to that one once, it crept into my dreams and i legit woke up scared and confused, mostly from the way that video was cut. I think that might be more on Katie tho, the way that vid got edited was the best part
...christ. This game looks like a Slav jank developer tried to merge Hotline Miami with the open world hub area of Sonic Adventure 1 while having an LSD trip.
More like doing 900 mg of DXM while being in bad opiate withdrawal. It feels like you wanna rip your skin off but you can't really connect your mind to your body, and sometimes you can see horrible hallucinations
@@gt4666master Thank god someone else said it. I find it weird pp call it an LSD game. When everything in it just screams DXM, the rubbery alien aesthic mixed with the nauseating atmosphere and gooey sounds.
10:43 I don't know why this bit is so funny to me. The way it comes in out of nowhere combined with H4MM3R'S voice delivery and the footage of Civvie immediately getting fucking obliterated just sends my sides into orbit every time. Also despite being a joke implant the nightmare vision goggles do in fact help with the Dark World since it makes everything virtual boy-coloured, which is eye gouging but still better than not being able to see anything without using the flashlight.
The Handler may be based on a silicone sex-toy called "Pig-Boy". There's an uncanny resemblance. There's also suspicion the main character is modeled on George Floyd.
the grappendix is actually great for the office tower, you can swing around the outside of the building and shoot through the office windows to get almost all of your targets while bypassing the interior entirely
I feel like we're slowly moving into a fresh era of independent games. Game building software is giving people who never would've been able to design games the opportunity to bring all sorts of interesting ideas to life.
The appendix gun and general jank of this reminds me of the goo gun from a DOS fps game called terminal terror which is right up your alley civvie only that nobody has ever heard of it.
4:44 "It's amazing what you can get used to" is a great tagline for the game. This game has so many controls that are... _wrong_ by most standards of the genre, but once you adapt to those it's one of the most fluid and controllable shooters I've played. It's amazing.
That's a damn good one I haven't heard before I first referred to it as a game based on that meme with mario kicking down the door and demanding your liver
If anyone wants to read some books related to the game; “accursed share: volume one” by georges bataille, and then “story of the eye,” “on Nietzsche” also both by Bataille. “Anti-oedipus” by deleuze & guattari, anything by Baudrillard, few little jewels there. Nick Land as well, “beyond good and evil” by Nietzsche. Cruelty Squad reading list...at least some philosophy pertaining to, or an influence on the game. Enjoy.
@@TheRealLordRama marx was obviously a big inlfuence upon most of these authors but his writing doesn't really touch upon the postmodern schizophrenia of Bataille, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Land. Anyway I'd argue against reading these books unless you want to permamently poison your worldview with nihilist anti-truth psychobabble.
@@RafaelCDet Isn't Nick Land like, a fascist or something? Dude's fucking crazy. Deleuze and Guattari at least hold some truths to be evident in their philosophy. I think Mark Fisher is missing from this list as well.
Feels like a game made by people who've never done any drugs so that other people who've never done any drugs can comment on Civvie's video about the game is like being on drugs.
Ehh this game IS like being on drugs, but less shrooms/lsd and more being trapped in a heroin or opiate addiction and being in a never ending depressive addiction spiral that costs you everything
Honestly the aesthetic of the game reminds me of closed eye visuals from lsd, mixed with a story that emulates the weird stories and rabbit holes your brain goes into when you’re zonked out on ketamine. I’d say the game nails the confusing vibe you get when you’re so high out of your mind that everything normal seems confusing and distorted, but then you have to drive to work and act normal because you got called in on your day off.
Imagine a lost 90s game that was somehow found in an attic covered in dust, cobwebs and weird alien mucus and the code was tied together with spaghetti and entrails made by a group of shit eating asylum inmates from an alternate reality of the SCP universe and described to them by a malevolent Lovecraftian nightmare who was good friends with John Romero. That's this game in a nutshell.
I tried leaning around corners to take out enemies, but the walls that no longer obstructed my view still obstructed the bullets. Not sure what's up with that.
@@gsilver0 No idea mate, leaning is crazy OP in this game and needs a nerf tbh, you can take out an unlimited amount of enemies coming through that corner since you're completely invincible while doing it
Reminds me of Monaco, a heist game that looks like a Gaspar Noe nightmare/drug sequence, yet is very fun, inventive, and the visuals are quickly acclimated to because they are consistent.
What the fuck is going on with VTMB2. They friggin fired 70% of the dev team like a month ago and it got pushed back to 2022 T_T. The work the other dev team did is getting turned into a 3-Char mini-story-game but what the actual fuck.
@@aeraaureliawashereonce the comment is a reference to a clan of vampires from the table top role playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. Clan Malkavian have powers that can make people see nightmares to put it simply. There are a lot of other clans and each have their own powers, called disciplines.
I'm glad Cruelty Squad exists. I understand that it's a work of genius that executes exactly on what it set out to achieve. That it's sophisticated and intelligent. I don't ever want to play it. I don't want to look at it.
