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.
@@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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
@@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?
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Hearing "and this is where things get really weird" halfway through the video, after what I just witnessed in the first half, is both absolutely mind-boggling and totally expected at the same time.
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.
The ship level with a grappendix is the most ridiculous shit I've ever seen, imagine chilling on your cruise ship and you see a guy with bright purple hair swinging from what's obviously some kind of extremely long and elastic intestine thing, he looks at you mid air and without breaking a sweat unloads an entire magazine in the direction of the swimming pool, breaking the glass and sending scores of people plummeting to their deaths.
The cruelty squad reload mechanic grew on me so hard during my playthrough. It became such second nature that it's actually weird going back to other games. It almost gives you the same feeling as playing a light gun game
@@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.
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.
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
Im glad I'm not the only person who loves Idiot Party, that level was an absolute joy and its literally just a vertical spire of rich people in gimp suits.
I haven't even watched the video yet, but I wanted to say immediately: thank you for the warning in the beginning. Flashing lights, motion sickness, etc warnings are always important to give.
A foolish man complains of his broken pocket, While a wise man uses it to scratrch his balls.
Sobbing
You know you're in for a trip when one of the highest rated reviews of this game on Steam is just the Unabomber manifesto
Anprim
link that shit bro I cant find it
link
Oh damn, you made me search and read that terrorist's drivel lol
@@phaolo6 average industrial revolution fan
"No need to steal his organs, though. They're not worth that much."
That's a very special line.
Russia selling USA Alaska be like...
its also wrong
@@brya9681
He's not wrong, fishing pays way more than organ harvesting
This game is a cautionary tale of what happens when
when exist
When me when ur mom.
capitalism
You you when you when when when when you WHEEEM!!!
@@kurros1270 thank you neco arc
This game is what I imagine the world outside Civvie's dungeon looks like.
oouuuuuuuu 👀
This is a thinking mans comment, In fact this IS the world Cannon of Civvie's Dungeon
I'd rather stay in the dungeon.
Isn't Civvie's Dungeon canonically in Uktrakill's hell's limbo?
I mean...
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.
Shitmen
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.
One of the augments makes you canonically thicc around the thighs.
The triple jump canonically makes you dummy thicc
Fun fact: The distorted language every NPCs use is the same exact language of the animals in Animal Crossing.
as soon as he showed us it i realised this.
Fun fact - distorted language is basic game design choice. It is like saying this game is also 3d shooter, exactly like half life.
@@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.
@@StrayGoose oh wow. I'm wrong then. Understandable, have a nice day.
I noticed some of the door textures are an HD remake of the one from Peach’s castle in Mario 64. There might be other things like this.
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
@@spawel1 What
@@TooMuchSascha he reads people like deleuze, althusser, guatarri, bataille etc
There was a mod on the community discord to fix this shortly after the official release
It's impressive how consistently disgusting everything is.
It really is
yeah its almost like a complete shutdown of values and the re-integration of the death of hope
Hey there, just need a quick clarification if you don't mind:
Are we talking about the game, real life or both?
@@BloodfelX Yes.
@@zarnox3071 Thanks, that helps clear things up. :)
Ok, so the creators of Polybius are back again and they made a FPS.
First Person Squicker.
FPS = Forever Permanently Scarred
Creator. Cruelty squad was made by one person!
Wow, they've came a long way since they lied on the forum
@@geonosian3457 And it Shows.
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.
We Cruel Few
69 likes, make a wish!
You have to get a prescription for an item and you have to pay an absurdly high amount for them.
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.
It could be as easily the "anti-depressants" making him hallucinate something nicer.
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.
It festers in your mind and eventually lays eggs
"Can it run Crysis 3" says hello
"Aggressive Graphics". This is it. This is the proper way to describe the visuals that I have been trying to figure out for months and months.
@@_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.
@@_marlene Any updates?
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??
The game was ogre from the start.
actual plot twist wtf PagMan
Shrek is love, Shrek is life.
The game does cause a sensory ogre load after all
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.
I feel like this has been said before but, Cruelty Squad looks like the type of game to have gore videos hidden in its files.
Or the type of game that would make your antivirus have a seizure.
Or the type of game that would do both of those things.
It's like if World Peace was a video game
More like the type of game to be found by prosecution lost in a massive archive of gore videos.
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.
I like how you access the secret levels through paintings. It’s like, the ONE purely innocent and not fucked up thing in the game.
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
@Fenn Byers yeah that too
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.
@@rooknizan2923 eh, that could just be a paper decal
"i am a flesh automaton animated by neural transmitters" is a hardass line
"power in misery" and "the sun smiles at you with eternal malice" are also very badass
@@necromech_ the beginning of the life ending starts with
*I WEEP.*
which is pretty badass too
HOPE: ERADICATED
HOPE: ERADICATED
HOPE: ERADICATED
HOPE: ERADICATED
HOPE: ERADICATED
HOPE: ERADICATED
HOPE: ERADICATED
DIVINE LIGHT SEVERED
This just says "im a human" tho
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.
@@NerfPlayeR135 Obviously someone from "Are We Cool Yet?"
@@drusik You sure it wasn’t someone from Gamers Against Weed? Seems up their alley.
@@NerfPlayeR135 We have evidence pointing to it being a collab project.
Playing James Bond music on the good route and Austin Powers music during all the fuckups. You’re too good to us, Katie.
I'm so glad I wasn't the only one to catch it, it almost makes it worth watching 30 minutes of this fucking monstrosity of a shit post.
What James Bond song was used?
14:00 is the time stamp
Carlos Runway from the Goldeneye N64 soundtrack. one of the better remix/reinterpretations of the classic theme song
@@Mr_Spaghetti Thank you
Cruelty squad looks like a suspicious taiwanese malware-filled game from 2001
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
@@yosefyonin6824 They're capitalists lol
@@DeepDiveDevin yeah ccp is technically capitalist but they stillsilence and severely punish anyone who talks against communism
@@yosefyonin6824 Well obviously their idea of communism isn't very trustworthy though
@@DeepDiveDevin to be fair no idea of communism is trustworthy
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.
Yeah, getting re blessed by God so you can go through doors is pretty neat, but have you ever hacked a door so badly it counter hacks and kills you?
Your legs are ok
Whaddya mean FUTURE?
You gain brouzof
You gain brouzof
You gain brouzof
You gain brouzof
You gain brouzof
Lmao imagine still being trapped in your Cycles of Guilt
I killed my master but I am not his murderer.
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.
I think in the credits at 30:21 he seems to be using the Flesh suit, guess he didn't think of it?
@@ashe.7945 how is he flying, anyway? Haven’t played in awhile
agree about the talking
You can talk to them!? I always shot first, never asked questions later.
@@ashe.7945 Nope, that's night vision! Biosuit has a fleshy border all around it.
This is what they saw in the Event Horizon after walking into the sphere.
Seems about right
Where we're going we don't need eyes
@@pawel8365 "Something something this ship has seen things you can't comprehend" idk I haven't watched that film in a year
Wier says that right?
God that movie sucked.
You don't need eyes where we are gping
"It's amazing what you can get used to"
that one hit a little hard
something something frog
something something boiling pot
"You pick up an onion and begin peeling." is one of the coolest fucking ending lines ever.
It is actually your character disassembling the entire universe.
Layers.
The world is Shrek...
You are ogre
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.
Cruelty Squad is EYE if the EYE devs had stayed awake for a week off internet pharmaceuticals playing space funeral and doomscrolling
*WHEN THE LOW, HEAVY SKY WEIGHS LIKE A LID, ON THE SPIRIT*
Relatedly Pro E.Y.E. When Civvie?
@@AlL-tk6kw Aching for the light?
@@THExRISER wait there’s an actual community? devs? anyone doing fan patches or w/e?
@@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?
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.
I mean you get it at the end and you shouldn't spoil it for people who were still playing
@@bohnzo473 He never gave the location so it's chill, what he should really be telling people is to invest in GAGA before you beat mall madness
@@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.
@@bohnzo473 Do you need lotion for that burn?
@@SantitariumHaze He needs a new life and identity.
This game feels more akin to withdrawals than drugs
Accurate
Very, very apt. Frighteningly so.
*shamefully nods*
I thought that was the point
@@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.
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.
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!"
My legs are okay!
EYE: Divine Cybermancy
*UPGRADE*
CRUELTY SQUAD
It's EYE, but a lot better
you gain brouzof for your fantastic comment
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.
Cruelty Squad was what I called my ex-wife's family.
Aah, peak boomer humour
Cruelty Squad is what I call my own family
marriage over party started amirite brother
@@dankman413 Cruelty Squad was what I called *fine boom sound effect* AMONG US .
@@dankman413 That's more like boomer's parents humour.
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.
I always imagined as more akin to acquiring the metaphysical power of Death, which is necessary to enter Trauma Loop and achieve godhood.
@@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?
Ah sweet the gun update for LSD is here.
lol
Yes & No, but very much soo.
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.
There is a game called LSD: Dream Simulator for the psone
It's actually the LSD update to Gun (2005)
"I get down to the office, kill the target" [Tekwar intensifies]
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...
"You may have taken down the target but...couldn't you have taken less acid?"
This game: 'You must be at least *this* high to ride'.
Correction: "You must be high to ride."
this isn't the product of drugs, it's the product of fucked up detachment and cynicism
Oh hell no! I do not want to see the game while on drugs, it’s too much while sober
@@Graknorke isn't drug use also often a product of detachment and cynicism? I never play this game sober, it's not the same lol.
Im high enough, im 6'6!
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.
That was me. I am the idiot.
@@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.
@@gondalasatvarsh5892 Off to the Cold Room with you.
@@glitchedoom Nah, just throw a tarp down here, it'll be fine.
@@Civvie11 Why did you delete this tweet, CV-11?
"I am a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters" gotta admit that does sound kinda cool
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".
@@necromech_ YOUR FRIENDS ARE IN HELL AND YET YOU SMILE.
when the beat drops, im gonna fucking kill myself
Reaction image to the phrase "Divine Light Severed" is also very fitting.
A beautiful fucking nerve ape
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.
Oh it gets even worse after retina surgery
My retinas outright told me to go fuck myself
Lol I'm dying from this post lol 😆
Cruelty squad plays like a psychotic muder fantasy, and looks like me overdosing on my meds
pretty much if Garden of Earthly Delights was a game
stop taking meds
Damn boi can I have some of your meds. sounds like they got you on that good good lysergic
It looks one of my own fever dreams has come to life. It looks amazing and yet tempting to play this.
no it plays like a crappy asset flip and looks like me overdosing on my meds
"Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else."
Death Persistance
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.
There was something profoundly fucked about postal 2.
@fourthwall2533 nah, thats postal 1
This feels like if Deus Ex was designed by Jhonen Vasquez.
No enough screaming about DOOOOOM
@@miguelangelucsanchez183 yeah, I'm thinking more JTHM than Zim.
@@faulkgough1768 now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time
That's some good and overlyspecific comparison
Oh yeah the creator of Invader Zim!
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.
The problem he's having is that he thinks you need to pull it back up, too, but that's wrong. The down motion is the only one you need to make.
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 Follow Ted Kaczynski's example and rot in prison
@@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.
The graphics remind me of that one time my cartridge of LEGO Star Wars: The Compete Saga on the DS got corrupted
You sure you weren't playing a non corrupted DS Lego Star Wars 2
@@DubiousD yeah this happened to me all time on star wars 2, game was buggy as hell on DS. but star wars 1 was pretty solid
LSW2 is a nightmare
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
the icon for the task bar when you tab out is also the ouroboros snake
Lots of hermetic and gnostic themes in the game too
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.
Bro you not the thinker 😂
This is like that labyrinth Win '95 screensaver filtered thru your worst nightmares.
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.
Cruelty Squad truly is the _Dark Souls_ of overdosing on ketamine and bath salts while playing _System Shock 2_
Someone call this a Souls-like and get Iron Pineapple's attention
Also, in the way you keep items upon death, but similar to the souls mechanic, you can only keep new weapons if you finish the level with them.
This is the gorbino's quest of immersive fps sim's
uhm aktualy.... its a spiritual successor to mario 64
"A flesh automation, animated by neurotransmitters" is true even when you're alive.
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
Nah I think the soul thing is just really important in the world of Cruelty Squad and probably is linked to how fucked up everything is.
@@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.
10:43 this is the best "we coming for your ass" message I've ever seen in a videogame
I love that the song goes from 007 to Austin powers when he switches to fails
"They found me. I don't know how but they found me."
I *always* appreciate a good Back to the Future reference.
“I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.”
- Cruelty Squad
Oh, God he’s an eversor
Also Salvador Dali.
Which, when you think about it, they aren't much different.
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
Eat drugqks
Eat
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
Actually I love all the sounds in the game. I feel like the audio is cuddly. ASMR sucks and this is beautiful. I need to speak to my therapist
@@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 YOU GET IT
@@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 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.
Seems like the story of a super-soldier that has crystal meth injected into his brain 24/7
Maybe Bromo Dragonfly
doom guy is subjugated to the gig economy but biopunk
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.
Isn't that the plot of Haze
@@InkBleedsDeeper i must know more, day of defeat source mod?
Cruelty squad is one of those unique games I can appreciate existing, but that I'll never play in a million years.
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
u get used to it very fast I urge you to try it
@@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
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
Violence, organ theft, stock markets, other sick shit, Sseth would love this.
This is true
It's too bad he only makes one video every 6-12 months.
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.
@@cibo889 basically
People still are waiting for him to cover Noita tho
I hope he reviews this
23:00 "Death, I'm dead now...
It lets me wall jump.
It's permanent."
he didnt say that
@@ienjoy7819 ?
@@RedEarth20XDX thats not in the video he didnt say that
@@ienjoy7819 okay thanks for letting me know
@@RedEarth20XDX you are welcome! in 1997 i stabbed and dismembered a 28 year old woman burying her remains 6 feet under in the outskirts of chechnya
It's like tongue-in-cheek social commentary put into a weird hybrid game engine of Vangers and Quake.
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 boss looks like if Slimer was instead made out of gore with a trucker hat
Oh god
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.
This is the best game you can play on TempleOS right now!
But when they glow in the dark, you can see em when you're drivin, just run them over
Always be nice to Mister God.
Cruelty Squad is Terrygrips the game after all...
China Virus
@@Oversensitive-S-poster God I hate Frasier!
...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.
And succeeded. TBH this does smell of Slav Jank. You don't JUST put an SKS as a powerful gun if you ain't slav.
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.
@@NEEDbacon The game is actually Finnish.
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.
"Shitpost with the force of a thousand rectums" is the single greatest line ever spoken on this channel. And that's impressive.
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.
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.
The Finnish game industry, between this and Remedy's catalog, is insane.
It's literally just one guy.
@@WTFisTingispingis why, why's always them who do these shit, what do they smoke
@@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.
@@Zontar82 the weather there seems p bleak
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.
No Marx?
@@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.
@@RafaelCDet Anti-truth in what way?
@@TheRealLordRama Cruelty Squad is more right wing anti capitalism then it is Marx . Think office space or million dollar extreme
Game looks like a 3am adult swim segway in the best way possible.
I've been scrolling through the comments for a bit now and this could be the most accurate one.
I'm here to buy Chunkopops for my son. He can't get enough of that plastic crap.
"Too weird for this channel"
Dude, the Serious Sam review
That's... that's all I need to say
"A lot of these areas are copied and pasted, whole hallways, rooms, so it gets a little confusing."
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
@@phantomspaceman Quit winning
@@Sorrelhas he has taken us to the edge of the a biss
That's also possibly his best video
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.
Indeed. I welcome these fresh, "outside the box" ideas.
I misread this as "flesh era" and it still made kinda sense
This reads like something you would hear from an NPC in the actual game
Doom 3 and resurrection of evil never gave me nightmares, but this thing Exists, that's all I'll say
The scariest thing about this video are the comments from people more experienced at the game
Lol agreed. I cant tell if they are trolling or actually play this… thing.
@@pangoprime8674cope and seethe, its a great game.
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.
Loved the gameplay but I never adjusted to the art style. I could only play it for a half hour at a time tops.
@@jakejutras5420 Fair enough! Now that I'm older and frazzled I probably couldn't play it, even Super Mario World goes too fast for me to follow.
I love how well that game lends itself to "we're screwed, leg it!" moments.
Monaco is much, much easier to look at than this; Monaco looks simplistic, but that's about it, it's not even that weird.
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
No one tell Civvie about the tattered rain hat in idiot party that makes all the fish jump out of the water.
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
Hearing "and this is where things get really weird" halfway through the video, after what I just witnessed in the first half, is both absolutely mind-boggling and totally expected at the same time.
Does this qualify as a "Zoomer Shooter"?
I honestly don’t know how to process what you just said.
Yes in a positive sense. Because this is the future (or present) they’ve got to look forward to…
But they got Gorbino’s Quest so that’s nice.
I would say it's the most boomer game so far
@@larsthedude1984 and chunkopops
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.
I like how the game's ending shits on "The Sky May Be".
As in the shitty Doom wad?
?
@@recnepsrc Yes
Can you explain how?
@@blastpipezj6937 THE PENIS IS EVIL!
The ship level with a grappendix is the most ridiculous shit I've ever seen, imagine chilling on your cruise ship and you see a guy with bright purple hair swinging from what's obviously some kind of extremely long and elastic intestine thing, he looks at you mid air and without breaking a sweat unloads an entire magazine in the direction of the swimming pool, breaking the glass and sending scores of people plummeting to their deaths.
The cruelty squad reload mechanic grew on me so hard during my playthrough. It became such second nature that it's actually weird going back to other games. It almost gives you the same feeling as playing a light gun game
Speaking of light gun games, if Cruelty Squad gets modding support at some point, I wonder if anyone would make a remake of CarnEvil for it.
Oh damn that options menu. This isn't just some badly executed first attempt, this is deliberate.
*THIS IS ART!*
“If video games are art, Cruelty Squad is protest art.”
So, ugly, pretentious and made by college slackers?
@@stproducciones9140 something ugly and pretentious wouldn't have a 99% positive on steam.
@@just_matt214 Sure it would. Super Mario 64 gets great reviews, too.
@@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.
@@just_matt214 because ugly and pretentious doesn't necessarily mean a bad game.
I already beat this game in like 2002 when I ate an entire sheet of acid and speedran Deus Ex.
It looks like a video game creepypasta but they forgot to add the parts where the game is normal.
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.
*Wha Happun narrator saying I O N S T O R M intensifies*
This is the most evocative comment I've ever read.
That statement made me……. F E E L things
Damn, you have a true talent for dreaming up some 110 octane nightmare fuel, don't ya?
John Romero?
I reckon we should thank God it wasn't Willing Creator And Possible Destroyer Of The Entire Multiverse John Carmack.
This looks like the kind of Immersive Sim my sleep paralysis demon would play in the corner of my room.
Lmao what a nice analogy
Funny part is the nightmare vision goggles work perfectly fine for Paradise Catacombs.
Cruelty squad is like hitman but you overdosed on alien drugs while playing a random ms-dos game.
The accuracy of this statement is more percise than a military grade laser
Runway from Goldeneye caught me off guard in the best way possible. GG Civvie.
27:45 by this point I was so mesmerized by the game I forgot I was chewing my food and just sat in silence watching Civvie bunnyhop around
If you guys didn’t know at this point I encourage you to use subtitles in Civvie’s videos. They definitely add to the experience
At least starting from the Half-Life video. Before that, the subtitles are not always great.
It's like Space Funeral: The FPS
that's actually the most succinct way ive seen it put
Yeah pretty much
"It's too late for you !"
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
This is a perfect description, thank you.
Im glad I'm not the only person who loves Idiot Party, that level was an absolute joy and its literally just a vertical spire of rich people in gimp suits.
It's like if _GoldenEye_ had an _LSD: Dream Emulator_ mod.
I haven't even watched the video yet, but I wanted to say immediately: thank you for the warning in the beginning. Flashing lights, motion sickness, etc warnings are always important to give.
Civvie, playing CRUELTY SQUAD? Oh God.
Truly the mind of a CEO.
...So this is what a cyberpsycho's life is like. Glad to know now what I'm putting all those NPC's through when creating them now...
Agreed, but I'd use this for a psycho that overdid it on bio-mods rather than hard chrome.
Cruelty Squad asks the important question "what if Deus Ex was Postal 2"
"...while going through delirium tremors."
fun fact: the "unkillable" zombies can be dealt with using the DNA-scrambling gun.