I initially bought Cruelty Squad 3 years ago, couldn't get past the fact that you play the game inside a border and refunded it. Coming back with more interest and determination, Cruelty Squad is fittingly, a very unforgiving, punishing, cruel, disgusting game. And yet, there's so much about it that is wonderfully beautiful. It's style is off-putting at first, but very intruiging and becomes even strangely captivating. The world is a hyper-capitalist, cynical and nihilistic mirror of the real world, where your ultimate goal is to... find meaning to it all. The gameplay is super well made - a bizarro hitman where the enemies are just as threatning to you as you are to them, and in many cases even much more to you than you are to them, but because of that the combat never starts feeling dull. The gun's available are incredibly varied - from the basic silenced pisol, shotguns, machine guns, to the more bizzare DNA scramblers, gas grenade launchers or the mighty fishing rod - all feel very good to use. Your movement options have so much depth, especially combined with the augments and the few movement upgrades you get. It's the 2nd best feeling movement shooter I've played, but there are a couple things that are just annoying - the fall damage is completely absurd, gravity is your worst enemy since falling from about 5 meters will probably deal around 60% of your health, and anything higher will kill you. It's ridiculously punishing in a not fun way. Secondly, this is probably my laptop's fault but every single time I shot a gun the game would freeze up for a second - which you can imagine made my experience quite miserable in a game where a fraction of a second usually is the difference between life and death. Thirdly, while I like that the game is constantly challenging, the 2 final levels are just frustrating - solving puzzles while being chased by immortal, nearly instakill enemies is just annoying, and the boss is either stupidly accurate or a complete pushover depending on RNG. And then there's Trauma Loop. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, ♥♥♥♥ Trauma Loop. The design is confusing and difficult to navigate, nearly all the enemies one shot you, and the ones that don't are either mega tanks, are straight up immortal or are flesh rats (♥♥♥♥ flesh rats). This maybe wouldn't be so terrible if the level also didn't decide to take your augments away, that you have been getting used to probably the entire game, only to essentially show you the middle finger and say "alright, back to basics", while hiding enemies so far away that they are completely enshrined in darkness and will definitely see you before you see them, which results in insta death and the whole process repeats itself. Which just encouraged me to ignore everything and sprint to the finish, only killing the enemies blocking my way, and praying that fall damage doesn't kill me. So yeah, ♥♥♥♥ TL. Overall, I am glad that I eventually came back to experience CS, am very satisfied with my time, and will probably come back many more times to get everything - including the S ranks, weapons, and the dreaded fish.
