“A point in the horizon, a melting scene from your childhood. Your mortality is showing.”
For just 20 bucks, you can purchase an experience so unpleasant, I can only describe it as rotten meat infested with brain parasites in video game form. By all means, it’s an absolute steal. The consensus around “Cruelty Squad” is that it’s a fantastic game that is torture to play. A majority of the people who bothered to review this game seem to have really enjoyed it. That doesn’t really make sense at first. Let me explain.
“Bitter tears. Lust for power. This is where you abandoned your dreams. You are a high net worth individual, an expanding vortex of pathetic trauma.”
My fateful first encounter with this game was a videogamedunkey video, and I’m too absorbed in the absolutely baffling experience to listen to Dunkey’s commentary or bits. The textures are … wrong? It looks like the game’s code has been changed as a joke to look like absolute garbage, but this is just how it’s supposed to look. The game looks colorful, and I mean that in the worst way possible; all the colors clash so much I can feel their visceral hatred for each other. There’s a strange, slick, fleshy intestine-like border around the screen that says “CRUELTY SQUAD” in crooked letters at the top, just in case you forgot what game you were playing. In his playthrough, Dunkey leaves his flesh car and opens the door to a pizza place that is a soulless, hollow face modeled after my sleep paralysis demon. He walks up to a person, gun in hand, and they reply unprompted: “I really look up to people who are good at violence.” They’re gunned down mid-sentence. This bone-dry black comedy matched with the game’s brain-numbing aesthetics had me hooked. Who the hell would intentionally make a game this awful? Why am I slowly falling in love with it?
“The value of Life is negative. The balance of being is rotated by 38 degrees. The surface is full of cracks, a turgid light shines through. Fleshy primordial bodies sluggishly roll down the slope. Only you slide upwards, with a celestial step. You become beautified, a saintly figure.”
“Cruelty Squad’s” gameplay is simple. Each level gives you targets to take out, you eliminate them, and then you get out. Upon level completion, you are given a rank that you can try and improve by replaying the mission and improving your time. Secrets are stashed throughout each stage, like hidden equipment and levels. That’s not to say the game is designed to be mastered. It can be incredibly tedious and grindy the further into the game you get, as you start earning money for techno-dystopic cybernetic upgrades (like an appendix grappling hook, the Grappendix), investing in the stock market or even buying a million-dollar house.
Enemies can be easily killed with a headshot, but your character is no super-soldier. If you’re not paying attention, you can be easily disposed of. This game is spiteful and abusive, refusing to be an enjoyable experience for every player. Even the game’s writing seems to have the same unabashed off-putting quality. The dark humor I mentioned earlier can very quickly turn into convoluted pontifications on the nature of humans as flesh mechanisms, firing synapses and running on neurotransmitters, mixed in with philosophical statements about power, opportunity, value and life itself.
“Sit on the throne of contentment and ferment. Inspect the eternal blue skies of your kingdom. You come to a realization. You pick up an onion and begin peeling.”
I wasn’t exactly clear what “Cruelty Squad” was satirizing at first glance. It has a clear satirical tone, but my senses were so overwhelmed I had no clue what to make of the game. Is it a deconstruction of the first-person shooter genre, in all of its glorified violence? Kind of, but that’s not devoted enough attention to be the point. Is it an examination of the reductionist attitude toward viewing humans as nothing more than flesh and brain chemistry? Getting warmer. “Well, when in doubt, assume it’s a critique of capitalism,” I hear you saying. Bingo, right on the money!
“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.”
So how does “Cruelty Squad” criticize modern-day capitalism? For starters, we’ve already touched on the delightfully sardonic dialogue, and the reduction of humans to flesh. Your boss who contacts you offering you a job at Cruelty Squad as gun-for-hire describes it as “the sort of work that you enjoy but you’ll have to adjust to a more corporate mindset.” When you die, the ending screen has a line that says, “BODY RECONSTRUCTION: -$500.” Despite destroying your body by becoming a cyborg and experiencing repeated deaths that leave you a mangled corpse, it’s all reduced to a $500 invoice. Your victims’ bodies can be relieved of their organs, which can be sold on the stock market, conveniently reducing what was once a functioning human to a paycheck. As your targets are repeatedly resurrected to repeat each mission, life itself becomes a high-supply, low-demand commodity as expendable as a plastic wrapper, and death an irritating inconvenience.
Some of the missions take place in corporate and consumerist hellscapes, including a gated community built on an ancient mass grave, a casino with a gun slot machine and, of course, an office. The non-player characters are caricatures of the people you’d find in these environments. For example, the gated community has someone praising you for being an open-carry gun owner, despite the fact that you’re just a detached, homicidal maniac. The casino level has people openly acknowledging the self-destructive process of gambling, with one claiming the atmosphere is fancy enough to make them feel rich even when they’re not. The office is filled with exasperated workers swearing like sailors and using incomprehensible tech jargon.
The missions themselves are delightfully cynical as well. One involves killing the Cruelty Squad’s head of the pharmaceutical department, who has been embezzling company funds and flies into fits of rage and vomiting blood. Another is to kill the CEO of Sin Space Engineering because he’s increased the survival rate of a mission to Mercury meant to be a sacrificial mission to satiate the appetites of higher-ups, hungry for mass human sacrifice. Another still is annihilating the chief of police, who was initially enforcing the Cruelty Squad’s will on the public but has become violent and incoherent because of the experimental steroids supplied by the narcotics unit. “Cruelty Squad” paints an exaggerated parody of the corporate and consumerist world, every single aspect of its critique as cynical as possible.
“Synaptic cascade, neurological catastrophe. The point becomes infinitely dense, the universe condenses into a unicellular being. It screams sin. It craves happiness. It’s done with this world. Sad pathetic mess. You feel pity and disgust but in a way only a being of pure grace can.”
Video games are often used as an escape from the mind-numbing grind of earning a living for people of various backgrounds and circumstances; games filled with feel-good mechanics and beautiful visuals give a player more agency than they will ever dream of being afforded in their waking lives. There are so many times when the “grind” in a video game unintentionally drives players away, but “Cruelty Squad” uses this grind as a tool for its purposes. Rather than painstakingly crafting an experience tailored to the consumer, “Cruelty Squad” turns a mirror on the toxic grind mindset that has poisoned us. A mindset that turns a blind eye to union busting and poor working conditions, as well as the exploitation of overseas workers. The modern-day worker has been taught that their worth is their productivity, that to attain their dream of settling down — of the good life — they must work themselves to death. No pain, no gain, and the more you hurt yourself the better. But this is a lie. The million-dollar house is a lie. Even if you achieve this dream, you are left empty, because to achieve the dream, you give up a part of yourself you never get back; it was sold away with your hours upon days upon years of labor. Self-worth is not found in a salary. You are more than the flesh you put to work and the brain that moves that flesh.
“The living organism, in a situation determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically. – Georges Bataille”
The more observant among you will have noticed the cryptic quotes scattered throughout this article. They are snippets from the third and final ending of the game. To reach this ending, the player must complete a level called “Trauma Loop,” which is exactly as painful to beat as it sounds. The ending itself is a disturbing cocktail of distorted, compressed sounds and angry red visuals that is “Cruelty Squad’s” magnum opus. The quote directly above this paragraph is the last one — a quote from French philosopher George Bataille, from his book, “The Accursed Share.” Death is supposed to be a driving force in our lives. We as humans are tragically finite, but we have the energy to grow and thrive. Yet, our briefness is no longer a priority when wealth becomes the new deity to which we bow. “Cruelty Squad” encapsulates the quote perfectly. It revels in our perverted understanding of worth and wealth, it basks in our scarcity and worships our mortality by creating a world that is utterly desensitized to death and flesh and all things disgusting.
“The third Triagon was born of death. It saw the world was radiating excess energy. It wanted to put great things into motion. But it saw that greatness wasn’t possible without value.”
I have a confession to make. Despite falling in love with the aesthetic of “Cruelty Squad,” and feeling inspired to write an entire article about said game, I refuse to play it. In a sentiment hardly unique to me, I’ve become all too familiar with the ever-increasing dread that accompanies the knowledge that I have become reliant on my career and productivity for my self-worth, which will never truly fulfill me. One more exam to ace. One more internship to find. One more dollar to earn. And I’m by no means in the worst position: I’ve been blessed with the opportunity of higher education and avenues to engage with my creative side. Even worse, those who have disabilities that impact their ability to work face extra obstacles on top of our current hustle culture. Helplessly watching my deaf parents get gray hairs from their increasingly demanding jobs out of fear of getting laid off is a soul-crushing experience on its own. I can never imagine living that life. But as I divide my free time into sparse rations, I have to min-max my joy; “Cruelty Squad” is not a risk I’m willing to take. I would rather spend one single hour researching the game, watching gameplay and analyses rather than spending double-digit hours immersing myself in the experience — an experience that could break me in its merciless criticism of the lifestyle I have fallen into.
“YOU ARE A FLESH AUTOMATON ANIMATED BY NEUROTRANSMITTERS.”
Sometimes it seems like this dilemma is not one I can overcome by myself. Maybe I am destined to be a slave to the very thing “Cruelty Squad” mocks. This game takes joy in ridiculing anyone who deludes themselves into thinking their wealth brings them power or satisfaction, that they can rise above the very system they exist within. Financial ambition is a fool’s game, and denying oneself their own identity is nothing more than a short-sighted misstep into a dizzying cycle of burnout and regret. “Cruelty Squad” cackles at me with its moist, phlegmy laugh. It has a sadistic, toothy grin and its gnarled finger is pointing my way. Sometimes, all I can do is laugh along with it. Rise and grind, my fellow flesh automatons!
Daily Arts Writer James Johnston can be reached at johnstjc@umich.edu.