Cruelty Squad

 

 

Taking one look at Cruelty Squad and its obvious it isnt like any other FPS game, or any other game you've played before. I saw a few screenshots, a few seconds of the gameplay trailer, noticed it had thousands of reviews on Steam and that was enough to peak my interest to eventually pick it up to try it for myself.

Upon starting it up you get a brief intro cutscene of the players character standing in his apartment, he gets a call from some agency offering him a job as some kind of hitman or assassin, and thats about it. From then you press start game and see the level select UI with the most bizarre interface ever which takes a little bit to get used to and understand where everything is and what they do, even selecting levels can be pretty confusing at first.

Before each level you can select Weapon 1 and Weapon 2, and also select Implants you can use on your body. You can have implants 1 in your head, 1 in arm, 1 leg, 1 body. Of course this took a little bit of time to figure out how exactly it worked, since the interface is so absurd. The first impression was basically just pure intrigue and wondering where this would all go.

Then I start level 1, theres no cutscenes or story really, except the mission briefing before you click start level, where some weird slug guy spouts a wall of text at you. But immediately upon starting level 1 its obvious this isn't like many other FPS games. For starters, the default controls are kinda just insane. Shift is zooming in with your gun, R is open doors / interact, and the weirdest of all is to reload you have to hold down the right mouse button and drag the mouse down past a certain threshold. Its kind of a satisfying mechanic, it feels sorta arcadey and almost makes you feel more attached to the reload process than just tapping the R button like other games, but it took me a lot of fumbling around and confusion at first to figure out how to reload. I go back to main menu and realize there is another level you can enter called Cruelty Squad Headquarters which acts like sort of a tutorial, which I then did and it helped a little.

After figuring out some of the controls, the next striking thing is the visuals. The game is obviously just trying to be as surreal and absurd as possible. Its hard to even describe it, just look at the screen. I kinda like it. It makes it stand apart from other games and have its own unique identity, and its memorable for sure. It almost has horror vibes or frequently disturbing images and sounds, dark humor, and overtones of cynicism and pessimism throughout the whole experience. Its like a scary drug trip the whole time or something. Anyway, the first level also immediately shows you that the game is not a joke in terms of difficulty. Level 1 is some kind of pharmaceutical office complex. You walk into the main building, theres innocent NPC's all around, but also guards that instantly start shooting at you. You can talk to NPC's and they will frequently say odd things and sometimes give tips, but on level 1 its like as soon as you enter the building youre just getting shot at - this was immediately confusing and took me a handful of deaths before I could tell what the hell was going on.

But once you get your bearings the game is quite simple. You enter a level, and there are these red targets on your HUD. You simply go to these red targets and kill the person there, once all the red targets are gone you have to find the level exit to complete the level. But like I was saying the game is not very easy. Level one I was dying over and over, it took me quite a few attempts to actually beat it. You lose health so fast, just a few bullets and youre almost dead. It took me a long time to figure out how to get my health back, which was the main contributor to how difficult it was. The gameplay at times almost reminds me of Hotline Miami, in terms of trying to perfect these short little runs and memorizing every single aspect of the level, where the enemies spawn, and then executing it perfectly. There are no quicksives or mid-level saves, which is something I actually like because it forces you to play good and I'm increasingly getting bored of quicksave spam shooters so its nice to see some games that dont rely on it.

Eventually I found out to get health back you can eat corpses , which only gives 1 health. But more importantly you can spam the Use button (R) on corpses and pickup organs such as Kidneys, heart, liver, etc, and then press TAB and sell them on the stock market, and then go up to vending machines and buy food which gives you health. This helped a lot. Yeah, theres a damn stock market of all things. All sorts of stuff you can buy and sell, I never really bothered with it besides just selling organs, I didnt want to gamble money. Still really funny that its a thing and further adds to the strange nature of the game.

I finally beat level one, now that I at least understand how to get my health back, how to reload and actually play the game I can start making progress.

The game has tons of innocent NPC's in every level, like I said previously. Its actually a bad thing to kill these innocent NPC's because it takes away how much money you earn after you finish the level. This makes for interesting gameplay, where spraying into crowd's is actually a bad idea and you have to be careful about who you are shooting at, which makes the game feel unique and different than other games in the genre. It creates an interesting tension between placing your shots carefully but also sometimes just saying screw it and shooting into the crowd blindly because you dont wanna take too much damage. I like the pedestrian mechanic, its a great inclusion. It's also really amusing to talk to these NPC's, it adds another dimension of strangeness and intrigue to the game to see what kinda deranged stuff they'll say. You can even talk to the targets youre hunting, although I didnt do it too often in fear they had a gun.


Level 2 starts off completely different, its called Paradise and its like this little town where you hilariously start off with a vehicle you can actually drive, some of the most silly vehicle driving ever, like of all games theres a vehicle in this one? Its largely pointless its more a quirky silly inclusion its not really needed. But this level is surprisingly easier than the first and I'm pretty sure I beat it on my very first attempt. Just go in, run to the targets, kill them and exit. However it must be noted that there is much more to the levels than simply killing the targets and leaving. The levels can sometimes be huge, with many optional houses and places to explore. The actual main objectives only sometimes cover like, 25% of the actual map. The purpose of searching all the other optional areas is to unlock implants or unlock other secrets which become important later on. Though as I played through the game up to this point, I was mainly focused on completing the main objectives until I better understood the game.

As you play through the game there is all sorts of implants you can unlock and equip, and theyre actually all quite interesting and change the game in significant ways, its not just static number upgrades. You can get stuff like a grappling rope that lets you attach a rope onto basically any surface and fly around the game world like Spiderman, obviously a very powerful tool, but its expensive at 50k, I didnt really use it until around the end of the game. There is life sensor goggles you can equip which lets you see a dot through walls of any living being in the world which can be very helpful. There are leg implants that can allow you to jump very high, you can get camo that makes you harder to spot, you can get stuff like you lose the ability to reload but you slowly gain ammo passively - gamechanging stuff which was fun to see and interact with. Theres all sorts of secret implants you can unlock like the Bouncy Suit which totally negates falling damage making you bounce, which fills the game with a lot of wonder and mystique to try to see what is hidden in the game world.

Although for most of the game I simply equipped the highest tier of body armor implant that I could, since you lose health so fast without it, using body armor significantly decreases the amount of damage you take. The downside to this is it makes you move very slow, and even trying to jump would barely go off the floor. There are other lesser tiers of body armor with less of a movement penalty, sure, but I wanted the most damage reduction. I could kind of eventually get around it by using the highest leg implant which enhanced jump, how I can have high damage reduction and still jump so that helped.

And probably the most important and impactful implant for me, funny enough, was the medkit implant on your arm slot. This lets you , once per mission, to instantly gain back 50 health. This proved crucial many times.

Something I did not realize until later was that carrying different guns massively decreases your movement speed, so it might have not even been the body armor that was slowing me down much but rather the weapons I was carrying. I wish it actually said the weapon weight in game, and how much speed impact weapons have. Still it felt kind of annoying how it was either I almost die instantly and have decent movement speed, or I have a fair amount of damage reduction but move like a slug, I didnt feel a good in between, at least until I figured out the leg implant and that carrying different weapons also impact your movement.

There is a huge variety of guns, many of them are secret or actually hard to find and unlock. To unlock a weapon, you just have to beat a level while carrying it. The weapons feel unique and different amongst themselves, its not just like the same feeling weapon with different stats. Many of them have unique abilities beyond just shooting a bullet. For instance some guns shoot gas, one gun even turns enemies into this crazy red balls of goop, other guns are 3 round burst and have scopes, etc. There is even a secret gun you can unlock called ZKZ that apparently scales its damage off how much you have invested into the stock market. But for most of the game I just used that 3 round burst weapon with the black & white scope, that gun is very good and felt obviously more effective than most of the other guns I had found. For the second gun I would try to just use something light, like a pistol or baton, to not slow me down once I figured out that was a thing.

Other main levels in the game are things like Level 3 Sin Space Engineering, a boat yard plus office complexes plus pyramids? I dont know. Memorable though. Pretty sure I beat this level on my first attempt as well. So level one I Really struggled with until I understood the mechanics then I started to breeze through the game.

The game has quite a large variety of enemies, which were always interesting and exciting to discover new ones. You have standard police/soldier enemies, then you have these Psycho enemies with big heads that once they spot you, start to really mess up your screen and camera, making you spam shoot your guns wasting bullets, kinda obviously reminds me of STALKER controller enemy, another possible influence and reference. Then theres different types of these humanoid enemies covered in balls, which is a kind of armor. Theres also all sorts of creatures like mutant dogs, these tiny little insects that drain your health, zombies, and other abominations.

Other missions, like Androgen Assault, is a huge complex with like hundreds of enemies in it, and at one point you start going into these crazy nightmare rooms with indescribable creatures that are targets, that was cool. This mission was pretty straight forward except at one point you have to jump onto a ledge to progress, but I was using body armor so I couldnt jump high enough. It kinda sucks there are some moments in levels that are pretty much impossible if you have the wrong items equipped. That wasted a bunch of time and I had to redo the level and take off the body armor so I could jump properly, after I figured there was no other way to progress and get up there.

Then I started to encounter some difficult and kinda frustrating levels. One was Mall Madness.
This level amusingly starts off seemingly with a nod towards Goldeneye's Facility level. You start off in a vent, and then are looking down at a guy on a toilet. Then its just a big mall, with a single target. Hes towards the end section behind a glass wall guarded by enemies and these giant robot enemy things that you cannot damage normally. Even if I found my way around and take down the main target, then the gates close and I couldnt find my way out. There were these dressing room areas, but I also couldnt jump high enough to reach a grate in the wall which seemed to be a repeating problem that if I wear body armor there are some missions where I just cant progress because it ruins the jump ability. Eventually I realized I can just grab a garbage can and position it under the grate and climb onto that and I progressed through the level. Also in this level is a hidden rocket launcher which I used to finally kill the big robot enemies but this took a lot of exploring and attempts to figure out.

Apartment Atrocity is another more straight forward level, apartment complex where police are outside coming to get you, I beat this one pretty fast, one attempt, cool level though and feels like a movie scene or something. There is a crazy powerful sniper rifle you can get towards the end of the level here which was fun to use.


 Seaside Shock, one of the later levels, is a big fancy boat which was a cool level but it had some issues. It has a few targets, two inside these cabins, then one at the very top swimming in some pools. Also funny enough they seem naked. The problem with this level is once you kill the targets it took me a long time to figure out where the hell the exit is. Like mentioned previously, to beat a level you have to kill the targets and go to the exit. Well its not always obvious where the exit is. I kind of wish after you kill the targets there was at least a little arrow or something pointing towards the exit. Because I had to spend like 20 minutes going around this whole boat level trying to find the damn thing and it just felt like a waste of time. I even accidentally stumbled onto a secret level BEFORE I found the level exit! Thats right, I jumped through a damn wall and found the level Alpine Hospitality. This was extremely confusing. I thought either I broke the game, or this was the intended path, or what. I had no clue what was going on. But no, it was just a secret level I ran into, and it erased what I had done on the boat level so after I finished that secret level I had to then go back and do the whole boat level again AND find the exit. That was just annoying as hell. Again, could have been prevented if a little arrow showed you where the exit is after the targets are dead, or even if there was a little cutscene at the beginning of each level beginning showing the exit, I dont know. I think the game is probably just designed like this on purpose but its a questionable design choice.


 Then the last few main missions are Bog Business, a sort of Dark Soulslike Blighttown level, by the way thats something this game does a lot, it seems to have references and nods to classic games, like the Goldeneye facility reference, theres Zelda level design references, and even nods towards Mario 64 with some of the level designs, maybe its just me imaginging that but it really feels like it. Anyway Bog Buisness is pretty straight forward, quite linear level where you track down a single target then loop back around to the beginning, only notable thing about it is you go through swamps which damage your health but I found out you can eat these plants around to stop it. Then you have the level Casino Catastrophe, probably the most annoying level in the game? Its a big casino with a single target, but as you get close to him these marshmellow stone enemies come at you, these enemies fucking suck, they popup a few times throughout the game, theyre basically invincible unless you shoot rockets at them so after dying a few times I had to go pick the rocket launcher from the loadout. Then you get past them and guess what? If you walk on a certain spot the damn floor falls and you go into rooms filled with these guys you just die instantly. This started to feel like bullshit Kaizo Mario or I Wanna Be the Guy Tier stupid level design. Trial and error bullshit. Dying a dozen times memorizing exactly each spawn exactly where not to stand and so on. once I memorized it perfectly it was easy and I beat it in like 30 seconds but yeah it was just an exercise in frustration.

 One of the last main missions, Idiot Party, has a suitable name. Its this big tower with a bouncy platform on the bottom, you can jump into it and it launches you really high into the sky. You can either try to climb your way down or jump onto this platform and kinda squeeze your way into a window, not sure if thats intended or not but it kinda felt like an exploit. It only has one target and after killing him you can use that launching platform thing to launch yourself into the exit, which I failed to do a few times which felt janky. Theres probably other ways to beat the level but this seemed like the intended main way.

Office is the second last main level and its a big office complex with many elevators and floors, quite straight forward though, you climb to the top and take out the targets ,the only real difficult or threatening part is the very top floor target is guarded by those marshmellow/golem looking enemies but luckily I somehow sprayed into the room from the elevator and killed the target and was able to complete it successfully.

Then the final main mission, Archon Grid. This level is just a mindfuck. First of all its like a platforming level like some kind of Mario 64 shit, with silly colors, theres an orb you grab at the beginning which says Divine Light obtained and changes your hud, and after doing some platforming sections you just start walking ontop of invisible roofs of all these different sections you cant interact with. Took me quite some time to find this tiny little pool of water square you can jump into which actually starts the level. From there you go through a series of rooms with stones you can push on a grid and this arcadey enemy chasing you around, going through mazes fighting waves of enemies, then you come to I guess the final boss, this giant flower thing in a cathedral type room. I died the first time I reached him cause I had no clue WTF was happening. Second time I figured out you just shoot his orbs or whatever kill him and reach the games ending.

It ends by your character walking towards some distant plain saying some stuff about how youre trapped forever and how it doesnt sound like this has been a success etc.

After this I realized theres still like, 6 levels missing from the level select so I wasnt satisfied that I had actually completed the game. Yet, left clueless how to actually get the rest of the content. I didnt want to just play through every single level over and over looking in every single possible area , who the hell knows what I'm supposed to do to unlock the rest of the levels. At this point I just started Googling stuff and looking up what do I do. Turns out this is basically what everyone else does at this point too, the most common search result is "What do I do after Archon Grid" - Looks like everyone has these same thoughts and problems.

So by this point doing the main missions just gets you 'Ending 1' - but theres actually 3 total endings. Its very unlikely anyone is gonna find them all, and find all the secret levels themselves without looking stuff up because the kind of stuff you have to do to unlock this content is asinine and obscure as hell. Even after looking up exactly what to do it was still very confusing and baffling. Honestly, by this point my enjoyment of the game kinda started taking a nosedive having to look up all this cryptic nonsense  and doing all this random garbage just to unlock the rest of the content. Sure I could just bracket it aside and say my enjoyment of the 'main game' is one thing, and my enjoyment of the optional/extra/secret content is another - but this doesnt even feel like secret content, it felt like Ending 1 isnt "beating the game" , like I cant say I beat the game if I just get ending 1, you need to do all this exta stuff to actually play the whole game so..

Anyway, to unlock 'Ending 2' , you have to unlock something called Hope Eradicated. This is basically like a harder difficulty. It changes  your HUD border when its unlocked. How do you unlock it you ask? You just pick a menu option? No, of course not. You have to do some insanely cryptic bullshit. You either have to find one of these shrines that have the Hope eradicated black orb, or use an item called Cursed Torch, which is also another hidden cryptic item, and enter any level with it. I never found the Cursed Torch. So I figured to just find one of the shrines. There are only two shrines in the game that have the Hope Eradicated black orb, one is at the end of the last main mission, yeah kinda dont wanna do that again. The other is in the tutorial level, Cruelty Squad Headquarters, after climbing through a secret grate, then jumping across to a platform and climbing up to a seemingly empty room. What you have to do is TURN YOUR RESOLUTION TO 640x480 (Terry Davis reference) , then a secret wall reveals with the shrine. What the fuck. I know there are NPCs in the game that say something about 640x480 being a special resolution, but just wtf.

Furthermore, you also have to unlock something called DEATH MODE. This is hidden inside a kinda secret building in the first main mission, it looks like a building you cant even enter but walking up you can actually open the door. Then theres a NPC that talks about walking down a hallway will make you undergo a procedure. So you walk down and now it changes your HEALTH orb to say DEATH. Thats DEATH mode activated. This apparently now lets you walk through a hallway required for Ending 2, it also unlocks the ability to wall jump (which feels janky as fuck). No one is gonna figure this shit out on their own.

finally, now I can make progress towards Ending 2.

Then, inside the same level Cruelty Squad HD, there is a door that is now open-able since you are on HOPE ERADICATED mode. So I open the door, make my way past some annoying enemies and get to the top where there is now a target for the level. This is a boss, basically. Except hes invincible. Or he has so much damn health that by any normal means you cant kill him. I tried shooting him with every gun every bullet I had, couldnt kill him. He shoots at you with this dumb gun that after a few shots shrinks you and makes you tiny and lose your guns, effectively making you reset the level. Of course I had to look up how to actually kill this guy. There are a few ways, on the wiki it said the "suggested way" was to find the ZKZ rifle on this same level, so I went and found it, after much trial and error and BS, its hidden behind a fucking secret wall that no one would ever naturally find, guarded by marshmellow golem guys and all sorts of annoying enemies, but even after I got the rifle guess what - I couldnt exit the room, I could not jump back up, and I kept taking fall damage each attempt and I died trying to escape the room on multiple attempts. So I said fuck that I'm not doing it. Turns out this stupid gun is only effective anyway unless you have 1 mil invested into the stock market - WTF, I dont even use the stock market beyond just selling organs, so it would of been pointless anyway.


Per the wiki again, the other suggested method is to use some specific gun Bolt ACR, because it apparently shoots these super powerful gas clouds with infinite ammo, combined with using a stun gun to knock the boss out. Problem is I dont have the damn ACR gun. How do you get it? I have to play the entire Office level again, pickup the gun, and beat the level with it. Here is when I realized another annoying problem with the game. Why cant I just exit the level at any time I wish? I can walk to the damn exit zone, but why does it do nothing unless I beat all the objectives? I should be able to just pickup stuff, and walk to the exit and leave the area. That would make sense. But no, the only way to actually exit is to complete all the objectives. Why? I guess just to make the game more annoying and pad out the length? So I play through the entire damn level again, get the gun, and unlock it. Okay, back to Cruelty Squad HD to kill this dumb boss. So I get to the boss, knock him out with the stun gun, and just shoot him in a corner with this Bolt ACR gas gun for like 4 minutes and he dies. Kinda insanely stupid 'boss' fight? Why even make such a dumb encounter? Just make it an actual boss fight you can kill with normal weapons instead of doing this lame cheese-strat shit. But no, its like impossible to kill this guy unless you exploit him basically. It just kinda sucks and feels anti-climatic.

So this guy dies, and now I get 'Ending 2'. A big smiley face image appears on screen and this time it sounds more congratulating like I'm doing something good and making progress.... OK. I mean sure, its amusing and funny and its a spectacle, but unlocking this ending didnt really feel like I didnt anything meaningful or rewarding, I just had to lookup some annoying cryptic strats, go play through a level I already beat to unlock some dumb gun, use the dumb gun a single time while the boss is knocked out, then I win. It kinda sucks.


And now to unlock the final ending, Ending 3, you have to beat every secret level in the game. Well, by this point I only found one secret level naturally, Alpine Hospitality. So I had to look up how to unlock all the secret levels. At this point I had to go back and playthrough parts of some of the previous levels, to find very cryptic hidden walls, obscure passages, just stuff I'd probably never find myself in a million years type shit. The first secret level is Darkworld, well to unlock Darkworld you have to go into a house in the second level, Paradise. Except the house basement is too dark to see. How do you see? well you have to use a Flashlight. Wheres the flashlight? I dont have it. Oh... its in some really cryptic random place in the level Androgen Assault. Ugh. So I have to playthrough that entire level again, just to be able to use the Exit and take the damn flashlight with me. Now I can finally go back to Paradise level with the flashlight, go to the basement where I can actually see - now in this basement theres an extremely obtuse hidden secret wall you have to open where you then see the Darkworld painting you can jump into. Oh yeah by the way, secret levels are like paintings from Mario 64, see what I mean with classic game references?


Thankfully the Darkworld secret level isnt too hard, the start of the level is, as youd expect, dark, but you just run past it and jump down onto some platform where theres a big mansion. Inside the mansion is your only target. Didnt take me too long to finish this level, just lure the enemies out, kill them one by one, kill the target, then the only challenging part was actually finding the exit. Once again I could not find the exit, wasting a dozen minutes going around looking for it. Had to look it up. Its inside some grate in the basement. See what I mean? An arrow should just popup when the target is dead and show you towards the exits, it just sucks each time this happens, it adds nothing to the game to wander around aimlessly looking for these damn things once I already completed the objectives.

Other secret levels such as Miners Miracle, you have to unlock in the Bog level, this one I could plausibly find myself, its just a tunnel near the spawn that takes you to it. Miners Miracle is just an odd level, at one point you run out into a field and you get a kind of Second person view of some sniper looking at your player character and you still control your player character, if you shoot you then shoot yourself. Whats the point of this section? Theres no other enemies on screen, it just serves to be really strange and not much else.

This level seems like some sort of cannibalism thing, you go to some building with kitchens and everyones talking about food and they all look even more deranged than usual, inside this palace you takeout the main targets then have to find the exit once again. I couldnt find out what to do. Had to look it up. Its some cryptic hidden passage under a table and floorboards. I mean some of these levels are cool and all, but why is there so much hidden shit that just wastes your time? it stops being fun at a certain point and just annoying.

One of the last secret levels, Neuron Activator, is unlocked in the level Idiot Party. Theres an elevator you can jump off to find its portal. Probably would never find this myself. This level is some kinda big rave party, crammed with tons of pedestrians and a few targets. Its like the design of the level is to make it as hard to identify the enemies as possible, which is a kinda cool twist. But I just said fuck it and started shooting everyone I saw, what, Im just gonna lose some money? by this point in the game I didnt even care about money anymore. This level is relatively straight forward and fun, go into the night club, kill everyone, leave.

Then the second last secret level is unlocked by simply buying a 'House' from the upgrades menu. The house costs 1 million dollars. By this point I only had like, 50k. Not happening. I had to look up how I can get enough money for that. Luckily there are a few hidden things in the game that gives tons of money. You can gamble at the casino level to get a million dollar payout, theres a damn Fishing mechanic in the game where you can fish in various spots and find fish to sell on the stock market, which I never interacted with. But what I chose is inside the level Neuron Activator is an option bank you can go into which has a hidden 1 million dollars. So I just did that. Theres a few marshmellow golem enemies that I killed with the rocket launcher but past that it was easy to get, its just hidden in an insanely obscure wall which I'd never find myself but looking it up was fine.

Now with the House level unlocked this level is just absurd. You start off at your house, with not much in it. Theres a car in your garage, you can drive the car and its just ridiculous driving over mountains bouncing all over the place its like awful on purpose I guess. There are these crazy orb tentacles in the distance which apparently give you rewards if you kill them but I never bothered. But what you have to do is go to some far off village where the actual level targets are. This level is straight forward , but challenging. I died quite a few times. You just go into this village full of pedestrians and human enemies shooting you, sniping you, each target inside a building, the last target inside some more fancy mansion building. I finally beat it by going back and using that 3 shot scoped rifle gun which made it much easier than whatever I was using before.

Then you unlock the final mission of the entire game, Trauma Loop. This level, as the name suggests, is just an exercise in pain and frustration. There are multiple paths you can take, first path I took was some platforming Mario 64 bullshit, which was annoying as hell. Then I actually naturally discovered another path by pushing a book on a shelf revealing an elevator down, this takes you down to this floating castle building with enemy placements again reminding me of trial and error BS games like I Wanna Be The Guy, after dying a dozen times memorizing everything I could actually get through it each time. You go upstairs and I killed something that said Ambassador dead, - I didnt even know what that meant but apparently its a really dangerous enemy. Then feeling stuck I couldnt really find what to do next. There is an EXTREMELY annoying room up here with floors you fall through and those Golem enemies inside tiny rooms with really, really obnoxious platforming that made me want to fucking rage quit just going inside them. Luckily theyre optional, what the HELL is the point of those fucking rooms? Like the worst area of the entire game. What you have to do is go to some downstairs hallway full of unkillable zombies, I could not get past this area so I looked it up. Well guess what? If you CROUCH YOU CANNOT TAKE DAMAGE FROM THE ZOMBIES. Facepalm. Who the hell is gonna figure this shit out on their own? The game just wastes your time and is obscure and stupid on purpose, it kinda sucks.

Getting past the zombies makes you go down some big chute, where you will die from fall damage unless you know to jump at the exact right moment, which further wasted a bunch of my time until I looked up how the hell I'm supposed to do it. Then youre at the bottom of this dark chasm full of super annoying slugs that drain your health where you can barely fucking see them, maybe the worst enemy in the whole game.

But finally going past this dark chasm theres a floating orb thing in the sky, you go around the level and slide your way down to it and stand under it and ENDING 3 UNLOCKED.

This gets you some crazy ending reciting some philosophical quotes from Georges Bataille, and other amusing I guess anti-capitalist stuff? I don't know the story and theme of the game is fascinating for sure, the whole presentation is kinda awesome and it has great writing , its not like the game is ever boring really. but yeah thats Cruelty Squad. Thats what it takes to 'beat the game'. I still had a bunch of implants I had not unlocked or found by this point, but thats every level completed, all endings unlocked.

How do I feel about this game? Well playing through I guess the 'first half' to Ending 1, was quite amusing and fun, with some annoying parts but mostly enjoyable. All the extra 'secret unlocking' stuff to get all the rest of the levels and Endings 2 and 3 was kinda unenjoyable annoying bullshit. I dont know what the intention was there, to make you sit down and play through every single level for dozens of hours until you somehow stumble across this cryptic nonsense? Doubtful thats ever gonna happen for most people. These 'secret' levels should just be more seamlessly weaved into the main game, I don't know, I cant say it was too enjoyable having to go read shit on Google to go get it just to play the rest of the game. Like sure its cool theres all sorts of wondrous things to find in the game, I love secrets in games, but these dont really feel like secrets it feels like you have not completed the game unless you do Trauma Loop, so I don't know everything past Ending 1 has me feeling conflicted. The actual gameplay, presentation, audio, sounds, and even morbid tones of the game are great, but at times Cruelty Squad made me feel like its simultaneously the worst game I've ever played and at times one of the best. An enigma for sure.

7/10