Cruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you dead
Feeding your dog an entire can of soda normally results in a very sick dog. In Cruel, however, filling your pooch with off-brand Dr Pepper gives you roguelike-style upgrades. In my first run of this frantic run-and-gun shooter, I netted a bonus that gave me extra ammo when deflecting bullets with a melee weapon. To this I responded «Hold on, you can deflect bullets?»
Kicking down the door to the next level, I swiped my axe at the first cultist to take a shot at me, and the projectile pinged off the metal axehead. «Oh wow, you can deflect bullets,» I said, before blasting the cultist's head off with my revolver.
While it's a fair description of your actions in the game, Cruelis running with the wrong adjective in its title. It should really be called Cool, because that's what it is, and effortlessly so. It's a grungy, riotously-paced shooter that has shades of Monolith's classic gunfest Blood, as well as more recent titles like Anger Foot, where you tear through the dilapidated hallways of an apartment block that's actively trying to kill you.
A round of Cruel starts in wickedly stylish fashion, with your character tossing their revolver into a chalk pentagram on a table, as a disembodied voice asks «Who do you want to kill?». You're prompted to type a response to this, and I won't lie, a few different names ran through my head before I settled on responding «You.» «Wow, really,» the disembodied voice replied. «Well, that's disturbing, but who am I to judge?»
Following this encounter, you're thrown into a glowing elevator which takes you to the first floor of the apartment building, where you'll typically be greeted by a pistol-toting cultist. Cruel will seem familiar to seasoned FPS fans for about thirty seconds, until you glance over your shoulder to discover the hallway behind you is on fire. Consequently, each level becomes a race against the flames, with you booting down doors and dealing with whatever's inside as efficiently as you can to reach the next stage.
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