Cruelty Squad is undoubtedly one of the weirdest indie breakthroughs of this decade, a wilfully obtuse and unpleasant immersive sim in which you play a corporate assassin in a lo-fi 3D world painted with vomit. But we dug its counter-cultural (and counter-mechanical) approach and, following its success, the developer has since been working on a new game called Psycho Patrol R, which has just dropped a new trailer in advance of its early access launch in a few weeks' time.
Psycho Patrol R is spiritually aligned with, but fictionally distinct from Cruelty Squad, with developer Consumer Softproducts describing it as a "policing and punishing simulator" set in a decaying state called Pan-Europa. In fact, I'm just gonna drop in the full blurb in below, because it's basically nightmare dystopian flash fiction that really got me stoked to jump in.
You play as an officer of the European Federal Police, a V-Stalker pilot of Psycho Patrol, a special unit tasked with counter-psychohazard operations and neural meltdown prevention using cutting edge criminological frameworks. The battleground of the 21st century is the human brain, the base unit of the hyperconjoined egregore Terra. The soul of the planet is on the verge of collapse. Your chances are 0.001%.
- Psychedelic assassination FPS Cruelty Squad is getting official merch including 'Godhead Heavy Industry' hats and 'Resist Cocaine' t-shirts
- I felt goodwill and hope for the future seeing Cybrlich and the Death Cult of Labor, an FPS that's 60% HUD and looks like an Adult Swim cartoon where you smoke 'deepweed' to restore your health and blow clouds that spell out 'doink' and 'loud'
I mean, who wouldn't want to play that?
Pyscho Patrol R likewise appears to play similarly to Cruelty Squad, providing an open-ended blend of stealth and first-person shooting. The world is seamless this time around, rather than being split into missions, and you'll be able to approach its objectives however you like, with the developers stating that "every quest is a side quest".
The biggest difference, though, is how you can switch between on-foot combat and piloting a big mech, which the new trailer dedicates a big chunk of its time to portraying. You might think a mech designed by the creator of Cruelty Squad would handle like a forklift on an ice-rink, but it looks surprisingly smooth and responsive. Indeed, the combat in general seems slightly more refined than Cruelty Squad, which I'll admit I'm relieved by. I liked Cruelty Squad's ideas, but I found it just too unwieldy to stick with. The textures still look like they were taken from a pub car park, however, so don't expect it to be in any way a conventional FPS experience.
Psycho Patrol R launches in Steam early access on March 31. It's landing in a big year for first-person shooters, with Killing Floor 3 arriving a few days before Psycho Patrol R, Doom: The Dark Ages set to rip and tear a big hole in your gaming time in May, and the likes of Atomfall, Borderlands 4, and Splitgate 2 all set to launch this year. Yet even among this packed crowd, I doubt Psycho Patrol R will have much trouble standing out.
