Mikko Perӧsuo. That’s the name of the first person my mech pilot killed in the “line of duty.” All the warning signs were there; back at HQ, multiple cops were concerned about Mikko’s behavior, a farmer increasingly radicalized after his agricultural permits were denied multiple years in a row. One officer said they were worried he “may soon do something he might regret,” but no one did more than gossip. As I left the European Federal Police HQ in my V-Stalker equipped with a Cord-12.7mm heavy machine gun and HX G600 battle rifle, I heard gunfire. Or rather, I felt it bouncing ineffectually off the EFP Standard Armor, not so much as chipping the paint. Almost reflexively, I took aim at the lone gunman and pulled the trigger.
This is Psycho Patrol R, a new game from Cruelty Squad developer Consumer Softproducts that launched earlier this week in Early Access. You play as a mech pilot in the European Federal Police (EFP), engaging in skirmishes and detective cases in a surreal vision of the EU where “every quest is a side quest,” as the Steam description puts it. Basically, it’s an open-ended immersive sim with giant robots where you play as a dirtbag. It also happens to be obtuse, strange, punishing, and tailored towards a very particular kind of sicko, but if it clicks, you’ll probably spend far too long searching its dark corners for answers and excuses to fire high-caliber machine guns.
In the hallucinatory opening, a low-poly man with a smiling holographic face tells you that the Federation of Pan-Europa is in a state of panic due to the upcoming “great human extinction event.” He says you are “the last individual left on Twin-Terra with an iron backbone and a strong sense of justice. A fitting hero for the federal age.” He then recites the federal pledge: “I PLEDGE TO UPHOLD THE LAW AND THE SANCTITY OF THE STATE, I SUBMIT TO THE HOLY AUTOMATISM OF ACTION. CIRCULATION OF BLOOD IS CIRCULATION OF POWER.”
From here, I’m thrown into the shoes of a custom-created cop defined by unexplained stats like “Bioenergy” and “Lack.” There’s no mini-map or initial quest marker, so I stumble around this office made from blocky PSX-styled graphics until I eventually find Lorenzo Visconti, who is apparently my boss. He rambles about the real-world Austrian psychoanalyst Willhelm Reich and his concepts of “muscular armor,” insisting Reich’s theories are the cornerstone of his unit’s policing and must be followed to act as “pragmatic anti-hitlerite officers of the law” (while many of Reich’s theories are absurd, like the idea that a cosmic sexual energy called orgone could cure cancer, he was also an anti-fascist who wrote a book called The Mass Psychology of Fascism).
Lorenzo then spouts psychoanalytical nonsense about the collective consciousness before giving you a mission to investigate something called “SLS Panic,” a “psychohazard” reaction to rumors that Sodium Lauryl Sulfate-based products, like shampoo, can cause disease and hair loss; he wants you to find out who is spreading this information and put a stop to it. While he claims this needs to be done because these alleged lies will spread discord, it seems like you might actually be doing the bidding of SLS-dependent companies, calling to mind Consumer Softproducts’ previous game and its corporate-sponsored assassinations.
The ridiculousness of Lorenzo’s words is further emphasized when, after receiving this lecture on how the precinct’s Rechian approach is what differentiates them from “vulgar authoritarian policing,” you step outside and immediately blast a guy into pixelated bits. The contrast between words and actions is as sharp as Cruelty Squad‘s capitalism-bashing messaging, and in this case, the team directs its barbed satire towards the oxymoron of “ethical policing.” Because, despite your leader’s grandstanding, you face no consequences whatsoever when you accidentally (or intentionally) trample on innocent civilians in your several-ton mech suit (unless you squish a cop, of course). In fact, you’re frequently rewarded for this collateral damage because passersby drop pocket change when they die, letting out a cartoonish “ka-ching” as you collect your prize.
And as it turns out, you’ll need every penny of this blood money to upgrade your gear because the world outside the police station is brutal; if you thought the frequent allusions to a largely discredited Austrian psychoanalyst were esoteric, the gameplay matches this energy and then some. After exiting the garage (and wiping what remains of Mikko off the sidewalk), there are two directions to explore. On your right is a nightmare bridge where four V-Stalkers wait to ambush you, two attacking from the front while another pair snipe you from a distance. This is where I lost all $5,000 of my starting cash—like in Dark Souls, you drop all your money when you die, and if you bite it again before picking it up, it’s gone for good. Despite my best attempts at side-dashing and leading my shots, I beat my head against this battle for probably too long before assuming I was meant to come back later.
In the other direction is “PHC Free City,” where almost every person hates your guts: “You will perish like the rest of your Pan-Europan pig friends!” one yells. After taking two steps in, you’ll get unloaded on from all sides, but luckily for you, these low-caliber bullets barely scratch your state-funded mech. Your armor shrugs off small arms fire as long as you haven’t taken damage from a V-Stalker’s heavier ordinance. The area is less insurmountable than the bridge, but still uncompromising because these mechs can demolish you in a second flat. While enemies without a V-Stalker stand absolutely no chance against these hulking machines, that goes for you too; when you inevitably leave your vehicle to navigate tighter spaces, you have virtually no room for error because getting hit by a single bullet means curtains.
To overcome your frailty, you’ll have to memorize map layouts and devise strategies that probably involve peeking around corners and using the right weapons for the job. For instance, I eventually realized that my 20mm cannon was much more effective against V-Stalkers than my smaller-caliber weapons, which led me to dual-wield these during particularly V-Stalker-centric encounters. While these scraps can often be frustrating at first, it feels excellent to finally get through unscathed.
However, unlike Consumer Softproducts’ previous release, this one is deeply non-linear, tasking you with navigating a rancid world as you meet a bunch of freaks who speak in cryptic proper nouns and are generally obsessed with Wilhelm Reich. You might find a Dutch Frogman in an alley who asks you to perform a ritual in the sewers, where you’ll inevitably get killed by poison rats. Or you’ll spot a one-off manhole, blow it open, and discover a pathway to a prison where a naked man screams at you. Or you’ll hear strange garbled noises in a bathroom, shoot at the wall, and see a fleshy, square-shaped face staring back at you. It’s bizarre but cohesive, operating by its own strange internal logic.
Exploration is further complicated by a whole bunch of finicky mechanics, like a fatigue counter that charges you thousands of dollars if you let it top out or an in-game stock market that seems to be the best way to avoid going broke because every bullet you fire takes money out of your meager daily wage (I am currently $6,000 in debt and can’t even afford a snack from the company vending machine). These many unstreamlined details grant this experience the flavor of an old-school RPG, and the general lack of explicit guidance or even a “main” story will likely either be very enticing or frustrating, depending on your preferences.
While personally, I’ll admit that Psycho Patrol R’s crushing encounters and ambiguous quest design left me a tad frustrated at times, it’s still such a weird, unique thing that I very much plan on checking in from time to time during its Early Access period. Basically, it shares Cruelty Squad‘s best quality: its surreal vibe, and between its off-kilter writing, low-poly aesthetic, and UI choices from the ninth layer of hell, it’s clearly a project driven by the singular whims of creatives rather than by a committee of suits. Put simply, Psycho Patrol R is grotesque in a way that’s impossible to look away from.
Elijah Gonzalez is the assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.
