I like how all the violence is framed in this carnivalesque setting, with festival attractions turned morbid. Not only does it go hand-in-hand with the in-story justification for “the games” (that it should be a show for the sponsors), it also maps the arcade like facets into the world’s logic, like racking up points is all part of the deal in this hell hole. A baroque exaltation of the excess action movie bullshit violence, and it’s great.

Also it recognizes that extreme violence works if the tone is not self-serious. Plenty of gore centred media can become unintentionally funny and fail. The other approach, taken here, is to lean into the silliness of the excess. The game constantly shows the carnage as funny, glossy, stylish. If it was constantly framing its violence as a moody or disastrous thing, it would come off as corny, I think. It succeeds because it knows its violence to be a casual, pointless haze of speedy executions.