BUTCHER’s hyper-exaggerated pixelation manages to amplify the already-excessive ultraviolence. Even from a distance, the pixels used to construct everything are absolutely massive, which in turn makes the on-screen action look like it’s been heavily censored. Not that it’s shy about its subject matter. Everything in this game dies horribly. Messily. By buckshot, blades, bullets, and brimstone. Human beings are reduced to sticky, nondescript networks of unidentifiable red clumps, burned into nothingness, or repurposed as house paint. It’s an absolutely disgusting game, and the fact that it's so implicitly detailed somehow makes it worse. Everything else about BUTCHER’s visuals is in the service of being as high-impact as humanly possible. The simple act of firing your shotgun visibly rattles the screen, for crying out loud.
Maciej Niedzielski has somehow created the official soundtrack to unapologetic mass murder; it’s an awesomely nasty piece of electronic metal that elevates the on-screen action at every step. It feels quintessentially 90's; in the same grody way that Hotline Miami’s music is quintessentially 80's. The music bores into your skull and plays you as you play the game. It makes you more ruthless, more efficient, and more graceful in your campaign of indiscriminate slaughter. BUTCHER’s only voice acting is made up of agonized screams, because, of course it is. And all the sound effects that precede those screams… earn those screams.