As a self-proclaimed expert in the art of stealth gaming, I’ve never given much thought to who has to clean up the mess when things go south in the middle of a mission. This is largely due to the fact that I am not an amateur and my mother taught me to clean up my own messes, like an adult living in a civil society. For the rest of you who leave blood puddles that trail through the level, bodies sloppily littering the map in a haphazard way, and enough evidence that it would make it impossible for Johnnie Cochran to get you off the charges with his impeccable Chewbacca defense, there are the Serial Cleaners. 

This is a follow-up to the 2017 release Serial Cleaner, which gives you the chance to see what it’s like for the folks who have to do damage control after someone else got a little too trigger-happy on their last mission. If you’re like me and never played the original, it’s self-contained enough for you to jump in without having any previous experience. The story takes place on New Year’s Eve of 1999 as the group’s leader Bob recounts some of his favorite cleanups, thinking back on the jobs that lead him to recruit the rest of the team, and then the team sharing some of their own war stories. This allows the game to realistically jump time periods going as far back as the 80s as well as locales all while firmly being planted in a semi-realistic setting. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite narrative, or anywhere close to it, but it was written well enough with just enough dark humor to keep me from mashing the skip button to get to the action. If you want to call it that.

This is a rather short game that features smaller open areas that task you with removing bodies, vacuuming up blood, and disposing of evidence; all while avoiding the prying eyes of the police, security guards, or general gawkers casually strolling by. The variety comes in the form of how you go about these tasks since you will need to distract the NPCs to achieve your goals – it could be by dragging a body throughout the level using the ensuing blood trail to write your name on the floor, shutting off some lights, or something so simple as just leaving a door open. There is a surprising amount of options available to you in each level; however, that is where the freedom comes to an end. In most cases, you have a limited amount of places to dump the goods, thus making the journey there less intriguing, and removing any desire for me to revisit previous levels to try to find a better approach.

At a minimum, I wish I was given the option to swap cleaners, or even pick which cleaner I could use. Sadly, you are mostly locked into whichever character was at the forefront of the mission in question, only occasionally being able to call in backup from one of the others. They are mostly the same outside of obvious physical characteristics, but each brings some unique ability to the table: you’ve got the girl who can parkour about, a hacker, and then my personal favorite, the psychopath who can use a chainsaw to cut apart bodies and then throw the severed limbs at the living in an effort to knock them out, or if they do happen to stumble upon you in the grisly act, may faint on the spot. This was easily the high point of my playthrough and had I been given the option, this would’ve easily been my main throughout.

If you are a returning player, one thing you will likely notice is the drastic change to the overall design; going from a pixel art depiction to a more detailed isometric viewpoint that really suits the gameplay. The varied set pieces really capture the grimy, gritty nature of the crime that permeated film and TV during the late 90s with a surprising level of detail. I only wish this carried over to the character models, which look passable but kind of dated, almost like this was designed for mobile and ported to consoles and PCs after the fact, akin to the recent GTA remasters. Outside of the faces, which look stylized just enough to be forgivable, everyone looks kind of stiff, moves like they have a stick shoved up their ass, and the way they run just perplexes me – it looks like they are running at full speed through a vat of molasses. The AI is also kind of weird. While I rarely felt challenged until deep into the endgame, it’s hard to miss how some guards completely ignored the fact that they were across the room walking straight toward me, but were on high alert the moment I pulled out my vacuum cleaner when they were three rooms away.

While the visuals seemed to have been upgraded, everything else seems to be a slight step backward, at least in terms of what I gathered from reading Jason’s review of the first game. Unlike the original, everything seems to remain static from playthrough to playthrough. The guards follow the same path, the goals remain in the same places, and the night and day changes are a thing of the past. This didn’t negatively impact me outside of my obvious issue with the lack of freedom, but if this was a selling point for you originally, it might discourage you from following the series further.

Serial Cleaners is a unique game that I really can’t compare to anything else on the market. I enjoyed my time with the game for what it is, but was left wanting a little more by the time the credits rolled. I wanted more options and more freedom, and I really think this could’ve been an outstanding game to play with friends cooperatively with a few minor tweaks.  I can easily look to the future and see how some minor changes could’ve elevated this from something different that I wouldn’t discourage you from playing to being a must-have release. I will hold out hope for the inevitable third release to hopefully deliver on this. Until then, I’ll try to keep them busy by leaving them just a little more to clean up when I game elsewhere.

7 out of 10

Pros

• The Psychopath Is Hilariously Brutal to Use
• The New Characters Change Up the Gameplay Slightly
• The Backdrops Look Outstanding

Cons

• Limited Options That Discourage Experimentation
• This Game Was Begging for Co-Op
• Stiff Character Models
• Mediocre AI

Serial Cleaners was developed by Draw Distance and published by 505 Games. The game is available on NS, PC, PS4, PS5, X1, XSX. The game was provided to us for review on NS. If you’d like to see more of Serial Cleaners, check out the official site.

 

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