Crime Scene Cleaner Review (PC)

I was fifteen when I landed my first job—undertaking, believe it or not. It was around that time, during those faithful adolescent years that, where my friends were out enjoying the endless possibilities of the summer, I was elsewhere—in the opaque corridors of a morgue, under the impression that, in order to earn a living, I’d have to knuckle down and do a bit of dirty work. As for whether or not those life skills were transferrable to other orders of business—cleaning up after a mob attack, for example, is another matter, and one that I honestly didn’t think I’d have to deal with after making the vital decision to retire from the funeral service at nineteen. Alas, Crime Scene Cleaner has since come knocking, and I, being one to fit snuggly into the glass slipper, will answer the door. Here we go again.

Conceptually, Crime Scene Cleaner isn’t all that different from the likes of House Flipper, or Powerwash Simulator, for that matter. Mechanically, the game sees you working through a series of cleanly designed scenarios—iffy matters that, quite frankly, aren’t surpassable due to the sheer volume of spills, stains, and in this case, blood splatters. But, there’s a twist: you aren’t working for the authorities, but rather, the mob—an underground organization that has a habit of resorting to you to clean up their mess as and when the time strikes. And that, really, is what the game invites you to do: to make amends for the mob’s lack of hygiene and moral compass. Lucky you.

Anyway, Crime Scene Cleaner has just arrived on PC as a full-fledged ode to the art of cleaning. Care to join us as we pick up our mop and bucket? Then let’s get to work, feller.

Spills & Chills

It’s late out, and the mob certainly isn’t one to mince words. They’ve done something disturbingly bad, and they want you, the caretaker of the organization, to load up your tools and remove the evidence that may just result in their arrest should you fail to wipe the slate clean. It’s a simple job: wipe the grubby footprints from the wood floor; scrub the blood stains from the carpet; and, for the sake of keeping the perfectionist mind on track, remove the corpse that just so happens to be slouched against the fire exit. There’s a lot of dirty work to be done, but at the end of the day, somebody has to do it. It’s a darn good thing that they pay so much for your services, then, eh?

Crime Scene Cleaner dabbles on a wavelength that we’ve seen countless times before. It’s a love letter, if anything, and while it may not don the same vibrant colors and family-friendly vibe as its adversaries, it does manage to capture the same gameplay loop that we’ve come oh-so comfortable with. Like its peers, the world in which you find yourself in has a slew of fresh challenges to shovel through—a checklist, if you will—which involves taking on certain contracts and other gory odd jobs around town in exchange for cash and other lavish mob-based benefits. But of course, there’s that elephant in the room here: the mob isn’t quite as organized as, say, an OAP with a feather duster, which means that you have to do a little more than the average caretaker to meet the job requirements. But hey — no pressure, though.

If the Glove Fits

What truly sets Crime Scene Cleaner apart from its other kin is its unpredictability—the fact that, even though it’s mostly the same deal with each new job that you onboard, the beats are oftentimes cloudy and obscured by a significant amount of gruesome detail. It’s the not knowing, and not being able to fully come to grips with what it is that you’re doing, that’s what makes it all the more, I don’t know, daring. Of course, you don’t have to worry about any federal law coming into effect; on the contrary, you can simply sift through your duties at a relatively slow pace, which means that you aren’t necessarily against the clock, but rather, the checklist that looms over your shoulders instead.

As for the gameplay itself, Crime Scene Cleaner mostly focuses on the act of having you shovel through a series of relatively simple steps: clean the blood, dispose of the evidence, and rearrange the furniture to create a sense of order and what have you. Aside from these rather generic tasks, the game also allows you to onboard separate goals—looting the area for personal items, and utilizing your perks for upgrades and other abilities on a nifty skill tree, for example. Naturally, you have the power to choose how to respond to each given episode, whether it’s by restoring balance to a crime scene, or by ransacking the joint and harvesting as many collectibles and items as remotely possible to benefit your back pocket. It doesn’t matter either way, mind you, so long as there isn’t any evidence for the authorities to uncover once you vanish into the night.

Flipping for Criminals

I wouldn’t chalk this one up as an idle clicker sort of gig—the sort of thing you’d take on whilst mindlessly jamming out to some form of lo-fi playlist on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It isn’t quite that. Well, it is a little bit of that — but there’s a lot more to it than the bog-standard rinse-and-repeat ordeal that we’ve come to know and love from previous iterations. It’s a lot more, mainly due to the fact that, from an overarching point, the maps are generously designed, sizable, and loaded with all kinds of secrets and additional incentivized elements to uncover. Add the fact that there’s also a genuinely intriguing story and unruly setting to immerse yourself in, and you’ve got all of the quality ingredients of a worthwhile conservation project.

If you’re looking to take the natural route towards the next step in your caretaking journey, then you ought to consider jotting your name down for Crime Scene Cleaner, if not for an excuse to scratch that post-House Flipper itch, then for the sake of carving away at that ever-alluring sense of morbid curiosity. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot to enjoy here—a tremendous amount, even, given the fact that the campaign also offers a solid variety of different nodes and avenues for you to explore over the course of the campaign. It helps, too, that each portion of the story also has a meter that, when put into effect, can elevate what would otherwise be a textureless cleaning sim into a full-fledged horror game, gore and all. I can’t fault that, honestly.

Verdict

As the saying goes: insanity is doing the same thing several times over and expecting different results. Well, there is some level of truth in these words, and I don’t think the act of cleaning crime scenes is an exception to that, either. With that said, if I had come to learn anything about Crime Scene Cleaner, it was that the mob, although a little gimmicky in their own sort of way, wasn’t the type to rely on routines or other forms of tomfoolery. Sure, I could bet my life on the idea that each new scenario would more or less involve some form of gore and a lifeless corpse of some sort, but that didn’t change the fact that there was always something else embroidered in the script. And, to be fair, that’s sort of what kept me going: not knowing what sort of job would come knocking next.

All in all, I’d say that you’re looking at a rough eleven or twelve hours of content to work through in Crime Scene Cleaner — perhaps even a few more, depending how you approach certain objectives and tackle some specific encounters with the mob. Regardless of how you choose to execute the job at hand, the fact still remains: if you are the sort of gamer who can get a kick out of mopping up spillages and bathing in small quantities of perks and XP, then you can’t really go wrong with President Studio’s latest mob-and-mop excursion. It’s dirty work, for sure, and yet, in the strangest of ways, an ordeal that is exciting enough to make even the most mundane of things seem weirdly captivating. Eat your heart out, House Flipper.