Crime Scene Cleaner was a surprise Xbox drop and a Day One Game Pass port. Taking on the role of a Dad whose wife was fridged and daughter is super duper uber sick. As a janitor, you’re the king of cleaning, and when a deceased friend’s kid accidentally murders his drug dealer, you help out by cleaning things up. Queue a connected mob boss who loves murdering and finding out, and you’ve got a new profession, mopping up rivers worth of blood.
Sleep, Drive, Mop
Crime Scene Cleaner is very European as evidenced by its willingness to dive right into some truly horrific crimes, including seeming sexual assaults into murder right off the bat. It’s kind of wild that this game is on Game Pass, given just how f’ed up it can be. As a Jaystwocents looking janitor, you’ll start your day at home, with your dog Dexter just hanging out. Answer your phone, have a short conversation, and then use your computer to activate a job.
Once you arrive in your pickup truck, you’ll get to work. The job consists of picking up and throwing away all broken items and dead bodies. You’ll need to mop up the copious amounts of blood that stain each level. Seriously, these people have more blood in them than the over-the-top ’80s anime. There is a running tally on the top left of the screen for each area of a level. Things like moving furniture, finding and removing evidence, and a few other tasks unique to each level will slowly tick down.
There are ten chapters right now in Crime Scene Simulator. As you complete them, you’ll see what looks like two other variants of each, but those are not active yet. I spent half an hour trying to figure out what I needed to do to activate them after completing the story, before searching the web and finding out they simply do not work yet.
Houser Wash Stimulator
The majority of Crime Scene Cleaner’s gameplay feels like a messed-up version of House Flipper. There is a copious amount of picking things up and throwing them into your never-ending supply of garbage bags. Pressing Q gives you “cleaner vision” like you’re a terminator for stains. Outside of the garbage you have a mop, sponge, and pressure washer for all the blood, puke, shit, and piss that litter the terrain.
As you pick up bodies and toss them around for fun, you will find various dollar bills, drugs, and expensive items you can steal. This money is used as your experience, earning you skill points which let you upgrade everything you have until you are akin to a cleaning God. For proper cleaning, you’ll need lots of fresh water, with each level having various faucets strewn throughout. As you use your mops and soon, gett they’ll accumulate filth, requiring a quick cleaning. You get detergents to slow this down or empower your mop until it can clean the surface of the sun itself.
One of your most powerful tools is the black light. It lets you see all of the accumulated filth you’ll need to clean in an area around it without having to rely on cleaner vision as often. Every level has collectible cassette tapes that let you play the game’s soundtrack, as well as secrets to find. Most secrets lead to large reserves of money to greatly increasing your overall experience gain.
Big Jim
Where Crime Scene Cleaner changes things up a bit is in its focus on story. Most of these “simulator” types offer up the most bland and meager stories. Crime Scene Cleaner goes all in with a psychotic gangster who thinks any and everyone is out to get him at all times. While the ending felt a bit weak, I grew to genuinely enjoy how dumb and funny the writing could be.
As said previously, this game is extremely European, n and the grammatical errors in the writing and dialogue came fast and furious. It only added to the weird, wacky vibes the game consistently gave. This is one of the chill-out and turn your brain off types of games, you’re just doing it in the weirdest/worst situations.
One issue is the lack of replayability. With only ten levels, most of them taking 30 or so minutes to beat, with the last few being up to two hours, you’ll have a fun week/weekend with the game. There is no co-op, and so far, no challenge modes or variability to the jobs. Once you beat it, you can go back and replay jobs, and that seems to be about it.
Wrapping Things Up
Crime Scene Cleaner is an odd duck. It’s mix of zen-inducing gameplay in some truly horrific crime scenes is delightful, though a lack of things to do post-campaign is a bummer.
Crime Scene Cleaner
Played on
Xbox Series X and PC
PROS
- Looks and runs well
- Gameplay loop is satisfying
- Lots of powerful upgrades to unlock
- Weird-assed story
CONS
- Low replayability
- Story conclusion is unsatisfactory
