Titles such as Hotline Miami have marked the era thanks to its explosive mixture of action, challenge and a very particular mood; others like Party Hard , betting on a slower and less visceral game rhythm, adding a good dose of strategy and stealth to the equation. Now we have to clean up what others do. We are the Cleaner , a cleaning professional after the most atrocious crimes that acts ou
tside the law in favor of the mafia in exchange for a good pinch. Work of the small Polish studio iFun4All together with the Londoners Curve Digital , Serial Cleaner takes us to the turbulent decade of the 70s to clean, vacuum in hand, the most varied criminal scenes, both in PC and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One , in a 2D stealth adventure and with a sharp sense of humor. To clean!
Beginnings of the 70 . We are the Cleaner, a boxing enthusiast who loves the bell-bottomed cowboys who lives with his mother and who devotes himself, without anyone knowing it, to a job that very few would understand. Each call becomes a new and macabre c
ommission to which we must go with our ranchera, in order to get rid of the bodies , gather the incriminating evidence and make us with other precious objects, not without clearing the liters and liters of bl
ood scattered in every criminal scenario. And all this surrounded by police, gangsters and other insightful figures who will try to hunt us at the slightest suspicion of our presence. Broadly speaking, Serial Cleaner seems like a simple title for fast consumption
; Nothing is further from reality. We have hours and hours ahead to complete each scenario one hundred percent and get us with their large number of collectibles hidden throughout the many scenarios.
The title offers as a great incentive a story mode with a curious argument -which does not skimp on topics- with up to 20 different levels to overcome, as well as another 10 extra levels -really good- based on cult films and that we can unlock if we fin
d their respective film coils hidden in the scenarios. At almost all levels the challenges and the mechanics to follow will be the same; we have a
s objectives to collect the bodies of the victims, put them in bags and take them to our vehicle ; in certain occasions we can make the bodies disappear in other ways, say, unorthodox. Other c
onditions that will allow us to complete a level will be the collection of all kinds of testsof the crime, as well as completing the requir
ed percentage of blood “removed” from the scenario; Of course, we can always reach 100% blood if we want to complete the entire title, a very complicated challenge, by the way.
The levels will be full of police officers, security agents and even gangsters who will watch the crime scene so that no one tampers with or withdraws the
evidence. According to the type of “enemy”, they will run more or less, they will have better or worse sight or they will notice our presence more or less easily. And it is that if we remove a corpse or a test, quickly they will g
o to the place to try to find out what has happened; if they catch us, the game ends and it’s time to restart the scenario, something that will be especially painful at the most advanced – and complex – levels when we have a short tim
e to finish. It will be at this moment where strategy and stealth come into play; we must study each level very well -from houses to factories, going through clubs, gyms or caravan parks- and the routes of each policeman or security guard.
Thus, each one of our antagonists will follow their own itineraries observing the place thanks to their vision cones; If we cross paths with them and enter their reach, they will undertake a persecution to which we must respond, either hiding or misleading them. Of course, they usually run more than we do -especially if we carry a body-, so the best option is to look for s
ome element of concealment of the many available according to the map: from pots to barrels or boxes, everything will be used to mislead our persecutors. In order to locate each of the objectives and places to hide, we can resort to
the so-called Sense of the Cleaner , a skill that allows us to see the entire map highlighting the points of interest.
We can also try to call the attention of a policeman in order to change his route and leave a zone that interests us, either by quickly passing his cone of vision or causing distractions with radios or other noisy objects, in addition to moving certain obj
ects to change the scenario. This is where Serial Cleaner shows its best side, offering the player a whole range of possibilities to face each situation in the way we consider. In addition, with each new game or attempt, the main elements change their location, with which the challenge increases exponentially; Of course, some of these
random configurations will be more accessible than others, causing some incoherence in the curve of difficulty of the title. Luckily, and once w
e have finished the main campaign, we can add a long collection of challenges that will completely change the evolution of each game, adding all kinds of handicaps that will modify the personality of the title and that can lead to infernal levels of difficulty; all a success.
