Before the main event, there’s usually a warm-up act – a stand-up comic, maybe a support band – but what happens after that? Someone has to pick up the pieces and tidy up. These are the true heroes, like your parents, who pick up the plastic debris after you’ve hosted a Lego Woodstock. It’s not a glamorous job, but someone has to do it, and find the right employer, and it pays well. Let’s talk Serial Cleaner for the Switch.
While browsing the Nintendo eShop, I stocked up on a handful of games. Of those, Serial Cleaner was near the top as it has been on my wishlist for some time. The wishlist on the Nintendo eShop is a funny old thing. I know some people use a wishlist for items they want to buy someday or perhaps wait for the price to drop. For me, it’s a convenient way to remind myself what I want to play next, but if the price does come down, I might do a bulk buy. The price was right, but is Serial Cleaner Switch any good? Yes. I love it!
Set in the 1970’s you play Bobby, the cleaner of the title and not one of the fairies your folks claim to clean up after you. He lives with his mum, got himself into a debt problem and needs to pay it off pretty darn swift as the people he owes money to are on the wrong side of the law. To solve his money troubles, he has a cleaning job – the type of cleaning that gets rid of bodies, guns and stubborn stains such as blood, crayon and blackcurrant. It pays well, and the company benefits are out of this world, but no dental plan.
Specifically a stealth game, Bobby has to sneak around, and you can’t deal with the po-po the same way as the wrong ‘uns. You must tiptoe about, avoiding any contact whatsoever, as if they catch you, that’s it. No lives, no health – back to the start of the level, known as a contract. Bypassing these agents of law means observing their patterns – where they walk and their line of sight.
The sight system is similar to Metal Gear Solid, Hitman or a driving theory test: a triangular cone of vision. It’s orange by default but switches to red if they see you. The fuzz then gives chase until they a) catch you or b) you hide in a pot plant. As you do. You can ‘disappear’ in plain sight while they are giving chase, but the button response can be a bit fiddly, and it’s easy to double-press the button and hide, then reappear, only to be hit with a truncheon. Fnar fnar.
The cops have a simple patrol pattern, so if you’re patient, you know where they’ll go next, but if seen, their pattern may change. Ideal situation: don’t be seen. Each level doesn’t have a ranking system, so you need not worry about unlocking trophies by speeding through or doing x, y, then z, as there isn’t a set time limit. That said, even with the best strategy, it’s not that difficult to cause a disturbance, which results in being caught and restarting the contract.
There’s scope for a sequel. Maybe in Serial Cleaner 2: This Time It Gets Messy, you play Bobby’s offspring, who has a penchant for boxing (linked to the Serial Cleaner story), and they implement their own style of cleaning. Instead of dumping the bodies into the car, you drop them in some sort of acid or made into pies. I’m not going to find out what type of acid or a suitable pastry as I’m not a psycho and don’t want to, nor need to know. However, you could feed them to pigs. They’d go through the bones like butter. In the end, though, yes, Serial Cleaner is a good, clean fun.
