I really like all the main characters, they’re well-written, believable human beings, and their voice actors do a great job at bringing them to life. The game starts off really promising, with a flashy, animated introduction full of style, before segueing into our four protagonists, celebrating New Years’ Eve 1999 by swapping tales of their favorite operations from a decade of being in business.

If there’s one thing I liked about the game, it is the well-crafted story. It’s not a glamorous line of work, and the cast eventually grows to have mixed feelings over it, but it’s definitely a unique setup. They go to crime scenes and clean up anything that could be incriminating to their employer, namely evidence, dead bodies, and especially blood. Serial Cleaners is a pulpy, 90’s infused, organized crime tale about Bob, Psycho, Viper, and Lati, a group of mobsters who deal in the business of evidence disposal. Serial Cleaners is a hybrid stealth game/cleaning simulator, perhaps one of the weirdest genre mashups I’ve seen in the longest time, and it’s absolutely not a harmonious mixture. Unless you count super vacuum cleaning action. It’s the purest stealth game I’ve seen in a long time, all sneaking, no action. This is why I was a little skeptical of Serial Cleaners, from developer Draw Distance and publisher 505 Games. It can greatly enhance a game it’s featured with, but it’s a bad situation when all you have is ketchup. I think adding stealth mechanics to a game is like adding a condiment to your favorite meal. But playing these games the way the devs subtly hint that you should, a nonlethal ghost playthrough, is extremely unpalatable to me. I love Dishonored for its imaginative world and characters, and for the well-done sword combat.

I love Deus Ex for its freedom of choice and the feeling of being a superpowered cyborg badass. They’re some of my favorite games to play, but I rarely enjoy them for the actual stealth mechanics. I have a complex relationship with stealth games.

Serial cleaner nintendo switch