Crime Scene Cleaner Review – MOB AND BUCKET – Guest Review by Albie

The following review for Crime Scene Cleaner, is a guest review by the very awesome Albie from the completexbox discord. At Complete Xbox, we always welcome your views, and we love to share and promote them within the wider gaming community.

To find out more about Albie and for a fanastic video playthrough of Crime Scene Cleaner, please check him out on Youtube and Twitch, you will not be dissapointed.

Before we get started, here’s a little about me. I love cleaning games. I love detective games. So, when I saw a game called Crime Scene Cleaner was coming to Gamepass, I raised an eyebrow. I’d never heard of it before, so naturally I expected it to have janky controls and ropey visuals. Instead, it hit me right between the eyes…

You play as Kovalsky, a former janitor whose daughter fell ill, incurring significant medical bills. In order to pay for her treatment, desperation leads him to uses his transferable skills to work for the Mob – Specifically, in cleaning up after their “visits”.

Let’s not beat about the bush: This game deals in some pretty serious topics. These scenes are Mob hits and they don’t try to be discreet. They’re sending a message. Any time you enter a scene, there will be bean juice -everywhere-. Some of the situations you encounter may be distressing. With such an intense subject, I am grateful for the levity brought by the game mechanics being (I believe intentionally) a little clumsy – The ragdoll effects, in particular, are hilarious.

Let me explain: Your primary weapons against these gore-soaked environments are a bucket of water, a mop and a sponge. You unlock more as you go along, but these are your opening salvo. Place down a bucket and get scrubbing. Except, the bucket is a physics object – You can knock it over, and I’m sure you will. Again and again. I couldn’t tell you how many times I have done just that in the dark, cramped crime scenes, only to leave a trail of bloody footprints when I take the bucket to be refilled. Also, you’re going to break plates, glasses, furniture – All things you’ll need to clean up afterwards. I found myself making my own physics mini-games, such as trying to make 3-pointers using a bag of waste (or a body) as a ball and the back of my truck as the net. Yes, he’s a strong fella, and yes, I have a dark sense of humour.

There have been moments in the game where I’ve opened the tool wheel to select a piece of equipment and it’s instead given me the tool next to it, but that hasn’t ever ruined my game. It has, instead, made me laugh a few times, and as it’s also possible to cycle through tools with the D-Pad, this is barely worth mentioning. Each tool has an upgrade tree that you can progress through to improve them, and there is one piece of equipment you can unlock – the Ozonator – which really made me chuckle!

From a story perspective, the different levels in the game are well crafted and each follows it’s own arc. Moving through each crime scene is designed in such a way that it builds momentum, at least as much as you can in a game about cleaning. I recall one job which was genuinely atmospheric, tearing at my nerves as I wondered whether that clattering in the next room was a scripted event, or something of my own doing.

The drilled-in humour is a little hit and miss – Some of the lines of dialogue (particularly when moving bodies) would make Arnie flinch, but it’s not terrible. Many of my laughs came from the aforementioned physics model, along with some bizarre, almost off-brand feeling secret sections hidden in the levels. There are also several cultural references dotted around, such as your dog, who is called Dexter (a show I never watched, but I know the premise) and I saw a message from a Laura Palmer (Yes, I remember Twin Peaks), to name just two.

The inclusion of a ‘cleaning sense’ was occasionally invaluable – Think Batman’s detective vision, which will show you stains you’ve missed, pieces of rubbish you’ve not collected and bits of furniture that you’ve not returned to their rightful place. It’s a great tool for anyone with limited patience, though I refrained from using it on my playthrough as much as possible.

The controls are easy to pick up and feel pretty well refined for a non-Triple A title. Graphically, it’s not going to be a match for the latest AAA titles, but it doesn’t try be, nor does it need to. I’ve encountered a few graphical glitches, like a missing wall texture in the basement of Kovalskys’ home, and there were a couple of times while messing with physics objects (boxes, furniture, etc) that the game decided to wet the bed and eject me into a different room… Nothing game breaking, it just may take you out of the immersion temporarily.

There are some pretty good music tracks throughout the levels which add to the unnerving vibes of the levels, often preparing you for some shocking and unexpected discovery. The sound design overall is pretty good at keeping you on edge, when it wants to – Hearing something fall or break in an adjoining room when you’re supposed to be all alone can be quite unsettling.

There are a couple of small issues, one of which the game self-referentially mentions in the last mission: It doesn’t have a colourblind mode. I don’t know how badly this will hamper anyone in the early levels, but it may cause some frustration in the final two. The other issue was that, despite playing the game in streamer mode, there was a music track in the final mission which got flagged by Twitch – Not a copyright strike, but a small part of my stream got muted.

I have really enjoyed my time in this game, it’s difficult to put into words exactly how much it exceeded my expectations – As a fan of Powerwash Simulator and House Flipper, this game combines the two, whilst adding a pinch of LA Noire to the mixture. I can’t fault that, since these three games are permanent residents on my Xbox’s hard drive!

I highly recommend this game, particularly to those who already pay for Gamepass. I will just say in closing – that, while the game tried to make me care for and be invested in the story surrounding the sick daughter, I actually felt more sympathy for some of the victims’ stories from each chapter. That said, my heart belongs, wholly, to dearest Dexter. Who’s a good boy, then?