Serial Cleaners: We tried a secret puzzle with a guilty taste

Producing the following always provides a great opportunity: to do better than the past. After seeing Serial Cleaners at your booth 505 Games During Gamescom 2022, we can say that the Draw Distance team definitely seizes the opportunity by greatly improving the top-down privacy formula.

Coming to major digital stores for Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and Windows PC on September 22, here are our impressions after we got it I tried Serial Cleaners.

Cast and setting

Rather than using 2 to denote the nature of a sequel, Draw Distance adds an S to the original title, perfectly revealing this sequel’s most important innovation. The first episode was set in the ’70s and featured Bob C. Leaner as the only hero: Bob cleaner, the person to call to clean up the crime scene. Find incriminating evidence, remove blood and fingerprints, collect corpses and destroy them in a jiffy.

It’s not an easy feat, because a crime scene is always guarded by cops and prying eyes, and that’s where the production’s secrecy element hits. In the Serial Cleaners, Bob is not alone, on the contrary.the whole team. In addition to Bob, the player will be able to take on the role of Haldor Hal Boen, who will play Psycho, a meticulous and crazy housekeeper for the group’s hacker Erin Vip3r Reed, reporter Lati Latisha Thomas and their friends.

From a narrative standpoint, Serial Cleaners is definitely more ambitious than its predecessor for telling one thing. non-linear plot With multiple options to activate in multiple game missions. You can always choose between two or three characters, except for some “mandatory” missions where the player will have to play as a certain cleaner. Based on the mission preparatory meeting, it will be possible choose the cleaner with the skill set best suited to the situation. The choice made will affect the next steps: The more a cleaner is used, the more information about its past is known, but this choice prevents knowing the stories of others.

That’s why Serial Cleaners is a powerful title replayabilityIt can be played several times if there is an interest in deepening the history of all heroes. Compared to its predecessor, the era of historical fiction from the 70s to the 90s is also changing.

Reading the dialogues and observing game scenarios, the inspiration for a particular cinematic specification is pretty obvious. The Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction, Fight Club: Serial Cleaners is full of atmosphere 90s cult. Also thanks to the American composer Joshua Eustis, who is very active in the contemporary electronic and indie scene.

Visuals and indicators

As said at the beginning, Series Cleaners use the sequel’s opportunity to improve pretty much everything. game mechanicsadded a variety and depth that was not present in the previous chapter. Mind you, Serial Cleaner wasn’t a bad game, but it clearly showed potential that the production couldn’t take full advantage of. The first episode was always a stealth game that looked overhead but was a 2D composite of environments. It’s definitely still a nice selection and well integrated into the game, thanks to an interesting artistic sector. However, he can understand how the 2D top-down view can be quite limiting after seeing and playing the Missions of the Serial Cleaners, where he switches to a series cleaner. 3-dimensional Definitely well made.

The appearance change allows you to better decipher the surrounding environment: shooting lines The number of enemies is more readable, which makes the alert of patrolling enemies flawless. When a cop or witness sees our cleaner, a dotted line will connect them, and of course the priority will be to disconnect by running or hiding. Easier to manage, at the same timesound wave The size of the environment is emitted by the character, which will appear as a circle with cyan outlines in proportion to the emitted noise. The louder it is, the larger the surround of the sound wave, and obviously, if a policeman walks into the environment, they will be alerted by the noise and look for its source. Walking makes the cleaner almost inaudible; then there’s the average noisy running and finally the use of the vacuum cleaner which makes a loud noise but is necessary to clean the blood from the floor.

The standard task of Serial Cleaners is by collecting a number of important clues that must be removed from the target. Crime scene, exhumation of corpses and cleansing of blood. While evidence and corpses must necessarily be collected, blood does not need to be completely removed, but it will be sufficient to clear enough to empty the top left bar to the minimum required indication. You have to be careful with the blood because even the cleaner can drag the corpses and spread them on the crime scene. The alternative is to carry bodies by shouldering them, but speed and mobility are obviously lost during transport.

Special missions and abilities

complete missions it’s not that simple, not even the first proposals. We should study the environment and make the most of the opportunities offered. As in the first Series Cleaner, the heroes will never fight with the police in this second installment… cleaner’s duty. A good mechanic moves carefully, cleans everything and disappears without a trace. However, the situation can heat up and for this, it is possible to surprise the police with some objects or by slamming a door in their faces during the chases. It’s also important to break patrols, create distractions, and move objects and furniture. Deserializer scenarios are persistent; this means that if you close a door, for example, it will always stay closed. Obviously any change in the crime scene will be noticed by the cops who will start patrolling the area more carefully.

But what makes the difference is the character’s unique ability, which decisively changes the way he plays. bob is a highly experienced cleaner and knows how important it is to do a clean job. As a special ability, he can pack corpses that won’t leave a trail of blood during the drag and go unnoticed by passers-by when the character carries them on his shoulder. It can just be a voluminous carpet. Despite his age, Bob is quite agile and as a second special ability he can move faster and glide over blood pools. maybe this is one of them Skills We appreciated this the most because besides looking really nice, dragging a blood-smeared corpse on the ground can be a quick way out.

Sides He is the troublemaker of the group, not interested in playing in the shadows because even if he gets caught, he can escape the cops thanks to his athletic skills. Lati runs faster, climbs higher obstacles, slides and climbs over medium-low ones. In addition to the introductory lesson, during our testing we had the opportunity to play with another character and chose Lati, which we still find very effective despite her playing style being the most. riskyas you often play too open.

VIP3rAs noted,computer expert Your group. With a bang to rival Angelina Jolie’s in Hackers, Vip3r can access terminals scattered across the levels to take control of all electricity supplies in the area. His style of play is all about distracting the enemy: it’s much safer, but this requires perfect timing and planning.

And then there is Status, aka Psycho. They call it that because this cleaner always travels with her loyal one. ChainsawHe uses it to dismember the bodies of crime scenes. As we exited the booth, we saw an actor rehearsing Hal’s promotional mission, which took place in a snowy environment. Here the cleaner not only dismembered a body, he threw the pieces into a shredder, while in the character trailer he threw his foot at a police officer to stun him.