Crime Scene Cleaner Review (fred fuchs)
I really hope this genre starts gaining more traction, but I'm well aware that it's not everyone's cup of tea.
Crime Scene Cleaner is obviously inspired by Viscera Cleanup Detail, another game I love, but expanded in all the ways I wanted. The thing about Viscera is that it seems to be mostly made as a joke. The first playable part of Viscera was the Santa's Rampage map. It definitely fell into the "Youtuber bait" category like other goofy games during that time.
In Viscera you're a random disposable employee working for a soulless corporation in the future, and a lot of the game's humor reflects that such as the complete lack of care for the employees. It's also driven home in the gameplay however, with tools being iffy and borderline dysfunctional, some even being downright useless. It's easy to mess something up, and a lot of the machinery will randomly fuck you over just because.
I'm not saying those elements made Viscera bad, they're just part of that game's dark humor. Crime Scene Cleaner is also chock full of dark humor, with the protagonist himself seeming like a more responsible Postal Dude just doing what he can to make money to save his daughter.
But Crime Scene Cleaner takes the gameplay seriously. There's a whole upgrade tree, unlockable equipment, more of a full "arsenal" for your job that lets you optimize however much you want. In some ways it's way more in-depth than Viscera, in other ways it's more streamlined.
The game certainly has jank, and a lot of it. Some of the animations are awkward, some parts of the levels can look downright horrible if I'm being honest (skybox sphincters), and particularly the last level gave me frequent drops below 100FPS (My computer is beefy, it shouldn't struggle that much).
But as someone who's poured a lot of time into Viscera, this game scratched that obscure itch so good, I played it to a hundred percent completion in just a couple days. Now I'm hoping DLC is coming, and/or better yet, workshop support is added so everyone can create their own massacre scenes to handle. I need more. Here's hoping Viscera 2 will expand in these kinds of ways as well!
Edit: I'm a bit late for this addition to the review, but the post launch update roadmap looks great! They're adding more content to the game in the future with no additional cost. If I'm honest though, I wouldn't mind paying. Crossing my fingers they add mod/workshop support at some point!