Outward Definitive Edition | Life In Jail
Review | Viscera Cleanup Detail
You could clean the house or be a lazy space janitor that fails to properly clean up alien experiments gone wrong.
If you are extremely OCD about getting every little splatter spot, wrapper and bullet this game can sure suck you in. It is one of the stranger games I’ve owned. For whatever reason, it’s just a relaxing gore filled good time. With blood splatter, all the walls and messages were written on the floor. There is also something twistedly satisficing about using the incinerator to dispose of the evidence.
The game itself over the many years has added in quite a few different worksites that have you using a bucket and mop among other tools to make it look like nothing ever went wrong. They also give you some hints in how long it should take and how hard each site is. I found the time approximation to be reasonable as long as you were not going for 100%.
Things Have Improved Over The Years
I’ve played this game on and off again for a number of years now to say it has improved in its time. The good old days were filled with utter frustration and game breaking bugs making it impossible to be as OCD about achieving 100% as you wanted to be.
Physics has some effect on the objects in this game. It used to be really easy to tip over your bucket spilling blood water all over the floor. Along with having body parts to soda cans just fly out of the disposable container you were carrying to the incinerator. Nothing worse than having a squeaky clean room splattered in blood. If you could not tell by now this game is not for the faint of heart.
You also had some game breaking bugs like bullet casing just falling through the floor. Alien splatter in some corner you could not reach so you ended up trying to build a pyramid out of random items to reach it. Along with never finding that last freaking blood spot that the sniffer tools keeps beeping at as if you were blind.
Thankfully I get to say this is one of those games that developer have gone back and fix quite a number of these things. I only experienced one strange bug of picking up a body and having it drag me across an entire room splattering blood everywhere. I JUST CLEANED THAT FLOOR!
I still have that old gut-wrenching feeling when carrying a disposable container full of items hearing them move thinking they could fly out. Thankfully they have seemed to sort that out as well. Bumping the container with a bullet casing no longer nocks it over either. Glad some weight was finally added to containers, buckets, and other things.
The Game Is A Troll!
Now that they have gotten most of the bugs out that I’ve noticed we know for certain they are having some fun at anyone with OCD! There were a number of times where the game though it was funny to mess with me. I’ll be honest I found it funny as well after a few swear words.
There is the old classic of both the waste bin and water bucket devices plopping out body parts instead of the item you requested. Hitting the floor and leaving another mess for you to clean up. Even more so you could end up stepping in it and leaving bloody footprints on the floor. As you walk around cleaning up the new mess just making it worse.
The biggest troll of them all has to be the height assistant tool that allows you to get up in those hard to get the area. Whether it be a window league, walkway, or a corner in a vaulted ceiling. I’m sure some of it was user error on my own part and some of it was the game having a good laugh.
It likes to give me the “jammed” message where it might be fixed pressing the up or down button again. Along with a chance to of causing havoc by sending things everywhere. The best times are the flat out error message before it launches you ten feet into the air with everything you had carefully stacked onto the device! Nothing like cleaning up fresh blood stains all over the floor as things rolled!
After A long Cleaning Session
The game does have some humor in it and you get to see that played towards the end when you clock out and go to the janitor room. Everything from the options you to get select to the insane little news stories that are generated from your utter failure to be a space janitor!
So how was my cleaning job at the end of the day? I was demoted for only scoring 92%. That just seems harsh. Why would an employer ever expect a space janitor to do better than that?
It’s been a while since I’ve tried to 100% one of these sites. You don’t realize just how lackluster of a job scrubbing a spot a couple of times before moving on is. They also do try and hide things. You sometimes just got move stuff around and get out the sniffer to make certain. Which I for once wanting to move on felt it was good enough.
I guess my boss won’t be collecting his bonus check for my lack of attention to detail I wonder if those spices where his? That would certainly explain getting demoted over a couple of bullet holes. Does your place on another planet not have similar decorations? How strange.
Final Thoughts
The downside to playing this game is your house is still dirty by the time you have finished cleaning up someone else mess. It does not make in real life chores any more enjoyable granted it never promised it would. It is commercial the kind of games that are out there and the fun we can have in them while trying to avoid real life chores.
The part I always enjoy the most are the starts where you are just surrounded by a mess and have no idea yet where a bucket is. So you are doing your best to not leave bloody footprints all over the floor while you lean the layout.
During the many hours of cleaning up the gore, I have let my mind wander a little bit about what really happened. While the game was not very deep they do drop some clues along the way with documents, writing on the wall and other stuff.
All I know is I’m just the space janitor and not the former employees of whatever black site I just cleaned up!
Other Content
- Game Review | Fallout Shelter
- State Of Decay 2: Review
- Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim | Still Works
Information
Screenshots were taken and content written by @Enjar about the game Viscera Cleanup Detail.