Gamer Chronicles

Mops, Mayhem, and Murder: Cleaning Up in Crime Scene Cleaner

• Aden • Episode 3

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Episode Summary:

This week on Gamer Chronicles, we dive into the blood-soaked world of Crime Scene Cleaner, scrubbing away the messes no one else wants to deal with. Plus, we break down the week’s biggest gaming news, from Payday 3’s troubles to Tomb Raider nostalgia and even Nintendo’s bizarre $100 Mario alarm clock. Tune in for laughs, rants, and a whole lot of gaming goodness.

Episode Breakdown:

  • Intro (0:00) – Kicking off with a welcome and setting the stage for this week’s gaming chaos.
  • News Start (0:45) – A rundown of the week’s biggest gaming stories.
    • Payday 3 Troubles (0:47) – A look at the ongoing issues with Payday 3 and whether it can be salvaged after a rocky start.
    • Baldur’s Gate 3 Scalping (2:22) – Scalpers are driving up prices for Baldur’s Gate 3 collector’s editions. Larian Studios weighs in.
    • Xbox Cloud Streaming Update (3:53) – Xbox expands its cloud streaming to include games you already own. Is this a game-changer?
    • Ex-Disco Elysium Devs’ New RPGs (5:05) – Former Disco Elysium devs are working on new narrative-driven RPGs.
    • Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered (5:56) – A nostalgic trip with remastered Tomb Raider classics coming to modern consoles.
    • Steam Deck Struggles (7:19) – Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield aren’t playing well on the Steam Deck. Is it a hardware limitation?
    • Roblox’s Dark Side (9:02) – A shocking report calls Roblox a “pedophile hellscape,” raising serious concerns for its young user base.
    • Nintendo’s $100 Mario Alarm Clock (11:03) – Nintendo fans expected the Switch 2 but got an overpriced Mario alarm clock instead.
    • Unity’s PR Nightmare (12:41) – Unity tries to recover after backlash from its controversial pricing model changes.
    • Denovo Backlash (15:09) – Denovo shuts down its Discord server after just two days due to overwhelming negative feedback.
  • Crime Scene Cleaner Review (17:44) – We switch gears to Crime Scene Cleaner, a game where you scrub away the aftermath of some seriously gory crime scenes.
    • Story & Gameplay (18:23) – This game doesn’t need a story to deliver its grimly satisfying gameplay loop.
    • Visuals (22:55) – How does the game’s blood-soaked aesthetic measure up?
    • Controls (23:36) – Simple controls, but precision is key—and often infuriating.
    • Tools & Upgrades (24:40) – How upgrading your tools affects the clean-up process.
    • Replayability (26:33) – Will this game keep you coming back for more blood-splattered crime scenes?
    • Final Verdict (27:39) – Is Crime Scene Cleaner a mop or a flop? Here’s my take on its weirdly addictive appeal.
  • Outro (29:02) – Wrapping up with final thoughts

What weird games are you playing lately? Let us know!

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 ------ Intro ------  0:00


So welcome back to Gamer Chronicles, where we dig through the digital guts of the gaming world to bring you reviews from everything from sprawling RPGs to, well, crime scene cleaning up simulators. Today I'm putting on my rubber gloves and stepping into the role of the unsung hero. The person who shows up after the detective says this is going to be messy


 ------ News Start ------  0:45


So let's first start off with the news. We have quite a few articles this week. Don't know what's going on, but here we go. So the payday three developers believe disaster ridden game can be saved. For those of you who have played Payday three, which I have, it was not the greatest start. And I played it with some friends and server issues just played it. So the highly anticipated release of Payday three has been anything but smooth. From server issues to glitches and disappointing gameplay mechanics. So people have voiced their frustrations since launch. They've encountered problems with matchmaking and progression, and they feel that the game lacks the depth that made its predecessors a hit. So despite these setbacks, the developers at Starberry Studios remain optimistic. They have acknowledged the issues and promised a series of updates and patches aimed at addressing the players concerns. The team is confident that with time payday 3 will evolve into a game fans hoped for. The question now is, will players be actually willing to stick around long enough for these fixes to roll out? 

Because let's face it, it's been over a year since they released the game and it still has problems. So can they fix it? It might be, you know, the end of the line for the payday franchise, which is a shame. But they had a good run. You know, payday one and two were pretty good. And then they just did what everyone else does and just screwed it up with the third one. And it's a pity. 


 ------ Baulders Gate 3 News ------  2:22


Baldur's Gate three Publisher condemns Scalpers as the collection edition Prices soar. We should have known this. You know, it's typical that when something comes out that people actually won't be at the consoles during COVID or the NVIDIA graphics cards, Scalpers Galore. 

So Baldur's Gate three as we know, was a huge success, which was a great game I play. I loved it. And maybe one day I'll talk about it on the show. It's a bit old at the moment, which is why I probably won't review it just yet. but it has been a brilliant edition and the last one of Baldur's Gate, great additions to the franchise and the collector's edition of the game, which includes exclusive items such as a detailed diorama, has become a hot target for scalpers. It was originally priced at $270, but they're now being resold for up to obviously leaving many people outraged. Larian Studios who created the game has condemned these resellers, and they emphasized the commitment of getting special editions into the hands of genuine fans. I don't know how they're going to do that because they are being bought by bots and resold at extortionate prices, which at the end really fucks over people because it's it's not nice. People genuinely want these collections for themselves. because they love the game and the franchise and the studio, and they want to support them all. And people are just taking advantage of that. 


 ------ Xbox News ------  3:53


For those of you with excellent Internet, Xbox is expanding its cloud streaming games to the games that you already own. So while they continue to innovate their cloud gaming service, they are now announcing a new feature that will allow you to stream games that you already own. This is only curated to a list of game pass titles that was available by Xbox Gaming Cloud, but this expansion will let you stream any purchased games that you have bought from the cloud without needing to install them on your local PC. Which is great because if you have a large digital library and you want to play on digital devices, you won't need to download or install them. And it's great for people who love Game Pass and it's a great step in Xbox's vision to make gaming more accessible and flexible. But obviously you need a good Internet connection because you can't do gaming on the cloud without that. a lot of places in the UK still need to get better Internet as we go on to be able to do this. But we are getting there and hopefully it is something in the near future that we can all do comfortably. 


 ------ Disco Elysium News ------  5:05


Next, a bunch of ex disco Elysium developers are working on new RPGs. So if you remember Disco Elysium, it was like a non combative detective game. Brilliant game. I really enjoyed it. And some of the key developers behind the have moved to new RPG projects, while their creative split from the original studio did come with controversy, these X developers are now embarking on a fresh, narrative driven experience, and you can expect similarity. from Disco Elysium, which has innovated them to come up with some of these RPGs, the details remain scarce on what they're actually going to do, but they'll pretty much push the boundaries of what they've, you know, what they've done Disco Elysium to this, where they can offer narrative complexity and player agency, where they can offer great narrative complexity. 


 ------ Tomb Raider News ------  5:56


Great news for all you nineties gamers is Tomb Raider 1 to 3. The remastered collection has been announced. I am a huge Tomb Raider fan. And if you haven't watched the new Tomb Raider series on Netflix, highly recommend it. It pretty much follows with the video game themes that we've seen over the last few years, and it is brilliant, which is probably why they released it, because it then leads into this. So Lara Croft is set to make her return in the remastered collection of her earliest adventures Tomb Raiders, one, two and three are being reimagined for modern consoles with enhanced graphics and updated controls, while preserving the original charm of the classic nineties games. A it comes at the right time because this is when we're all enjoying the nostalgia for retro titles set a whole time high with many retro games being remade or remastered. You know, all the Resident Evil's one, two, three. were entirely remade and they were brilliant. The remastered collection would include all expansions and secret levels. And it's scheduled to release hopefully in early 2025. And, know, not only for us nostalgic gamers, it will show the new generation of gamers what games were like back then and bringing them in to it now. So it would it's going to be pretty epic With this Tomb Raider release? 


 ------ Steam Deck News ------  7:19


That was mostly good news. Now, unfortunately, we're going into some bad to shocking news. The first on the list is many of 2020 four's biggest games don't play well on steam deck. These include popular titles such as Starfield & Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty. I'm not surprised that they can't run smoothly on a portable device because especially Cyberpunk 2077 is demanding on my PC, which has a 4080 ti, let alone a steam deck. Because let's face it, cyberpunk just is stupid. It's stupidly demanding for everything. It just it just pushes the boundaries of what it should because even people I know where 1490s without dlss on struggle to run it. And you know when it comes to portable hardware you don't expect it to run games like that but I think the steam deck over promised what it could do. So the challenges have been highlighted with the limitations of the steam deck when handling these high demand triple-A titles. The steam deck is mostly Linux based as well. So it's got a completely different architecture from what we're running on Windows. they need to really optimize the games for that device. And this is a big disappointment to fans who hope that the steam deck would be the portable solution for playing all the favorite games that they had. And I'm sure it runs indie games quite well and some triple-A games, but it's just these top blockbuster titles that considering how advanced gaming is now, I think it's just going to struggle to keep up. So if you're thinking about buying a steam deck, maybe just hold off or put the money into a console or a PC. 


 ------ Roblox News ------  9:02


And now for some quite disturbing and shocking news is a report on road blocks calls it a paedophile hellscape for kids. In a shocking and deeply concerning report, Roblox has come under fire for failing to protect its young user base from predators. And unfortunately, most of its user base is young from I think from the ages of like six, all the way up to 14, 15. And, you know, I let my children play on it as well, because when you look at it, it seems like a innocent Minecraft game. I did turn the chat off when I first gave it to them because I read stuff about it before. So they haven't been luckily privy to any of this, but is still very disturbing. A the investigative report described the platform, which is immensely popular with children as a paedophile hellscape with numerous cases of and inappropriate behaviour slipping through the platform's moderation systems. Now, personally, I haven't come across any moderation systems, which is why I read a lot of things on Reddit and places about this game, which is why I disabled the chat completely. And it's not easy to disable the chat either. So if you want to disable the chat, you have to go through a lot of pain. It's not just settings disable chat, you have to go through a few steps. At least when I did it, you had to. Now, obviously, here comes the bollocks. Despite efforts from the Roblox Corporation to ensure safety. The report raises serious doubts about how effective these measures have been. Yeah, they make loads of money and that's all they care about. With millions of children logging in daily, Roblox now faces mounting pressure from parents, lawmakers and child safety advocates to address these vulnerabilities and clean up the platform. I know the game is great for children and it's got a lot of interactive features and great, usability, especially when friends are playing with each other. But it's just one of these games where I think you have to bite the bullet and just not let them play it. Because at the end of the day, it's just not worth it because there are some sick people out there. 


 ------ Nintendo News ------  11:03


Some more bad news, but quite light hearted bad news. So Nintendo announced their latest hardware release and disappointed so many fans because a lot of people thought it would be their next big console release. So Nintendo's mystery device turned out to be a $100 alarm clock. So instead of releasing the Switch 2 fans get to have an alarm clock. So Nintendo has kept its fans guessing about its next hardware release. With rumors swirling about a potential new gaming console or some innovative tech. However, it turns out that the big reveal was far less exciting than anticipated. A mario themed alarm clock priced at $100. That is a fucking expensive alarm clock. While the clock features charming nods to the classic Mario games, including familiar sounds and retro inspired design. The high price point has left fans scratching their heads, and for those who are hoping for something groundbreaking from Nintendo, this announcement has been somewhat of a letdown. Even though collectors might still be interested in this nostalgic piece of memorabilia. So there you go. They kept fans waiting for an alarm clock that is extortionately expensive. And just to put that into perspective, that you can get a LED demon slayer alarm clock for the equivalent of about $30. So they are just absolutely trying to rinse people for this piece of crap. 


 ------ Unity News ------  12:41


And next on the list, Unity CEO wants new engine to shape game development for years to come because they are such greedy bastards that they are now probably tail between the legs, saying that they want to now help game developers because they realize that people are shifting away from them to use other engines in a bold vision for the future. Unity CEO has expressed his ambition for Unity's game engine to remain a core component of game development for years to come, despite recent controversy surrounding Unity's pricing model. Because their greedy bastards and monetization policies. The CEO is focused on the engine's evolution to become even more central to the gaming industry. Unity's engine is widely used across the Indie and AAA sectors, Riccitiello aims to ensure it stays ahead of the curve by adapting to new trends in gaming, such as the rise of real time graphics, VR and AR. His comments underline unity, long term goals, positioning the engine as an essential tool for future game development. Even amidst challenges, there are no challenges for these corporate engines like this. Unity was a great engine and had a great pricing structure and they got greedy. And this is what happened. You have to now put your tail between your legs and come crying back because you absolutely fucked it. And considering your against big players like Unreal Engine. Amazon's lumberyard. Yes, Ama has its own engine as well that you can use CryEngine where you get the full engine source code so whatever. What was it crisis that ran CryEngine Gamemaker studio and many more you can use over shitty unity. Because let's face it that when a company gets as greedy as they are, this is what happens. But there's plenty for game developers to choose from, so it might be a pain in the arse to learn a new engine, but there are plenty out there. And especially on Unreal, there are plenty of tutorials and I'm sure with Amazons one, I'm sure it would work great as well. So they now have to pretty much beg people to come back to them. 


 ------ Denovo News ------  15:09


End to end the news section. We have a great one because we all love Denovo And for those of you don't know what Denovo is, Denovo is a anti-piracy software that runs in the background and absolutely desecrates your PC. It is DRM software and everyone hates it because it only really affects people who pay for games because let's face it, that Denovo has been beaten many times by pirates. it just sucks and a lot of developers remove it after only a year. So it's a huge controversy. So Denovo shuts down its Discord server after backlash. And you'll love to know how long it stayed open. So in attempt to improve its image, Denovo, a controversial DRM provider, recently launched a Discord server to open communication with the gaming community. Bearing in mind that they are probably the most hated, hate thing to do with gaming ever. Howeve, the server was flooded by disgruntled gamers who criticized Denovo's impact on game performance and its history with DRM. The flood of negative comments and hostility forced Denovo to shut down the Discord server just two days after launch. The attempt to rehabilitate Denovo's image backfired, h the ongoing frustration many players felt towards DRM technologies, which are often blamed for causing issues like performance drops and invasive user tracking. Good games. I will say this do not need DRM. The Witcher three amazing game made tons of money. Cyberpunk fans of Liberty, They clawed it back. Luckily they made tons of money. Those are just a couple of DRM free games. Even games like Doom Eternal, they had Denovo to launch and then they removed it shortly after While Denovo says they don't impact performance, a lot of people have noticed better performance after it just disappeared. But it's also the invasive use of tracking, which does not help. So there you go. Once again, game united and told Denovo to go shove it up their arse. So that concludes this week. I would call it extended gaming news breakdown. always stay tuned for more updates and insights on Gamers Chronicles. 


 ------ Crime Scene Cleaner CSC Intro ------  17:44


And now we're going to move on to. crime scene cleaner, a game where you're less Sherlock Holmes and more of the guy who picks up pieces after Holmes is done making a mess. So this is a game. If you've ever wondered what happens after the detectives leave answers that with a resounding Someone's got to scrub the brain matter off the walls. 


 ------ CSC Story & Gameplay ------  18:23


So let's start with making one thing clear. Crime scene cleaner doesn't need a story. This  is a high concept, narrative driven game where your decisions impact the course of the plot. This is pure, unfiltered task based gameplay, and weirdly enough, that's part of the charm. You're essentially playing as the cleanup crew for various crime scenes after the shootouts, after the body dumps, after whatever chaotic scene that devs decide to throw you into. There's no real plot. And yet each crime scene tells its own twisted story in the way only buckets of blood and smashed furniture can. What happened here? Who knows? That's not your job to question. you're here to solve the mystery. You're here to make sure that no one knows there was a mystery. It's like if Breaking Bad Mr. Clean, but with more fucked up carpets. So when you first start the game, you're trying to do something for a friend of yours who died. You're doing it for his son because he's gotten himself in a spot of trouble. And he stabbed a drug dealer in the back and, you know, with the gameplay, it's a mash up some puzzle and precision game play with a side of existential dread. it's not a timed one, which is nice. It's none of the levels are timed that might come later on when they release some more challenges. Your job is simple clean up after horrific crime scenes, and it's definitely not a walk in the park. So when you first start the game, you know, like I said, your basically looking after something that went horribly wrong with one of your mates, son, a it just feels like a bit of a joke in the beginning because, you know, there are few puddles of blood here, a broken TV, some overturned furniture and you get it cleaned up and that's it, you're done. that is essentially what the tutorial trying to do is getting you comfortable with the controls, you know, using a mop, carrying trash bags, dealing with biohazard materials. Sounds really simple, but then it goes all to shit because you've gone through the tutorial a bit. And then when you look up at the ceiling, you can see some blood dripping down. I'm only going to talk about the first level here in detail. And once you open that, a woman's body falls down and when you go up, things get really, really fucked up. If you've watched Terrifier It and or Freddy Krueger, it's similar to that. It's like Freddy Krueger hosted a slumber party. You know, blood isn't just on the floor, it's on the walls, the ceiling on the vents. And don't even get me started on. You know how quickly some of this blood has dried because some of it's really easy to get off, and otherwise you'll be scrubbing and scrubbing non-stop, pretty much. And it's incredible how much enjoyment you get out of scrubbing dried blood. in terms of tools, you get your standard mop and bucket that you start off with a biohazard disposal kits and you have chemicals. So each chemical does something, you know, their equivalent of industrial bleach. And you have to mix that up in your bucket, your bucket. Then gets clogged with blood. So when you start to mop something, you'll just see streaks of blood on the floor and just make your life worse. If you knock the bucket over again, blood everywhere again and it just gets it gets messy. And you start wondering if these crime scenes are just secretly designed to absolutely fuck with you because there's a meter at the top of the screen and you know, where you're scrubbing away, there's always 1% left that's mocking you. missed a Spot And it'll make sure you know, if you forget to dispose of that random bullet that you didn't find, like hiding under the sofa, it's just annoying because you're looking for that one thing after you've cleaned everything. And sometimes it might even be something as stupid a painting that's not aligned right, because you have to reset the crime scenes to exactly how they were before all of this shit happened. And it became literally just drives you insane sometimes because it can take you like 20 minutes to find something so minor that you like. How did I miss that? How did I miss that broken bottle over there? Or even worse is that if you're going somewhere and you, let's say, knock a bottle off or something or you're mopping, you can also break things, which then makes it worse because then you have to throw things away. 


 ------ CSC Visuals ------  22:55


So in terms of the visuals, the game is set quite dark and the graphics are solid. They're not groundbreaking, but for what it is, they get the job done really well. The blood is splattered completely in the wrong places, and by that I just mean like it perfectly splattered everywhere. And each crime scene is unique. You know, there's no crime scene. That's basically a carbon copy of the other you're not just cleaning the same dingy apartment over and over because one minute you're mopping up in a hotel room and the next cleaning up a gang shootout in an abandoned warehouse. with the size difference, it takes a longer time. The messes are different and it just gets messy, 


 ------ CSC Controls ------  23:36


in terms of the controls, very simple. you don't need more than your two buttons on the mouse and your WASD keys because it's simple. It doesn't use that many controls. It's easy. even though it's simple in terms of controls, it's, you know, when you try and get the blood on the ceiling, you're trying to get it off. You have to then pull out a stepladder or move something or jump on a table to try and scrub it off or use your jet spray because you can see the blood and you're just like, why can't I reach it? It's just so difficult. But that said, you know, there's a real satisfaction when you get everything spotless, because let's face it, this is just a cleaning simulator, but it's like a twisted version of that dopamine hit. You know, when your desk is messy for so long and you try to be like, yes, beautiful. But this time it's instead your desk is covered in entrails and now you're questioning your life choices. But to be fair, it goes from being a red blood stained mess to a lovely white, clean symphony. 


 ------ CSC Tools & Upgrades ------  24:40


one thing this game doesn't quite tell you is what tools you need for every job because you get to basically carry everything. But in terms of upgrading, let's say you can upgrade to have two mop buckets, you can upgrade to have two mops, you can upgrade to have two sponges or akimbo sponges, which is ridiculous but cool. And it will depend because if you're cleaning blood off walls, it's a lot harder to clean blood off walls with a mop than it is with a sponge. And the same goes for the floor. It's a lot easier to clean on the floor with a mop than it is with a sponge. And let's say you have to do a like one of the swimming pools. It's a lot quicker to pull out the jet wash and spray round there, but every single upgrade you've done, you don't know what's coming. So let's say you've upgraded to dual sponges, but then most of it is mopping the floor. So what will end up happening is it takes you a lot longer to do that level because let's face it, you're mopping the floor and you pull out a sponge because you're too lazy to keep going back to the tap. So you start scrubbing the floor with the sponge and it's the same with the jet wash. You know, sometimes you just pull a jet wash out to spray something. And the problem is, once you've done that and you let's say you spray a bottle by accident, the bottle breaks leads to more rubbish and then you have to go pick the rubbish up, throw the rubbish in the bin, and that means more bags and you can only carry in the beginning one bag at a time. So if you're playing a level that has a lot of trash and you haven't upgraded that, you're going to end up with literally you running around just picking up these and it's a pain in the arse when you're disposing of bodies and bags. It takes a long time if you haven't done it before. 


 ------ CSC Replayability ------  26:33


In terms of replayability, the game does have a weirdly addictive quality. It's one of those games that you tell yourself just one more level and you just spend hours and hours making sure that the aftermath of the triple homicide looks like a Pinterest worthy living room. And there's something satisfying about turning chaos into order. And that loop just keeps you coming back for more. I won't lie. It's not a game that's going to last because once you cleaned up all the crime scenes, you go back for better scores and you're trying to get that 100% cleanliness because of that in a neat freak. So there is a decent amount of replayability here. what I'm waiting for is them to update the game. They keep releasing some hot fixes, which is great. It's good that they are bug bashing. And the thing is, they've said they're doing that. So they said that initially they're going to do the hotfix and then they're going to release some more modes on the game, hopefully they do it sooner rather than later because this game did come out, I think, at the end of August. So it's kind of reaching the point where you're like, when I go back to it at the moment, I want to go back to it. But it's reaching that point where it's like taking a bit long to put that stuff in and we kind of need it now. 


 ------ Crime Scene Cleaner Final Verdict ------  27:39


So is it a mop or a flop? Crime scene cleaner is not for everyone because let's face it, I liked the visceral clean up detail, which is where you went around cleaning up after basically the doom guy had been in a blown someone's skull all over the place. I enjoy these kind of simulation games. I could spend hours doing them all kinds of simulation games. Farming simulator, this one visceral cleanup, detail, Power Wash simulator, some really random ones there. But if spending hours cleaning up pixelated Gore doesn't sound like your idea of fun. You won't enjoy this game But for those of you me included, with a weird appreciation for the grotesque. Or for anyone who loves just a good, grimy challenge, it's actually quite an enjoyable game. Not a masterpiece, but it is just enjoyable. It has a great rating on Steam because it's a game where first it has a demo that replicates what you do in the game. So you could try the demo and if you don't like the game, that's fine. Don't buy it. And very few games do that because what they end up doing is you hate the game. You can get a refund on it, but you can leave a review on it as well as this one. You play the demo, you don't like it, that's fine. it's a strange mix of Zen and chaos. And if you're willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Metaphorically, of course. Definitely worth a try. 


 ------ Outro ------  29:02


All right, then. So that's it for today's episode of Gamer Chronicles. If crime scene cleaners taught me anything, it's that real heroes of crime dramas are the detectives or the bad guys. It's the poor bastard who has to come in and scrub the evidence off the walls and who knew that mopping could be so stressful and satisfying at the same time? Just be sure to give your brain a break after because there's only so much virtual blood splatter a person can take before it starts to feel a bit too real. So as always, if you've enjoyed today's show and want to hear more about the weird, wonderful and downright strange games out there, make sure to subscribe and leave a review. And you know, please hit us up on social media. Put links in the description below and subscribe on the podcast. We're on many platforms. I'd love to hear what games you're playing or avoiding these days, so I'll catch up in the next episode and see what fresh chaos awaits. St safe. Keep gaming and for the love of all things holy. Remember to wear gloves.