Game:

Viscera Cleanup Detail (2015)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 21:02

247 views

5

Viscera Cleanup Detail (PC) - Caduceus - Let's Play, Episode #1

--------------------
Action Sofa is the sensational duo, Kim Stolz and Duncan MacRae, coming at you from Victoria, BC, Canada. We’ll play anything!

Action Sofa on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/actionsofa/
Action Sofa on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/actionsofa/
Action Sofa on Tumblr: http://actionsofa.tumblr.com/
Action Sofa Email: actionsofa(at)gmail(dot)com
--------------------

Title: Viscera Cleanup Detail
Released: 2014 (Early Access)
Platform: PC
Developer: Runestorm

Background

Viscera Cleanup Detail is a game by indie developer Runestorm, a South Africa-based developer that started out making FPS mods over a decade ago. Runestorm has the pedigree of a truly independent studio; they started by modding games like Quake and Doom, eventually moving onto Unreal Tournament 2003. They achieved some success with their Ballistic Weapons mod for UT2003 and they’ve been building on that success since. Viscera Cleanup Detail is currently in Early Access, but Runestorm is busy finalizing the features for full release.

Overview

Viscera Cleanup Detail has one of the strangest and most creative premises for a game that I’ve seen in a while. It puts the player in the boots of a “space janitor” (Runestorm’s own term) tasked with cleaning up the mess left over from a repulsed alien invasion at one of several familiar-feeling locations. The story is always fairly straightforward: something horrible happened involving monsters, space marines were sent in to blow up the monsters, you have been sent in to clean the place up so that people can move back in (and presumably start the cycle all over again).

You don’t get much detail to begin with, but the game does an excellent job of dropping clues as to what happened in the form of data pads, printouts, mission logs, and the like. Of course, the best storyteller in this game is the blood and gore itself. Each room is a gruesome tableau that paints a very clear picture of what happened while leaving enough to the imagination to make it horrifying.

Bodies are scattered all around, body parts are left in piles, sometimes it’s not clear how many people died in a given spot. What are you supposed to think when you find one torso and four feet? You don’t think, you just clean. The messages on the walls written in blood are a nice touch, but what got me was the bloody handprints. You just know that if someone had time to make a bloody handprint, they didn’t die quickly.

Each level has a different feel, some stark and clinical, others dirty and industrial, but all have a serious creepy factor. The fact that you, the janitor, are the only person in a fairly large area adds to the creepy factor. Kim and I played together, which made it less overtly unsettling, but I still found myself wincing and groaning whenever I found something particularly awful. The textures feel a little dated, but considering the theme, rooted in oldschool FPS games, I think it’s appropriate.

(Review continued in next video)


--------------------

INTRO MUSIC
‘News Intro Sound’ - Maximilien
http://www.soundbible.com
License: CC Attribution 3.0

OUTRO MUSIC
Little Idea - Composed and performed by Bensound
http://www.bensound.com
License: CC Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

SAD MUSIC
Sad Day - Composed and performed by Bensound
http://www.bensound.com
License: CC Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Other Statistics