Serial Cleaners: Dino Park – DLC Review

Serial Cleaners is a game about death, dismemberment, and tidying up the above with any evidence to make sure the organised crime unit you’re working for continue to go unnoticed, the original “Serial Cleaner” is now six years old, and while Bob was joined by three more characters for last years pluralised sequel “Serial Cleaners” it’s now time for some DLC to continue your murder-cleaning ways with a slightly more Jurassic predator causing the mayhem.

Dino Park begins on the outskirts of the island as you approach Fossil Cliffs. There are a few raptors on the loose, so you’ll need to tread carefully while working around the nearby area picking up any bodies and limbs you might come across and discarding of them to tidy up the crime scene and using the handy hoover the characters have stashed in their back pocket, to vacuum up any blood trails.

It took me a few minutes to get to grips with the game, having not played the base game “Serial Cleaners” before, but after spending some time with the required base game, I was soon up to speed and throwing dismembered body parts into giant fans to make sure they couldn’t be found.

This first level serves as a good introduction to the Jurassic Park-esque setting, and while I would have loved to see a little more background delivered during the short cut scenes, when tidying up someone else’s murdering spree, it’s probably best not to ask too many questions.

Beyond the cliffs, you’ll enter the main area of the park for the second mission, where there’s a lot more guards and a little less time between their patrols to do your dirty work, its serves as a neat learning curve as well as utilising each characters abilities to manoeuvre through the mission at hand.

Each of the four levels centralises on a single character, so you’ll need to utilise Vipers hacking skills on the second mission to alleviate the threat of security cameras, while Psycho, will handle the close quarters of the third missions train setting, where you’re much more likely to need to debilitate a guard.

I would have loved to see the option to switch characters, with certain objectives always possible, but far easier with a certain character, but maybe that’s something we can hope for from a third title in the series (as well as maybe some co-op gameplay) .

As it is though, the Dino Park DLC, like the base game is a solely single player experience, following the same isometric view, which offers well to the more retro presentation and gameplay style.

The overall world is well detailed, with plenty of variation through each level, from the cliffs and park to the train and “mountain” (which according to the mission select screen, is definitely not an active volcano, you’ll always know which mission you’re on as each one looks completely fresh and unique.

The game world is well made, packed with detail and the overall map design is well done, offering plenty of hiding spots, short cuts and little obstacles that you can use to easily avoid patrolling guards.

In some sections, maybe it’s a little too easy to avoid guards, partly due to the constant items to block the line-of-sight, but also the less than stellar AI of enemy units, and the ability to just close a door in a guard’s face to earn yourself valuable time to escape.

While cleaning up a murder scene is obviously a pretty mature subject, I do feel Serial Cleaners Dino Park is maybe targeted slightly below its 17+ mature rating, but maybe less experienced gamers and those new to the genre will find it a little more challenging.

As it is though, you’re likely to spend about 3-4 hours with the DLC which isn’t poor value for the £7.99 ($9.99) price-tag, each level also has a number of collectables to find and a couple of trophies, including making sure you mop up every last drop of blood, so purists are likely to find much more playtime from these 4 new levels.

Overall Serial Cleaners: Dino Park delivers exactly what you expect, more isometric, stealth-action, a neat Jurassic Park style storyline, but the same AI weakness and limited usage of characters experienced in the main game. However, it’s safe to say if you were a fan of Serial Cleaners, you’re going to enjoy this DLC.

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