The Cleaner

4 Imaginative
You could say it’s a simple shooter with few small twists and a mild rpg element, but the abstract setting and style make this game a trully imaginative and enthralling experience.

You play as “the cleaner” – a sort of soldier mage. Your woman gets killed during an attack (as you learn from one of the first game’s text-less cut scenes) and your goal is to take revenge by travelling through parallel dimensions and pummeling opponents with magical missiles.

You get to fly around, toss some enemies with telekinesis, you learn new spells – the usual stuff. It’s the visuals and overall style that makes it all worthwile.

The feeling of traversing multiple, often weird and abstract, universes is conveyed very well through the surreal graphics, disturbing sound effects, and lack of ‘normal’ music. It really gets to you.

It’s a fantasy story, but it’s the kind of ‘fantasy’ I like – actually fantastic and full of imagination.

The choice of not using any narrative in the cut scenes is brilliant. It leaves some things to interpretation and adds to the general impression of observing something that is alien and hard to understand for us.

It’s definitely one of the most atmospheric games out there that are still actual games.

It has its flaws obviously. Luckily, nothing major. The Another World-like art has some weaker spots and I experienced a couple of bugs during my playthrough. The balance between some spells could use some work as well.

It’s a really fun game with a very unique and stylish atmosphere and I recommend trying it out. Even if only to see how crazy some of the locations are.