Getting caught means insta-death and restarting the level, which is a miserable business after you've spent seven long minutes being painstakingly cautious but didn't predict that one enemy would suddenly turn in your direction. What is less fine is the sudden failure aspect. Which is fine by me: stealth tropes exist for a reason, and one of those reasons is that enemies remaining permanently on a state of high alert is extremely hard (though not impossible) to reconcile with having a grand old sneaky time. If spotted, you can sometimes outrun 'em for long enough to jump into a hidey-hole, at which point things go Must Have Been Rats a few seconds later. (Have you guessed why Serial Cleaner makes me frustrated instead of happy yet?) If they catch you, it's instant death and back to the start of the level. The stealth is broadly similar to the cone-of-view Metal Gear Solid system blunder into an enemy's eyeline and they'll immediately pursue you. Hide in cupboards and caravans, sneak out to haul a cadaver around by the armpits or pocket a gold watch splattered with telltale wrist-based DNA. Trouble is, the rozzers are already at the scene by the time you arrive, which means you're playing cat and mouse while trying to haul bodies back to your car and (very literally, in this interpretation) hoover up the blood.

Killers are good at killing, but maybe not so hot at cleaning up after themselves, so they call you to get rid of the bodies and clean up the blood, plus any other assorted evidence. You're a freelance cleaner for what, for want of a better term, we'll call the crime industry. It's a great, great concept, with style to match. I tried to come up with a more insightful way of putting this, but all I've ended up with is this: Serial Cleaner is a really good game put inside the shell of a bad one. Time and again, I fire it up and my brain clearly tells me 'yeah, I really dig this', but a few minutes later I've alt-F4ed right outta Dodge and am busy making a colleague endure my shower of invective about the game.

With 70s-styled stealth puzzle game Serial Cleaner, though, I am confounded. After this many years of wibbling about games, I feel as though my Iron Hammer Of Judgement should be absolute.

I don't like it when I don't know if I like something or not.

Cleaner serial