Disregarded Demographics: TV Cleaners

UK TV’s Channel 4 saw sense a few weeks ago and decided, yes, we have had enough of eating while watching, at primetime, a pair of women picking through other peoples’ grub.  Thus, after six series of mopping, scrubbing and germ-analysing, Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie’s How Clean Is Your House? was cancelled.  The world continued to spin on its axis and Kim went to eat kangaroo bollocks on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here.

Sighs of relief all around, then.  But what you don’t know – what you shouldn’t know – is that the only way Channel 4 could stop Kim and Aggie from terrorising the office with relentless cleaning until they got their show back was by fulfilling a different dream.  It’s a little known fact that the pair wanted to bring cleaning up the cool lists.  What better way than to get their very own Wii game out there?

Under the supervision of the tidying twosome, it’s up to you to clear those germs out of houses and make the pits you’re presented with habitable to people.  You are presented with a number of abodes to select from.  For purely stereotypical reasons, the tougher jobs are in the rougher areas, and these are the one that will net you the best ratings on your TV-show-within-a-game.

Fame isn’t the aim, however – cleaning is! Using the power of Wii MotionPlus to their advantage, the developers have ensured that you can clear every nook and cranny of filth.  Your Wii remote is a toilet brush, a duster, a vacuum cleaner, a mop, whatever you want or need it to be.  Just as in reality, you will have to learn the true meaning of hard work and put some elbow grease behind the remote to clean up shop.  Fail to give things a sufficient wipe down and Aggie will scream about how she’s going to throw up through the remote speaker.

Kim and Aggie also enjoy taking swabs of the disasters of hygiene that they visit.  This opens up the science-y side of the game, where you carry out simple tests to work out just what horrors you’re combating.  It’s here that you can mix up everyday products and foods, too, keeping in line with the show’s preference for lo-fi cleaning solutions.  Whack some baking soda, 13 Kellogg’s Frosties, a bit of curtain and a lemon together, shake the Wii remote like you’re making a cocktail and you get a grrr-eat cloth that melts mud away and leaves a delightful citrus scent.  There are hundreds of combinations – find ‘em all!

Germs don’t really fight back too hard, and this perhaps wouldn’t be a game without some level of conflict at the centre.  Enter fellow TV cleaners Grimebusters, who will race against you to reach locations and nab the ‘best’ for themselves.  You can either beat them…or join them to unlock even more content.  Join Grimebusters and you’ll get to troll the streets for additional things to scrub.  Or you could even take the detective approach and investigate illegal hot dog stands that are selling sausages practically dragged along the pavement.

I think you’ll agree that TV cleaners have a lot to offer gamers.  There’s plenty of intrigue and more than enough horror.  What other game is going to teach our youth to wield a toilet brush effectively so that they can help out mum and dad? Not Assassin’s Creed 2, I’ll tell you that.

Images: The Girl Who Fell To Earth, Outside Supply, MissCongeniality