One of the first games i looked at for the wii was CSI as i love the CSI episodes. I thought this game would let your imaginiation run and require some skill and concentration. It's not quite how i've found it.

Loading the Game
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I thought i'd first issue a warning that if you're impatient, take the game back to the shop or don't buy it to start with! This game infuriated me as every time you need to change location, you're sitting for a good 30 seconds whilst it loads. It's the same at the start of the game and continues right until the end. I'd often sit and check emails or do other things as i'd get so bored waiting for it to load.

The Plot
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There are five fifferent scenarios for you to play and you have to solve the first one to unlock the second and so on. There is also a tacky training episode where you learn game play, tools and are just given basic information. You would never guess what this one is on though - finding poor Gil Grissom's missing doughnut! The training episode was pretty pointless if you ask me and i'm sure they could have come up with a better idea than a missing doughnut... I'll give you a brief summary of the other five cases:

~Case 1: Burning For you~

You join investigator Nick Stokes to investigate the murder of a taxi driver who was burned to death in his cab. This is the first case and is very simple but if you get stuck, you can ask Nick for a hint at any point and he'll happily oblige. I found all of the evidence pretty quickly so i solved this quite fast and without any hints. My hopes were that the cases would get a lot harder than this.

~Case 2: Double Down~

You investigate this case with Catherine Willows and quickly learn that all isn't as it seems. A pregnant woman is found stabbed in her bed at her apartment and gun shots were heard. Is it really as clear cut as the arguing partner that didn't want the baby? The pieces of evidence were very obvious and it didn't take me any time at all to solve this one. So much for them getting harder!

~Case 3: Shock Rock~

It's your turn to investigate with Warrick Brown to find out who was responsible for murdering four famous rock stars and a potential new lead singer. They were electrocuted on stage and died instantly... how many people have the skills to do that? This one was a bit trickier as i missed a vital piece of evidence early on (even with the hint i couldn't find it!) but it still wasn't really hard to solve.

~Case 4: In Your Eyes~

You work with Greg Sanders to find out who killed an eye surgeon in his house. This case is complicated by the fact that there is only one witness to the case and it's his blind wife! This one was a little bit trickier, but still easily solvable.

~Case 5: The Peacemaker~

Finally, you get to work with Gil Grissom on a shootout where a clerk was killed with repeated gun shots. You have to look long and hard at this case to find out who the killer was and why they killed so horrifically.

Graphics
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In my opinion, the graphics on this were quite poor and they definitely didn't meet upto my expectations. The characters in the game did look the the actual CSI characters upto a point, but that was about the only thing. When they characters spoke, the lips moved at the wrong time. It's a petty point, but something that should have been quite easy to work on and fix before release.

The pieces of evidence were often difficult to find because the poor graphics seemed to make everything look really dark or blurry. This isn't what you want in a detective game and i'd have hoped they could have upped their budget just a touch to improve one of the most important parts of the game.

Locations
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Something that really bothered me was the fact they used the same locations over and over again. This made the game even easier as you'd know where you could zoom into and where you couldn't. Everytime i saw that same location come up i sighed in disbelief that they couldn't have spent a little bit more on the game.

Game Play
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A disappointing fact is that the game is only for one player. I think it would have been far better to make it a two player game, but then i did know this when i bought it. Only the wii remote is required which makes game play really simple for anyone to play. Hints are given away throughout the game in the form of the cursor. If you can zoom into something, the cursor turns green, whether it be into an arrow or evidence box.

When you do find a piece of evidence, the cursor will show you the evidence box. It will then come up with a box of tools that highlight either detection or collection. It will only let you select a couple of the tools so there isn't really any room for doing things incorrectly. I think it would have been far better to make you choose whether you wanted a collection or detection tool and force you to do some thinking and select one yourself. This would have made the game take longer and increased the difficulty rating.

Other than that, moving about is very easy most of the time but the graphics can be very slow.

You do get to go to the lab and analyse your evidence on the different equipment, but this isn't hard and takes about two minutes of your time before you're back to a pause waiting to go somewhere!

My good bits
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I know it doesn't sound like it from my review, but i did enjoy this game for the most part. The cases were all very different to each other which was definitely a good thing and you got to work with a different investigator each time and learn how they put their perspective (which was very little if i'm honest) on the case.

The controls were very easy (still not sure if this is good or bad) and with only needing the wii remote, it left another hand free to check emails whilst you waited!

My bad bits
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The graphics could definitely have been improved along with the speed of the game. The lips moving at completely different times to the speaker really got on my nerves (it's a tiny niggly little complaint, but one none the less). The same locations were also very disappointing as you'd know where to look and where not to.

Jumping from scene to scene was very slow, annoying but it did have a point. It's still one of my bad parts though as i'm sure they could have improved the speed of it, especially as they hadn't put a lot of effort into the graphics!

You also can't play with game with subtitles like you can in others (or if you can, i didn't find it). I'd often want to play the game without the sound blaring out at me but i found if i turned it any lower, the words were quite muffled and hard to understand. Probably had the same amount of input as the graphics!

The game doesn't last very long and well, once you're finished, you're finished. There's no going back and doing it again as you'd be bored out of your brain waiting for the cases to load all over again!

My Verdict
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If you're after a few hours of playing time, lots of annoying pauses and poor quality sound/graphics then this is for you. Don't get me wrong, the cases were decent towards the end, but i'd much rather a game that you could play constantly without having niggly little breaks in waiting for it to load.