CSI for Windows - this certainly wasn't daylight robbery!! (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (PC))

Member Name: CaptainD

Product:	CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (PC)
Date:	17/03/07 (204 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great atsmophere, good interface...

Disadvantages: ... very frustrating at times, some problems...

Crime Scene Investigation is the first game based on the popular TV series of the same name. I’ve not seen all that many episodes (yet), but I’ve seen enough to know that it’s one of the smarter detective dramas out there, and certainly with its use of techniques such as actually following a bullet’s eye view (if bullets had eyes) into the body in great detail, the most visually arresting. Having had a so-so reaction to the "Law and Order 2: Double or Nothing" game, I was a little dubious but nonetheless the game looked interesting.

Featuring all the main stars of the show (thus making it a better buy for fans, I guess), CSI gives you a number of cases to work through. You are a rookie about to start work with the unit under the tuition of the legendary Gil Grissom (
”Concentrate on what cannot lie… the evidence”."), you are talked through all of the necessary commands in the introduction to your first case, in which you investigate the murder of a young woman in a hotel room. Three tabs are ever-present at the bottom of the screen – Locations, Tools, and Evidence. Locations is obviously to move about the different places available, including the crime labs and justice department, and the crime scene(s) / associated locations. As you find more clues more locations may become available to you. The graphics are quite striking, not amazing or particularly high resolution, but nicely detailed and using an innovative technique to give you a 360 degrees of rotation view of each place you visit. The animation is on the whole pretty good too, though the lip-synching leaves rather a lot to be desired.

Later cases will have you investigating an arson, a body found in a barrel, mysterious misappropriations of controlled pharmaceuticals, and much more. There is a twist in the cases in that they are somewhat interdependent, but you’ll have to have been playing for quite a while before you properly understand this. In different cases you will have a different member of the CSI team to work with.

Once you get past the basic training, you have an army of tools at your disposal. These are basically separated into Detection tools – magnifying glass, UV light, a “sniffer” (gas / fume detector), etc, and Collection tools – gloves, tweezers, swabs, wound moulds, impression casts, etc. You use these in conjuncture with what your colleagues at the labs tell you and what you can find from the computer, and also questioning / interrogation of the suspects. Profiles of each victim and suspect are built that can be referred to throughout the game, and are updated as you find more information. Often reviewing these is the key to finding out what your next move is. If you get stuck you can ask a colleague for some advice, but the more advice you ask for the lower your evaluation will be at the end of the case. This affects your rank and the number of extras you can access – basically concept artwork, nothing to get excited over but it’s a nice feeling of accomplishment when you unlock all ten per case. The only real downside of all the tools and lab equipment is that some of them are only really needed for one particular clue or piece of evidence in the game, but it makes sense that certain tools – for instance the swab and magnifying glass – will be used more frequently.

The game generally works very well, with the cases being interesting and varied (although you will find that there is a link between them), and the use of the different tools well implemented, making you really feel like you are working on a criminal case. The graphics as mentioned already are detailed and eye-catching, while the voice-acting is generally good. (I did find that a couple of the characters seemed to over-exaggerate their accent, but maybe that’s how they speak anyway – I haven’t yet seen enough of the show to really know.) On the other hand this game can get very frustrating indeed, and on the last case I found it was actually impossible to complete if you did certain things in an unexpected order (if you finds this happens to you, use one of the many walk-throughs on the web – but only as a last resort!) Also the clues that you could get from your colleagues were rarely actually very helpful, and sometimes referred to items you hadn't actually found yet (though that could be a clue in itself!). Most of these problems were little things in themselves, but put together they add up to prevent this from being a 5-star game. Still, it’s a very well put together game on the whole and will have most people sleuthing for a considerable amount of time.

I did find this game rather better than Law & Order 2, both in execution and in scope. Purely detective computer games are a tricky genre to get right, and CSI is as near to the mark as any game I've yet played. Fans of the series may even feel that it’s worth the extra star to make it *****

--------------------

(Minimum) System Specs

OS: Windows 95/ Me/ 2000 / XP
CPU: Pentium II 300MHz or above
HDD space: 550Mb
RAM: 128Mb
Graphics card: 8Mb 3D card or above
DirectX version needed: 8.1 or above


System tested nn:

OS: Windows XP Home Edition SP2
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz
RAM: 768Mb
Graphics card: 256Mb (GeForce 5500 FX)
DirectX 9.0c

I had no technical problems whatsoever running the game.

--------------------

Crime Scene Investigation comes on 3 CD-ROMs, was designed by Focus Multimedia and is available on the Ubisoft eXclusive budget range. The budget release doesn’t have a printed manual, but this wasn’t a problem because of the tutorial nature of the first case (pity you couldn’t turn off the tutorial bit when playing it again for a better score though). You can also get information about each collection / detection tool by right-clicking on it, which often helps you to identify the right kind of tool for what you want to do.

The game is rated 16+ basically because of its content, i.e. you are investigating brutal murders and other nasty crimes. Also the reconstructions (replayable at any point once you have got to the point in the game where you’ve seen them) can be a little gruesome. Honestly, seeing that tiny bone in the neck break is quite horrible (and this from someone who works in a hospital!) There was honestly no bad language at all that I can remember hearing in the game.

CSI is available from Amazon.co.uk from £2.79 on the marketplace and £7.98 new, and Play.com for £7.99. I got it from Morrison's supermarket for £5.99, which was a good buy for a quality game. CSI fans will probably want to get the triple pack instead featuring this and the two subsequent CSI PC game releases, which is £9.99 new on Play.com and Amazon.co.uk for £12.47 new (from £7.52 on the marketplace). I would probably have gone for that if I’d known about it, but never mind, eh!

Summary: Overall, a very good game that will keep computer sleuths and CSI fans occupied for some time