CSI: Hard Evidence (Xbox 360)
Hey, you know that show CSI, where crimes are solved in an hour through the use of forensics, snappy dialogue, and obscure factoids? Well, now you can pretend to be a CSI your own self! And holy Moses, this isn’t a very good game.
Okay, I wouldn’t call it terrible, either. But really, this just is an inexplicable bit of corporate synergy. The main component of this crime-solving adventure game is the collection and processing of evidence, which, if you’ve ever seen the show, is distilled down into minute-long montages backed by pop music. Here it’s pixel hunt at the crime scene, use the right tool (out of the two or three options that you’re given; there’s no penalty for picking the wrong one first, aside from having to hear the same “that’s not the right tool for that” type comment from your CSI partner), then take it back to the lab and point-and-click until you’ve either matched the fingerprint, DNA, or trace sample. With no chance of failure, it just becomes trial-and-error over and over again.The other part of the game is interviewing suspects, which is even more pointless. You just click through all the dialogue options until they’re all done. Then when you’ve discovered something else, you go back and do it again.
Really, the whole thing screams budget title. It’s like Telltale Games had the CSI license shoved at them and told, “here, make a game, and make it cheap”. There are five cases, which take an hour or two to complete each, and characters and locations are reused in two of the cases. Achievement whores will rejoice, because all 1000 gamerscore is unlocked from playing through the game. They couldn’t even get the entire cast to voice their characters: Marg Helgenberger (replaced by some woman who makes Catherine Willows sound somewhere between a sultry ingénue and someone’s grandmother) and Jorja Fox. If you’re a CSI fan or an adventure gamer, you’ll probably enjoy this enough to play through it, but since there is zero replayability, nobody should buy this game, ever.
2 out of 5
Hey, you know that show CSI, where crimes are solved in an hour through the use of forensics, snappy dialogue, and obscure factoids? Well, now you can pretend to be a CSI your own self! And holy Moses, this isn’t a very good game.
Okay, I wouldn’t call it terrible, either. But really, this just is an inexplicable bit of corporate synergy. The main component of this crime-solving adventure game is the collection and processing of evidence, which, if you’ve ever seen the show, is distilled down into minute-long montages backed by pop music. Here it’s pixel hunt at the crime scene, use the right tool (out of the two or three options that you’re given; there’s no penalty for picking the wrong one first, aside from having to hear the same “that’s not the right tool for that” type comment from your CSI partner), then take it back to the lab and point-and-click until you’ve either matched the fingerprint, DNA, or trace sample. With no chance of failure, it just becomes trial-and-error over and over again.The other part of the game is interviewing suspects, which is even more pointless. You just click through all the dialogue options until they’re all done. Then when you’ve discovered something else, you go back and do it again.
Really, the whole thing screams budget title. It’s like Telltale Games had the CSI license shoved at them and told, “here, make a game, and make it cheap”. There are five cases, which take an hour or two to complete each, and characters and locations are reused in two of the cases. Achievement whores will rejoice, because all 1000 gamerscore is unlocked from playing through the game. They couldn’t even get the entire cast to voice their characters: Marg Helgenberger (replaced by some woman who makes Catherine Willows sound somewhere between a sultry ingénue and someone’s grandmother) and Jorja Fox. If you’re a CSI fan or an adventure gamer, you’ll probably enjoy this enough to play through it, but since there is zero replayability, nobody should buy this game, ever.
2 out of 5
posted by Cole at
1:38 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home