C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation

Written by Ryan Genno  on February 17, 2005

Review: It should be a crime to make games this bad!

Tweet

Comments

I know what you're thinking. Video game companies have had a long history of making lack lustre titles from overrated hit shows! Take Home Improvement and Alf for example: both were mildly entertaining sitcoms with very crappy games found on old gaming consoles like the Sega Master System and Super Nintendo. CBS's C.S.I. is not your average hit TV show though. CSI has taken grizzly subject matter of death and added a cool cast of characters, which helped it to become one of the best TV dramas ever made. The show is so good that it is one of the few reasons people actually watch CBS network anymore. Here is a great opportunity to make a great game from one of hottest shows in recent memory, but it just didn't happen.

CSI for the Xbox is a collection of older Point and Click PC games in one budget priced set (19.99 US). Even though we are not getting anything new here, it still sounds like a pretty good deal, right?

Like the show, each assignment begins interestingly enough. You and the CSI team find a dead body and it's up to you search the area for clues, discover motives, and gather a list of suspects. Unfortunately, you are forced to play the game is that order and it often doesn't leave too much freedom. In a lot of instances for example: you can't even leave one area until you've searched every boring detail of a key spot.

You can use advanced analysis and crime-fighting tools to help solve the mystery just like the show, but the interface is very clunky and hard to use at a moments notice. Questioning the suspects is even worse, since all the questions are already predetermined and you just have to cycle through them all and you're done.

For a game that takes place on static backgrounds, CSI is one disappointing looking title. A lot of the dull environments here are not very interactive and the actors move like robots. C'mon, even other and much older Point and Click games like Myst look more realistic then this!

Moving on to what this game has for sounds, there isn't too much for background music, but all the sound effects for the various tools are quite convincing. If CSI has any good points it would have to be that the game publisher has gotten the real actors to do the voices like William Petersen and Paul Guilfoyle for the game. The lip-syncing is a bit off, but again that is the fault of the game's graphics.