Customer Reviews

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Dark Motives

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

If everyone has the same problem with a game, that's a bug. You shouldn't have to play a game 9 times to get through it. I've had characters disappear on screen, not be able to interogate witnesses, evidence be collected, and then disappear. Ubisoft (the games manufacturer) says it is a noted problem, but the patch they gave does not work, for all the problems. I feel that they rushed this game out to capitalize on the past success of the previous game. Time between announcement of release and release was a scanty 6 months. Is that enough time to put out a quality computer game?

Also I had one other complaint about the game. Now it wants the CD in the disk drive for it to work, and it doesn't matter which cd. In the previous version, you could do a full install and not need the cd for it to run, which I thought was a definite plus.

So wait for a unbugged version, or get the original version, which even though it was short, it worked. Don't waste your time or money on this. I was extremely disappointed, as I love CSI.

This is the 2nd of the CSI games I have owned. I love the TV show and have even read the books and graphic novels - I'm a bit of an addict. The concept of the game is cool in theory, but there are just way too many problems.
1) Game play is too choppy (and I'm using a high-end system with all the necessary specs for gaming)
2) the graphics aren't as good as they could be - it seems like they just did the bare minimum and didn't take the time to make the environment as realistic as it could be. The characters' movements are very limited and repetitive - when they talk, their mouths look like really bad animation a la South Park. Most of the rooms/locations do not allow for 360 degree rotation, which would make the experience much better.
4) There are tons of bugs - for example, several times while playing the text would disappear in all places - the characters' speech, the text on the main menu, everything - so I kept having to restart the game to get it back. Also, unless you collect the evidence or ask questions in a particular order, you cannot solve the case. This is ridiculous - I had to use the walkthrough for the entire game because I kept getting stuck - mostly because of game bugs and quirks rather than something I was missing - For example, I went to ask for an interrogation when I had all the evidence for one suspect, but I had to go talk to a different suspect about something completely unrelated first and then go back to Brass's office before Brass would give me an interrogation with the first suspect. Things like this are very rampant throughout the game and makes for an extremely frustrating gaming experience. The only reason I'm giving the game 3 stars is because I really love the concept - but the game just has too many problems to make it truly enjoyable.

CSI is a hugely popular TV show, and the first Crime Scene Investigation game was relatively fun and quick. Unfortunately they raced this second game out the door before it was ready.

On the positive side, CSI fans will enjoy the tie-ins. You get the cool voices of the real actors. The visuals look like the actors, although at times it appears you're watching a badly dubbed Japanese movie based on the bad lip synching. You get cool music and cut-scenes just like in the TV show. It really does feel at times like you're "in" the TV world.

But where this COULD have been a great game with more quality testing and work, they obviously rushed to get this to the public and rake in the cash. The game crashed constantly on several testing machines. You now have to have the CD in the drive to play, even if you do a full install. They warn you that only "regular" CD players work well - that it won't necessarily work on a DVD player or CD-writer. Since most new machines come with those options and not just a plain CD player, that could cause trouble for lots of people.

Even when the game does play smoothly, the gameplay is iffy. People vanish. Items vanish. There's a patch on the Ubi website but it doesn't help with many of these issues.

The gameplay is supposed to have you investigate the clues, talk to suspects and figure out what has happened. But most of the times the clues are pretty obvious. The questions are all very leading, in essence telling you what to do next most of the time.

For the price on the box, you'd really expect more than the 5 hours or so of gameplay you get as a result. Maybe if the puzzles were harder you'd play a given mission for longer. I suppose with all the crashes, it does actually take you longer to get things going smoothly, replaying missions to try to get past the buggy spots.

Still, if you're a fan of CSI, you'll want to get this to immerse yourself further in the CSI world. Who knows, in another few months they might actually put out enough patches to fix the bugs - but the gameplay itself will still be simple and quick. Hopefully before CSI 3 comes out they'll do a bit more development and gameplay testing.

Oh my gosh - I too am someone who was eagerly anticipating the arrival of this new game and eagerly did a full installation yesterday (the day it arrived on my doorstep). But I am only a bit into the first case (for the second time because the first time I thought I must be doing somethign wrong) and the bugs are frequent and bothersome. I have two click twice on questions almost all the time before they get asked. And after awhile things start disappearing (the pictures of items I've collected, text on my tool box, etc).

What I've seen and done so far is exciting which is why I'm being optimistic and giving three stars - I suspect that with the bugs fixed it will be a five star product but not now!

Definitely watch the UBI website and wait for corrections or upgrades or, if you buy it, steel yourself for likely disappointment.

It's obvious they worked on some of the bugs with the first game. This second game is more in-depth and the cases are longer than the five with the first game. It's helps to download some of the patches before you play, as they help with some annoying bugs with the game. The graphics in this game are much more realistic than the first as well. I would still like to see more flexibility in the crime solving - so that I could for example take a different route to solving the game than the computer intends (sometimes you have solved it and can't bring anyone in to question because you are missing a small piece of evidence). At times you have the person at the crime scene with motive and yet still can't bring them in because you missed a small insignificant clue that the computer will not let you move ahead without.

Despite the frustrations, this game is completely addictive and a lot of fun. It's the best crime scene game out there right now - just as the show is still the best out of all the copycats. It also looks like the creators are constantly improving and making changes so I'm sure future games will be even better. This one is a lot of fun and too good to pass up.

From the author of The Difference Now, A New Dish, and At the Coffee Shop.

I purchased CSI and played through the entire game with no problems, or so I thought. I could never achieve a 100% on the games. I later dl-ed a walk through and did everything I should... still the game wouldn't let me get a hundred on one case... the company called it a bug, and download their patch- that didn't help!
I tried to play CSI DARKMOTIVES... the game came to a complete halt on the first person I spoke with in the game-it locked up! I uninstalled it and reinstalled it thinking it was me or the computer again I tried to play the game and the same thing happened. I went online to see that many people were having problems and didn't even get through the first case. I later uninstalled then reinstalled it causing more problems even after going to their website and getting a patch for the game it never ran or helped! I exchanged it for a new one and again the same thing happened. Evidence couldn't be collected, pieces of evidence you did collect disappeared, you couldn't talk to people and things started to lock up... and my computer is brand new....
My fiancé found both games in one for the Xbox low price of 19.99 thinking it was wonderful and I would finally get to play... nope! What do you know.... again the things had problems I couldn't get through the first case with out it locking up and having problems. I couldn't collect evidence even locked up my X-box twice once it tried to not let me have the CD back.....I have to try to battle to take it back.
I STRONGLY ADVISE DO NOT PURCHASE ANY GAMES BEFORE YOU ARE SURE THEY HAVE NO GLITCHES THERE ARE TO MANY. I found it is too much of a hassle trying to get the companies to take these games back because they were opened and of coarse no one knows of any problems with the games! Go figure... UBSOFT should do something more for the buyers like us that got burned. I drove out of my way hours to the nearest store to exchange thinking it was sold out... they aren't sold out they are all being returned and exchanged!

First i'll like to say this game totally ROCKS!!!!!!!! But the people who give it 3 or bellow stars just think there is a bug in the game just because you get stuck in a level. Well I had that same problem to, I thought there was a bug in my game even though I restarted the first level 8 times to be exact. on the ninth try I beat it. But the key of it all is to always analyse things you've already analyzed beacause that is where you never make it off a level. you have to look real hard for clues everywhere and scan every thing in for prints.
On the first level it is just about this messed up bike crash that someone almost died in. That is where people get stuck. Be sure to analyze EVERYTHING, even if you have analyzed it to the farthest extent.
The second level is about a homelesses man murder. That case is easier than cake.
The third is about a 2 year old murder when they find old buried human bones.
The forth is about this play, and during rehearseal this woman got shot and killed.
The fifth is about this missing komodo dragon, and a REAL human toe.
So I like the game. My best guess is that you need an XP to run it, But It's on my top game list.

I didn't have nearly as much trouble with bugs as some people, but Dark Motives is still a waste of money. There's no point to it, really, since there's nothing to figure out or decide for yourself. You just go where the game tells you to go and click on what you're supposed to click on and ask the questions you're supposed to ask. What's the point of that?

Short, boring, pointless. No more CSI for me, thanks. After playing both this and Sherlock Holmes: Silver Earring, I'm not sure I'll waste any more money on Ubisoft games.

I dont know about the other reviewers, but this game was not nearly as buggy for me as they claim. Granted I'm running an older system 600Mhz processor, 300mb RAM, Windows 98, might be the difference I dont know. Yes the game crashed on me. 3 times in over 12 hours of gameplay. I consider that to be pretty average for my system, so I cannot say its the game or my computer. But the game did not wreck havok with my PC as others are claiming happened to them. It did seem a little jumpy when it was about to crash and I learned how to recognize that, and simply rebooted my computer to reset the free memory available. In a game as graphicly detailed as this one, it will chew up a lot of memory. I did install the Ubisoft patch as well as did a full install if this helps anyone with crashing issues. I did find that doing frequent Alt-Tabs to view online strategy guides for this game did increase the amount of game crashing... perhaps a little less flipping around might also resolve this issue. Some parts of this game were quite dark too, at times a little too dark, but it was still playable.

Now onto the game itself and not its bugs. The graphics were an improvement over the previous CSI game. Far more detail in the environments and the changescene movies. The lips on the speaking characters were not in sync with the dialogue, but it wasnt detracting from gameplay. I also liked that you could investigate something after you've collected it, something that could keep you from completing your mission in the other game. I liked also that instead of Greg telling you when things match up, you have to figure it out for yourself. Makes the game a little more challenging. The cases you work are definitely more intensive than the last games were. The first case is by no means easy and the last is downright hard. Also some nice references to the previous game are mentioned if you keep your eyes and ears out. I like when games recognize there was a previous version and make references for those who've played the previous game. I also liked how one could not get a warrant to investigate something unless every piece was in place. But sometimes the hints Brass gave were a little too leading. I also loved that you could look at the autopsied bodies rather than having Dr Robins just spoonfeed you everything. Also in this game it sometimes requires multiple trips to different locations and multiple interviews which makes this game far more challenging than the previous version. Also if you played the previous version, you may notice a similarity in voices for your suspects, not sure if this was intentional or not, but sometimes I had visions of the previous versions characters.

All in all I could comfortable recommend buying this game. Its not terribly long to get all the way through without hints, and even with hints it will take well over 8 hours to complete. So good for a rainy weekend of CSI fun

Every fifteen minutes or so I have to exit the game and restart because all of the text disappears and sometimes the entire picture goes. Even though I did a full install to my hard drive, this game takes forever to load. Went to the UBI Soft site and guess what? They say they know about this problem and are working on it!! Unfortunately for me, a person who anticipated this title and paid full price, this is not what I want to hear. Are you so greedy UBI that you can't fix the bugs first?

Furthermore, I had hoped the game would improve over the first but it hasn't much at all. I love hearing the voices from the show and "working" with the main characters, but stop chastising me when I am just looking at stuff. The other characters also get to ask all the good questions. There's no real investigation for me to do--it's all pointed out. (Note that even when the arrow/cursor is turned off the hot spots glow with a different color and you can't miss them.) When I find an interesting piece of evidence, I don't get to follow up on it (for example the broken piece of the eyeglass in "Diggin' It"--you look at it under the microscope and then Sara goes on for several minutes about the properties of glass and eyeglass prescriptions--Why can't I research that?) The cases are all easily solved in a short amount of time (even with all the restarting). I really feel as if I paid too much and that's including the book that came with it. I am very dissappointed.