Customer Reviews

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I'm a huge fan of the TV series, and so I couldn't wait for the game to come out. I ventured out to buy it and tried it out as a soon as I got home.

First, technically, it's a great game. The interface isn't hard to figure out, and the first mission is basically a tutorial. (One problem, if you want to repeat this mission to attempt a higher score, there doesn't seem to be a way to shut of the voice commentary that runs throughout and tells you how to use the interface.) The graphics are very good, and fans of the show will be excited to find themselves "in" Grissam's office, as well as other locations in the show, and working alongside their favorite characters from the show.

The only problem is that the first few missions seems a bit too easy. I managed to get through them succesfully, without using many (if any) hints. Then the fourth mission comes along and I hit a dead end with no apparent way out. I'll keep plugging away, but it might take a hint source, guide or walkthrough to get me out of it. It's easy to miss evidence if you move too fast. Like real CSI, in that aspect, I guess.

More advanced gamers might fly right through these five missions pretty quickly. I managed to make it to mission 4 in one day. Had I more success with that mission, I might have completed them all in one day. For that reason, I have to say that the game doesn't deliver quite enough bang for the buck. One hopes theres a possibility that "expansion packs" featuring new missions might be in the works.

I'd have to say that the level of difficulty in the missions seems uneven enough to frustrate a player who starts out moving along at a good clip only to hit a brick wall.

Are you a fan of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation? Do you enjoy mystery games? This is definitely a fun game that draws you in and keeps you interested.

Much like the game Law & Order, in CSI you get to interact with the real characters from the show, with their voices and attitudes and everything. A show's writer put the game together, and you can tell by the pacing and dialogue.

You really get the feeling that you're watching the famous TV show and participating in solving the case. The first mission is a tutorial, to help you learn the ropes and how all of the screens work. They are well laid out, with your collection and detection tools nicely labelled and your case file always at hand.

You can easily gather up whatever you find interesting and bring it back to the lab to analyze and do computer searches on. The plots have twists and turns, and eventually if you are diligent you track down the guilty suspect. The graphics aren't stellar, but they're good enough to make the scenes believable.

Yes, this is not a game that will take 80 hours to finish, like Final Fantasy. You can probably play through a mission a night even if you only have an hour or two for each one. The object isn't to "race to the end", though. It's to go through the scene, think like a investigator, think about what you're doing. Who could it be? What might their motive be? The game is on the cheap side compared to most other games out there so I considered it quite worth the money. Plus, this is the kind of game that you can lend out to your friends and see who enjoys which missions the best. It's a great "evening relaxing fun" game that will keep you going for a week or so. And with the series only being an hour an episode, to have the same activity in the game take 8 hours would probably be a bit much :)

Hopefully now that the game engine is built, they'll come out with more missions for CSI fans to enjoy. It would be neat if they offered different "levels" of missions - some for new gamers, and some for advanced puzzle solvers. We'll see!

Just got the game 2 days ago, I have been waiting on it and was not dissapointed by it at all except for one thing the game has only five cases which if you pick up the basics of the tools you use it can be breezed through fairly easily and quickly. I am finished with the game and wish there were more cases to solve, the graphics are great, to be able to use the actual tools and uncover secrets and put cases together was a blast, they made the game very realistic. Every character in the show is in the game and use their actual voices. If you like the show you will love the game, it is fun to play and will keep you thinking and mad trying to put clues together. I say get the game you will love it, if only it was longer I would not be writing this now but it is very well worth it.

Ok, this game took me all of about 4 hours of gametime to play. Plus it didn't feel like I was actually doing anything. One of CSI's problems is that this tutorial never seems to end. There's always someone standing over your shoulder, pointing out how whatever evidence you've found ties in to the big picture. What exactly is your role in the detective work? At most, five clicks. The only real challenge in CSI is finding all the evidence. To do so, you go to various locations and drag the blue cursor around until it turns green. Then you click, and you look at something. You can try your tools, but if you're on the wrong track your partner will immediately tell you so. "There are no prints here," your partner will say as soon as you take out the brush. Pick the wrong tool for the right job, and your partner will advise you to "try a similar tool." If you ever actually get stuck, it will probably be because you overlooked the single piece of evidence that unlocks the next location. CSI seems like a squandered opportunity. In your first case, as you run the ultraviolet light over a bruised neck and dust a remote control for fingerprints, it seems as though you're in for a game of investigation and deduction. But all you're in for is running ultraviolet lights and dusting for fingerprints while all the interesting decisions are made for you. It's simple, but at least it seems promising at the beginning. The problem is that the game remains simple and gradually loses this promise over its notably short life span.

I was looking forward to playing this game because I greatly enjoy the TV show. But like someone before me mentioned, it was too easy -- I finished playing it in about 4 hours. There are too many hints and the clues are blatantly placed (even if you aren't into the game and you just want to win, all you have to do is drag your mouse over various areas and wait for the mouse pointer to turn green, collect the clues, and then it all comes automaticaly together). Spoon fed.

I do think, however, if it was too hard, people would get frustrated with it. But for fans of forensic shows, or even someone who has basic knowledge, this game is a breeze. Which is frustating in itself, because you play the game, anticipating it getting harder with each level, and that just doesn't happen.

Hopefully if they make another version of this game, they'll take some time and think up more complex plots that require greater deduction in order to win.

Although I do not watch the show CSI, I am a Criminal Justice student and after playing the demo, the game intrigued me, so I bought it.

Good News:
its fun, I'm told it's quit real to life in terms of the TV show/characters by people who do watch CSI.

Good (not Great) graphics

Few glitches.

The Bad:

It's TOO EASY! I took me maybe 20 minutes on each case, and there are only 5!

When you run your cursor around, it highlights objects that are "important", then the guy w/you tell you what to do, cast it, dust it, etc. There is no challenge, it would be a lot better w/o your partner giving you instructions, and taking points off your final score if you say tried to use the wrong tool.

Final Line:
If you are looking for a fun, easy game, you like CSI, buy it.

If you are looking for a challenging game, solving crimes/cases, etc. it's not for you.

If you're a []fan of CSI, this game is a must. The characters voices are the real CSI voices and even their little quirks are the same (look for lots of Greg-isms). I think the renderings of Sarah and Warrick are the best. The cases are complex and will take some time to solve. The first case gives you a brief tutorial on how everything works, and you do get hints from your partner so you dont have the chance of getting any irrelavent evidence (like if you use a glove instead of tweezers). You do have the option of asking your partner for hints on how to proceed if you get stuck. This game is definitely not linear in your approach like with real CSI work. Sometimes you'll need to return to the scene of the crime, analyze evidence twice and even re-interrogate witnesses. Each game is progressively longer and more complicated. Your first game will take probably 45 minutes if you're an experienced logic game player, and longer if you're not used to trying to mouse over everything and clicking on every inch of the screen. I do concur with a previous reviewer that some of the scenes are dark, very dark and I would have killed for a flashlight option (the UV light does come in handy at times for this however) and you can miss some important clues if you're not careful. The final case took well over 3 hours for me to complete with no breaks or interruptions. I'd love for them to make more of this game because its very realistic.

Now for the downside and thus my 4 stars. This game eats memory. If you do a full install of this game, you're looking at 1.5 gigs of space taken up on your hard drive. The 3 CD's will not be necessary then (kind of nice not to have to switch through 3 CD's) which I like (except for the associated piracy risks this holds). A patch from Ubisoft is available for this game and is necessary to remove some of the quirks but it wont erase the associated memory eating. After about 1.5 cases and on the last case, your computer will starve for memory. I had to restart my computer no less than 7-8 times during the entire gameplay. I have a pretty powerful system as well with an 80 gig hard drive 1.5 gigs of memory an ATI Radeon video card, and a Pentium 4 processor running windows 98 (personal problem with XP). The sound was also a bit choppy on my Soundblaster Live 5.1 sound card. This did not detract from my enjoyment of this game much, but I would have liked having smooth audio and smoother graphics. Dont get me wrong the graphics and sound were authentic and great, but choppy. Sometimes when the memory started to starve, I'd get Director errors or when visiting a certain location, whole frames of another location would pop up. Most of my problems occurred while at Greg's lab and on the final case. The game does autosave so even if you do crash during this game, you wont have to worry too much about losing all the hard work you did on the case.

The bonus material is nice, but nothing to write home to mom about. Kind of reminds me of bonus material on DVD's. I would have liked another case rather than the trivial material provided (I dont want to spoil things here).

The game does challenge you to be very thorough and you can replay the levels for a better score.

All in all this game is worth the money spent and is a must for a CSI fan or even a forensics fan.

In this game you will become a CSI (doesn't that sound cool!?)working along with Grissom, Catherine, Brass, Warrick, Nick, and Sara (who are 3D and look like the real people on the show!) on 5 baffling cases from: arson to murder. And plus, since you are "living" the action, you will deal with the tools that the cast deals with every week on Thursdays: luminol to fingerprint brush. Max Allen Collins, who wrote "Double Dealer", "sin City", and "Cold Burn" wrote the scripts for this game.
This game will be airing March 25,03!
Rated: M for Mature ages 18+ (that stinks!) Blood and Violence.

I bought this game yesterday because I'm a huge fan of the show and I love pc games. Although I was blown away that the actual cast members did the voices for the characters in the game and the games we're "solvable", there were quite a few technical problems that I had with the game that result in me only give 3 stars out of a possible 5.
First, the crimes (3 murders, 1 arson, 1 kidnapping) were pretty easy to solve. I solved the crimes in about 5 hours. Pretty quick for a pc game.
Second, you, as a detective, didn't get to move around too much. Basically you stood in the center of a crime scene or a investigation location, and scanned a room looking for clues to click on. It would have had a more realistic feel if there was more mobility.
Third, it was pretty easy to miss clues. When your mouse scans over a clue, it changes from blue to green. However, the area of color change is so small, it's easy to miss the color change or you have to get the mouse icon just right to be able to click on it.
Fourth, a lot of time wasted in the game by characters repeating themselves. For example, you will have to visit the lab on MANY occasions in order to analyze clues. Everytime you visit the lab, you have to wait to be welcomed by Greg Sanders. This can get to be annoying especially when your eager to analyze clues.
Finally, the characters portrayed in the game did resemble the actual cast of the television series, however, George Eads character, Nick Stokes, in my opinion, looked nothing like him. Now, some may think that petty, but I adore Eads!! That deserved the loss of one star from the rating alone! Hee hee.
Okay, enough about the bad stuff. The sound and music of the game was great. The dialogue was awsome (I still can't believe the cast did it!). And this was a nice way for fans of the show to get to solve crimes just like on television.
I recommend this game for true diehard fans, but don't expect too much. I think this was a decent attempt, but there is much more room for improvement and hopefully the makers of the game will read these reviews and take some tips to heart for future CSI games (hint hint).

As an avid CSI fan, I couldn't wait to get this game home and start plahing. Fair warning, it takes A LOT (1.5G) of space on your computer, and you must have a good system to run it properly. Before you start playing, I recommend you get the patch from UbiSoft - without it, you cannot complete some of the games at 100%.

When you first start your quests, you are sure to enjoy what you see. The game does well compared to the TV show, as it not only captures the character voices, but also their personalities. Your solving tools come straight from CSI. I definitely enjoyed the video clips, re-enactments of a crime happening (exactly like the show), along with an explanation from Al Robbins. Gameplay is quick to learn, with a tutorial that explains everything you need to know to start solving.

However, I was disappointed with the gameplay as I got into it. I found it too short and too easy. I beat all 5 quests within 2 days.

You can re-complete each quest for a better score, and if you get 100% on all five, you get "bonus material". I was very annoyed when I re-played the first quest and had to go through the entire tutorial again. They really should've let you bypass it. I didn't enjoy recompleting the quests. I knew how each would end, and it got boring doing the 'exact' same thing over and over again. Also - do not get your hopes up for the extra material - it's not worth beating the quests again for.

Overall, if you're a die-hard CSI fan, you won't be disappointed. It is a challenge to reach 100%, and there are the same twists at the end of each case as you would find in the show. The 5th case had an especially good story-line. If you're not a huge fan, it's not worth [it]. Would I buy it if I knew how it was before? Probably... It's a worthwhile experience the first time around.