Comments: 0 (Go to Comments)
Categories: Review
Tags: adventure, csi, xbox 360
CSI: Hard Evidence
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Xbox 360
Released: 9/26/2007
Hard Evidence puts the player in the role of one of those AFGNCAAP characters, which is too bad, because roles like this are exactly why Mary Sue was coined. You are new to the Las Vegas Crime Scene Unit, but since you are smart and observant and talented, you are immediately sent on cases with CSI members and at the end of day your new BFF Gil Grissom tells you how smart you are. Actually, it’s amazing that the television show can exist without your character since the approach Catherine, Warrick, Nick and the others take to crime scene investigating involves standing very still and saying very little.
The game follows the show’s premise of solving murders through the collection and analysis of evidence: fingerprints, DNA, bits of fabric and the like. CSI theory posits that there is a trinity linking suspects to victims to crime scenes and back. Your goal is to collect all the evidence, following it through to an arrest. Unfortunately, instead of using modern day gaming technology to create an immersive CSI experience, Telltale offers up a boilerplate exercise in pointing and clicking.
Each of the game’s five cases find you paired up with a CSI regular, but since you are being evaluated, it’s up to you to find all the evidence. You can ask the CSI character for assistance, but you’ll be marked off on your evaluation– so it’s best to ignore them completely. Locations in the game were built with a 3D engine, but still use the adventure game slideshow technique of navigation by clicking on hotspots. However, in addition to presenting mostly 360-degree environments, it is possible to circle around some objects. For instance, the first case, which involves a cabby burned to death in his cab, lets you circle around the cab and then click hotspots for closer inspection.
This game loves its hotspots. Investigating a crime scene involves moving the cursor around to see where you can click. If you are in a screen with evidence, then the cursor changes to a toolbox. If you are in a screen without evidence then you are awarded a thoroughness point for simply having found a place to click. Evidence collection is done by moving the toolbox icon over a hotspot (smudge, footprint, blood, etc) and pressing the A-button. At this point, the right tool is usually preselected for you. When there is a choice, it’s, “Do I pick this up with tweezers or a glove?”
After evidence is collected, it needs to be analyzed in the lab. Here, you have access to computers which break down powders, compare DNA, match fingerprints, and scrutinize audio and video tapes. There’s also a table where you can assemble broken materials or activate ballistics tests. The problem is it’s too player-friendly. There’s little in the way of distracting red herrings or contradictory evidence and, since you can usually tell where the story is heading, it’s easy to figure out whose fingerprints will match the ones found at the crime scene.
Hard Evidence is small. You’ll show up at a crime scene and there’s either one cop there or no one at all. You’ll visit casinos and hotels which are empty. CSI locations are similarly vacant, except for chatter which loops in the background. Most cases have only four crime scene locations and a handful of characters. There are no eleventh hour surprises, so the true criminal is always one of the three suspects you’ve met early on. There are more locations back at the CSI headquarters, but you’ll spend most of the time in the lab or in the interviewing room questioning suspects. Questioning suspects involve exhausting all the available conversation options. That’s fun.
Telltale should also receive special recognition for reusing locations between cases. Some of the characters and locations show up in two separate cases, which is one thing, but Hard Evidence brazenly redresses “sets,” with the winner being the casino set which appears in 3 out of the 5 cases.
Hard Evidence could be a decent game if it simply carried over what works on the show, but from The Who-less opening onward, it misses that mark, too. Jorja Fox (Sara) and Marg Helgenberger (Catherine) are replaced with “sound-alikes” and most of the male leads sound like there’s something they’d rather be doing, Robert David Hall (Dr. Robbins) and William Petersen (Gil Grissom) being the exception. Brass says the same handful of lines, Warrick and Greg are fine, but Nick is dull dull dull. In the show, the actors play off each other, but here they vary between speaking, acting, or doing voiceovers.
Which brings me to the graphics. Hard Evidence looks bad. Character models lack decent textures and the animations are painful to watch. I’ve seen hand puppets deliver dialogue more convincingly. All the environments are bland and static, except for a few touches like disappearing aquarium fish.
What are eyecatching are the HP and Visa ads. CSIs use fancy iPAQs, every house and hotel has a huge-ass HP flatscreen, and Visa ads are everywhere. We are even told about Visa’s credit protection program, “Visa noticed suspicious activity and alerted him right away.” Brass adds, “Good people to work with, those Visa guys.”
Finally, you can’t lose in this game. It’s the adventure game equivalent of a rail-shooter. You can’t visit new locations until you collect all the evidence and find all the right clues at the first one. You can’t falsely accuse the wrong person. You can’t mess up evidence by using the wrong tool. The only thing you can get marked down for is not clicking everywhere, not running through every dialogue option, or — god forbid — asking one of your team for assistance.
Between lazy game design, obsessive player-handholding, and a collection of unispired crimes, there’s little this game offers even to the most diehard of CSI fans. But even then, there’s absolutely no need to purchase this game. The five missions pass quickly and this game offers nothing in the way of replay.