CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (PC)

General Premise:

Basically you have to solve crimes that are not what they appear. It would be pretty boring if they were! You have to look closely at every facet of the crime scene gathering evidence and detecting things that are not initially visible. After accumulating evidence and incriminating so and so you are then able to bring them in for questioning and eventually, you will catch the bad people and lock them away. So what’s the story here?

The Plot:

You’re the newbie CSI being thrown in the deep-end and hopefully you’ll turn out better than the television show’s newbie Holly Gribbs who managed two cases before being shot to death, with her own weapon no less. You get a bit of dialogue from Grissom with some usual Grissomian wisdom added for nothing and all in his accurately recreated office full of entomological goodness and various test tubes and then you’re off! So what wonderful places do you get to go to?Outlines of the five cases:

INN AND OUT

Grissom the introverted entomologist holds your hand in this first mission in a cheap motel where a pretty but alas dead woman lies tied, strangled and blindfolded to the bed with some money wedged in her mouth. Was it the shady hotel manager? That’s for you to find out of course! The tutorial in the beginning of this level by a woman who speaks at around four words per minute is fairly torturous but thankfully doesn’t last all level and you can bypass it by right clicking.

LIGHT MY FIRE

Jason Gray, an aviation expert, goes out jogging in the middle of night and comes back to his house when he spots a small blaze in his living room and extinguishes it. It is confined to his home office and the files it contained. Lucky eh? Too lucky perhaps? He claims it was arson but if we have learned from the television show, it’s that people are liars and only the evidence never lies, right? You and Sara Sidle investigate this case.

GARVEY’S BEAT

A police officer is found dead by the side of a road with a hole gouged out of his head courtesy of a lead pipe. The crime seems to be a copycat of another cop killing a few decades back. So you and Nick Stokes the naïve Texan investigate this case meeting one of Nick’s mentors in the process and some other assorted geeks and oddballs.

MORE FUN THAN A BARREL OF CORPSES

After a crank phone call you and Warrick the gambling addict go out and investigate the call’s origin and discover (in my case after a painful eon wondering where the hell to look – I didn’t notice the title see…) a corpse in a barrel with a casino chip wedged in her mouth. Where’s this grass stain on her jeans come from? There’s only dust here! Doesn’t this sound eerily familiar to another case earlier on?!

LEDA’S SWAN SONG

Reinvestigating some previous cases and their charming (read: psychopathic) characters in this level where Gil has gone missing! It’s a race against time (it’s not really) to find him! Catherine the stripper turned forensic scientist assists you.

Questioning Suspects:

During these cases you get a question suspects and this is as simple as point and click on the questions on the screen! When you discover new evidence sometimes additional questions will appear so when you’ve milked the last out of the suspect they will usually tell you invariably “That’s all I’ve got for you”. There is unfortunately no art to interrogation unlike real life.

Your forensic arsenal:

Collection tools:

Swab – for taking wet or dry fluids for analysis (e.g. Blood, semen and urine)
Gloves – For picking up objects and so, you don’t contaminate the crime scene.
Tweezers – for picking up fiddly objects like shards of glass say.
Casting Plaster – for making moulds of things like tyre treads in mud
Mikrosil – for making moulds in wounds and for taking impressions
Adhesive tape – lifting fibres
Electrostatic dust lifter – lifts dust particles from carpets or other surfaces.

Detection tools:

Magnifying Scope – it’s a scope…which magnifies!
Ninhydrin – C9H4O3.H2O for formula fans. Lifts prints from porous surfaces (e.g. paper)
Fingerprint brush – for taking prints from hard polished surfaces (e.g. table)
Ultraviolet light – for highlighting sub dermal bruising and accelerants.
Sniffer – is able to detect odourants.
Luminol – C8H7N3O2 for those taking note. Makes blood glow in the dark.
Infrared Camera – Detects heat signatures.

Other main characters:

Doc Al Robbins:
He’s the coroner who processes the dead bodies you find. He probes and prods the carcasses for clues as to the cause and time of their demise. Also notifies you about anything unusual he finds. Usually heard saying that he can’t help you at the moment.

Jim Brass:
He’s the cop with the dry humour who issues the warrants to search locations and to bring in suspects for a formal interrogation. He’s also a whiz with that laptop of his and can bring up any pertinent information within a second or two using only one hand. Practice perhaps? He’s usually to be heard saying you don’t have enough evidence to do this that or the next and that you should go and find it instead of pestering him. Apparently the constitution applies here. Shame that, as it tends to get in the way of crime solving…

Greg Sanders:
He’s the lab rat who processes some of the evidence you bring him via the tools outlined above. He’s the guy who loads fingerprints into the computer or hair follicles into the microscope for you to look at. Usually heard saying that he can’t think of anything else to do with that when you repeatedly click and drag evidence over him just in case you’ve missed something.

My thoughts:

So you know the general plot line, the tools at your disposal, the main characters and now you want to know what I think of the game. Well being a great fan of the show and quite a few games in this particular genre, I am quite impressed with it but unfortunately it does have its faults which other less fanatic people may find intolerable. One of the major ones is endemic of almost all point, click, examine this and examine that games. When you’re missing a piece of vital evidence and you spend large amounts of time scouring the screen at each location with your cursor hoping it turns green can be a soul destroying and tedious process.
Your “partner” in every level never actually helps you to any great extent and doesn’t feel much of a team effort although it probably works best this way. They are generally fixed in one location in the scene gazing at something quizzically. Either that or they’re waving a Maglite and gazing at something quizzically. You can ask them for hints on evidence or what your next course of action should you be utterly stuck but it is best to leave this alone as Grissom will not think highly of you for it and will give you a poor score at the end of the level. There are bonuses for not asking hints and finding all the evidence in the form of content like game artwork.
Those familiar with the show will know of the fascinating close-up camera which zooms into the throats or internal organs of a victim to show what is really going on in there. It may be a bit gruesome for some but most will find close ups such as the breaking of the thyroid bone and the sound it makes quite satisfying. This is featured often in the game.
I know that it would be unviable but the game does not seem real enough for my liking. What are the chances that there is only one fingerprint on a hotel television? Why are there not more false leads and erroneous fibres, follicles or fingerprints which have no relevance to the crime? I can’t imagine Bert Sustern the motel manager deep cleans his hotel rooms after every customer!
The likeness of the characters to the real thing is not too bad but everyone seems far too youthful! The voice acting is spot on of course.
I mentioned in my cons section that there are graphical instabilities. I’m not sure if this is confined to my machine only but the characters on my system were subject to flashes of white banding every now and then. It doesn’t detract too much from the game though.
This is not a game which you’ll want to replay regularly. Maybe once through then another couple to get all the evidence and not ask any hints to get all the bonuses. After that it’ll be stored for a couple of years and maybe picked up when you’ve forgotten where everything is. But since this game and its newer brother “CSI: Dark Motives” are bundled together for around £17 then it is money well spent in my book for a couple of days worth of entertainment.
Something I think future CSI games would benefit from is using an engine like that in half-life 2. Where you can roam about in a 3d environment looking at things from every angle. The current crop of CSI are far too linear and you can only see in one direction and in one plane of view. With the freedom of full 360 viewing and motion in all directions it would make the game far far better in my opinion. Perhaps your partner can also do a bit of movement…