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CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Unsolved!

Score: 92%
ESRB: Teen
Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment
Developer: Other Ocean Interactive
Media: Cartridge/1
Players: 1
Genre: Adventure/ Mini-Games/ Puzzle

Graphics & Sound:

The graphics is CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Unsolved! are spot-on perfect. All of the characters from the show are modeled perfectly within the game, including the major characters of Ray Langston, Catherine Willows, Nick Stokes, Greg Sanders, Sara Sidle and Captain Jim Brass and the lab rats, Archie Johnson, Wendy Sims, David Hodges and Doc Robbins. The scenes that you'll visit are clear and have easily distinguishable items within them, and although some clues are very easy to miss, the blood stains look like blood stains and so on. The cut scenes are slightly animated with mostly static images that move, sort of like the animated graphic novels that have been popping up a lot lately, but they do convey the story well and look pretty good. You'll be talking to various members of the CSI team as you work the case, along with numerous suspects that you'll interrogate and each one has small animations that engage you more so than just a static image.

While there is no voice acting, but rather everything is conveyed in text only, the sound effects are good and there's always a nice little energetic beat playing in the background to keep you pumping through the case. Sadly, the CSI theme song is missing, but the music that plays between visiting scenes and on the map menu works well for the game.


Gameplay:

You are a brand new Level 1 CSI to the Las Vegas CSI team and as such, you'll have to work your way up the ranks to hopefully become a CSI 5 and a Shift Supervisor like Catherine Willows. You'll have 5 different cases to work your way through and your tasks will include collection of evidence, processing samples, interrogating suspects with Captain Brass and, hopefully, solving the case at hand.

Your first case is with Sara Sidle, then Ray Langston, Nick Stokes, Greg Sanders, and finally, Catherine Willows and they will each guide you while you are in the field. You'll first search the scene for clues and, sometimes, this will devolve into a straight-up pixel hunt. Your cursor turns from white crosshairs to yellow ones when you slide your stylus over something worth investigating and, at times, it's a matter of sweeping the entire area for clues. Some areas will warrant a deeper look and you'll have to zoom in on a cluttered area to search for clues. You may have to dig through papers on a desk or through a trash can, by using your stylus to move items. If you find fingerprints, you'll use your stylus to sweep the area with dust, then blow into the microphone to clear the excess. You may have to swab for DNA or use Luminal to check for blood. When you find a piece of evidence, you are given a choice as to which collection method you'll use and selecting the correct one will help with your evaluation by Catherine at the end of the case.

Once you have collected all of the pertinent info, a small blue arrow in the lower left screen will begin to flash, indicating you are done. When you back out, you'll see the main map screen and your location, which was once a red-tipped push pin on the map, but now has a check on it. Then you'll go back to the lab to process the evidence you've found. You may be checking fingerprints, processing DNA or a sample, reconstructing a photo or audio sample or even comparing two like samples. The mini-games for processing evidence include a Tetris clone for determining the contents of a sample; a matching game where you take strings of characters and place them into a long sequence of similar characters; moving points around on a fingerprint to determine a match, looking at a zoomed-in piece of a sample to locate the matching appropriate picture of a portion of the sample; stringing together DNA by matching colors, and even piecing together a destroyed document in a jigsaw puzzle fashion. You are only allowed three mistakes per mini-game or your score diminishes, again impacting your evaluation. lastly, you'll look over the corpse in the morgue int he hopes of finding something important. Doc Robbins helps you through this portion.

Once you've gathered enough evidence, Brass will bring a suspect in for questioning. He directs the interrogation, but you will present the evidence to refute what the suspect is saying in the hopes of catching them in their lies and forcing the truth out of them. If you present the wrong piece of evidence, Brass will act like you are a fool and move on with the interview, and you'll be docked points on your evaluation. Especially in later acts, there is so much evidence to choose from that you can make mistakes and present the wrong thing, costing precious points. If you do the interview well, it will eventually lead to a solved case.


Difficulty:

There is no difficulty selection in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Unsolved!, but the game isn't a breeze. Sometimes clues will be hidden very obscurely, even behind a wall, and you'll have to think outside of the box to find them, maybe even using an ultrasound camera. Again, the pixel hunt was a bit frustrating, but when you've covered what seems to be every inch and still don't have enough evidence to warrant Brass bringing someone in, you know you are missing a vital piece of the puzzle. Some of the mini-games were tough, like the ones where you had a zoomed-in view of something and you had to match the tiny pictures to the larger sample. The hardest of all for me were the ones were you had pieces of DNA and you had to place them on a DNA picture grid, overlapping the colors so they all fit together perfectly. While I did get through most of them on my own, I enlisted Geck0's help on three of them.

Game Mechanics:

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Unsolved! not only optimizes the use of the stylus, but really makes use of the DSi's extra features. Some games require the use of a camera and you'll have to hold your inner camera up to light for a certain period of time, filling a bar, then do the same in darkness, filling a separate bar. You'll have to blow the excess dust from your prints with the microphone, but mostly, you'll be using your stylus. You'll use the stylus to spray down an area with Luminal, to apply fingerprint dust, to clean off dirt obscuring a serial number, and even just to simply pick up a pertinent piece of info. If a clue is wedged somehow, you'll tap the stylus to pick up the tweezers and have to swipe back and forth slowly and in small strokes to tease the item out of its hiding place and to bag it. It's very clear that the developers are fans of the show and really went all out to make you feel as though you were truly participating in the cases.

The writing is very good and the cases are interesting. You've got cases about a dead rock star, a reality show murder, a murder in an exclusive old folks home filled with smokin' hot nurses, a body left in the desert and a case where the deceased is part of a group of CSI role players. It's all good stuff. The writing for the CSI team members is also perfect and each one acts as they do on the show. Even Hodges acts like his superior self.

I did find that from time to time, I would get cut scenes with my CSI counterpart that didn't make sense, like they belonged to a different clue that I found later on. This happened two or three times in the middle of the game. Also, once I went to see Brass to get a warrant and instead of text, his mouth was moving and no text appeared, which was odd. Seems like the QA team overlooked these.

Overall, the development team at Other Ocean has outdone themselves with CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Unsolved!. Aside from the few snafus I ran into, I really enjoyed my time with the game and found it to reflect the show well. If you fancy yourself an amateur forensics nut and are a fan of the show, do yourself a favor and check out CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Unsolved!.


-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications
AKA Ashley Perkins

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