CSI: Hard Evidence
Developer: Ubisoft
Platforms: Xbox 360, PC, DS
Reviewer: Eric
Before I can start this review I just want everyone to know my Xbox 360 reviews will be put on hold due to my system breaking. Yes I received the red ring of doom Tuesday afternoon and now I have to wait a month and a half to get a new system. Thankfully the nice people at Microsoft are giving me a free month of Xbox Live and 2000 points to spend on Guitar Hero songs, since that is what I'll most likely spend the points on. When I thought about it the free month is shit, I won't have my system for a month in the first place, so I will be calling Microsoft back with a few comments. Any way let's get on with this review.
In
ways it is a shame my last review for awhile would have to be on
CSI: Hard Evidence. Click and point adventures should not be on
consoles, nobody buys these game really in the first place,
unless you have "From the Creators of Myst" on the box. Hard
Evidence should only be played by CSI fans and Xbox 360 gamers
that are itching for an easy 1000 achievement points
Hard Evidence is a click and point game. This genre was huge when Windows 95 first came out. Every where you looked there were at least five of these games. CSI is just like all these games, but it includes all your favorites from the hit CBS show and all the cool gadgets they use, for the most part. CSI: Hard Evidence might not be the complete CSI experience, but it should satisfy gamers for eight to ten hours.
If you actually sit down and play this game it will take you almost ten hours. Trying to figure out where to go next, what evidence you need to look for and if that dead persons DNA is really important. Actually the dead persons DNA is always important, but how about all the witnesses DNA, is that important? That evidence is all up to you in Hard Evidence, point, click and collect, that's the name of the game. You can easily go to every area and click like a manic to find clues and sometimes you may have to really, finding the tiniest thing can usually make or break a case in this game.
There are a total of five cases in this game. If you do the math each one can take up to two hours. However if you are a pro at these kind of games you will be able to zip through this game with ease. You pretty much do what happens on the show, take pictures, swab for blood, find cloth fibers and a whole lot more. You can complete cases without finding everything, but at the end of each case Grissom grades you on everything. By everything I mean everything except how many clicks you do on the screen. Remember how I said about clicking like a manic on some of the screens? Turns out you don't loose points from your grade, just make sure you don't ask questions because that kills your score a ton. Even if you can't find everything in the cases just make sure to find all the bugs for Grissom, he thanks you at the end with the worst monotone voice ever!
Speaking
of the voices in this game, HORRIBLE! Everyone that counts from
the show is in this game, from Grissom to Captain Brass, their
voices are 100%. This doesn't mean they do a good job, at times
it really sounds like they did a half ass job just to get paid.
I'm sure the real reason for this was they needed to start
filming the new season for the show, but your witnesses you
talk/question are bad too. When I say bad I mean it, bad times
one million. I don't know where they found these people but they
got some people that should never have their voices heard in a
video game. This one business guy that talks, in the fourth
case, does a horrible Spanish voice. His voice changes so much I
am not sure if he has split personalities or not, maybe I need
to remember this for the end of the case. No the voices are that
bad, don't put any thought into this whenever you are doing
these cases, they are only guilty of doing bad voice overs.
Graphically CSI: Hard Evidence is nothing to brag about. The character designs are very flat and to make things worse all the characters mouth movements don't match half the time. Stage designs are lame, the same few areas are seen over and over again. There are times when you can tell the programmers got lazy, all the did was flip the area around, dimmed down the lights and called it the Bachelors Sweet instead of Apartment 164. One thing that isn't off is the product placement, Hewlett Packard computers, Visa credit cards and Chrysler vehicles. The developers went all out to make the computers look fantastic, with the HP logo big enough for a blind person to see. Then you have Visa advertisements every where, even spread throughout crime scenes. Finally we have the Chrysler vehicles. All I need to say is Chrysler has never looked so good before, makes me want to drop everything and buy a brand new Chrysler van.
I mentioned before about the achievement points in this game and how easy they are to obtain. I wasn't aware how easy they were to obtain, five cases, five achievements. It's that simple, beat the game and you get 1000 gamer points. The game doesn't care what your rating is, if you want to unlock the hidden crap in this game then you'll try to get the top ranking in each case. All the unlockables in this game are lame as hell. You get trailers to cases, early character designs and sketch pages. Holy cow I beat case one now I can see the trailer to case two, sweet. Wait...oh sweet so this is how that douche bag was originally going to look like, I'm glad they changed his design. Yeah it's that lame, I didn't bother after the second stage, the unlockables in this game are a joke.
Final Verdict
CSI: Hard Evidence for the Xbox 360 is the best and worst
point and click adventure on the console, mainly since I believe
it's the only one out. These kind of games can get old real
fast, but for some reason CSI doesn't get old right away. With
almost ten hours of game play here this game is longer than most
Playstation 3 games, even some other games on the Xbox 360 and
Wii as well. I'm sorry I had to make this my last review for
awhile on Xbox 360 games, but if you have some time to kill
between Halo 3 and Bioshock, which I will review soon since I
just beat the game late last week, CSI is worth a rental. The
$39.99 price tag sounds good but there is no replay value to
this game, when you beat the five cases you are done and I doubt
Ubisoft will release any downloadable content for this game
since they can easily make another one in a few months.
Rating
3.05 out of 10