Paying homage to old school
point-and-click adventure titles, CSI: NY – The Game attempts to give
gamers a chance to solve hard-hitting crimes from the popular detective show on
their own. While this is fine and dandy, the problem is that the developers
forgot to make the game intriguing enough to keep gamers interested outside of
the first episode.
Playing as two of the central
characters from the hit CBS show, gamers have the chance to take Mac Taylor and
Stella Bonasera through a series of mysterious deaths as they unravel before
your eyes. There are several other reoccurring characters showing their faces
within the game from the show, but sharing likeness isn’t enough to save the
game from mediocrity.
The gameplay is based around
interrogating and questioning individuals that pertain to the case on hand.
Through conversations with these eye-witnesses or suspects, you’ll ask a series
of questions that’ll open up more conversation options. After a few minutes of
discussion, you’ll run out of dialogue options and have to move on to new clues.
The dialogue trees are overly simplistic and aren’t nearly as interesting as
they are in the television show. In all honesty, I wish the interrogation
process borrowed a few things from BioWare’s role-playing game, Mass Effect,
when it comes to conversations. Instead of having a diverse and remarkable
communications with NPCs, CSI: NY – The Game employs unpleasant exchanges
between the characters that come off as robotic.
Outside of interrogating suspects,
gamers interact with repetitive mini-games that ask them to extract fingerprints
off of evidence, trace outlines around blood stains, and various other typical
puzzles. These mini-games often occur in the laboratory after retrieving
evidence from the crime scene. If you’re not performing mini-games or speaking
to NPCs, then maybe joining in on fetch quests to obtain objects pertinent to
the crimes is you’re type of thing.
There are four episodes to play
through that all start out with a death of a victim and thus sending our two
main characters off on a wild goose chase to figure out who committed the
murder. While there are a few prime suspects that’ll have you confused on which
one could’ve done it, by the time of the end of the episode – which all end in
the interrogation room with the killer confessing his crime – you should have a
clue on who done it. The personal favorite was the murder of a girl who was
killed while she was filming her video blog; it was current and was an
interesting scenario that I haven’t seen in any crime-detective shows lately.
Gamers turned off by adventure games
with high difficulty will be glad to hear that CSI: NY – The Game is easy
for the most part. If you ever get lost on what to do, the game employs a hint
feature to allow gamers to click on to figure out the next step in solving the
crime. The hints will easily send you in the right direction but if you ever
find yourself stuck on a puzzle, each of the game’s episodes allows you to skip
any two puzzles of your choosing.
Instead of using 3D graphics and
walking around environments to pick up items to solve crimes, players will
point-and-click their way through CSI: NY –The Game until the bitter end.
Sure, the graphics aren’t the norm – they’re static and somewhat cartoon like –
but the menus lack any depth to them. It’s not an attractive game in today’s
landscape of adventure games, so don’t expect any type award worthy graphics. On
the other hand the voice work is a little more accomplished thanks to actors
from the show lending their voices. Still, the actors didn’t put forth their
best work and often sound bored when reading their lines.
The major problem with CSI: NY –
The Game is that it doesn’t encourage gamers that try to rush through the
story to keep playing. In the majority, adventure games as such, promote gamers
to click all over the crime scenes to find evidence and push forward with the
title. Well, gamers will be punished if they go hog-wild with clicking all over
the place as the cursor will disappear and you’ll be left scratching your head
what to do. It’ll reappear a few seconds later, but those few seconds are
frustrating no matter what.
By the time you finish solving all
the crimes, you’ll most likely be bored stiff of the puzzles and won’t ever pick
up the title again. The developers are promising a fifth episode through
download content later on in the year, but there’s no real reason to join back
in the process after you complete the four short episodes already included.
Gameplay: 5.5
A monotonous game in almost every avenue, the game is linear with no
deviations from the storyline to solve the crimes.
Graphics: 5.0
The graphics won’t wow you, but at least they recreated the actors
faithfully.
Sound: 6.0
Having both actors providing their voice likenesses is great, but they
aren’t at their best in terms of performance.
Difficulty: Easy
Concept: 6.1
Forcing the games to follow the procedures in a specific order to solve the
crimes is very droning. There’s not much freedom to solve the crimes, but if you
enjoy classic point-and-click adventures, CSI: NY – The Game offers an
all right experience.
Overall: 5.3
While it’s an entertaining romp for the first hour or so, the game will tire
quickly on the player. The show is much more exciting than the video game so
it’s best to stick to watching CSI on your television rather than playing
it on your PC.
