Anime Forum Games Links Movies Music Profiles Survivor TV Shows CSI is one of the best shows on TV and can currently be seen on CBS every Thursday night. The first two seasons can be found on DVD as well and the fourth season starts this fall. I eagerly awaited this game, how could it be bad? Well, it delivered what I wanted, sort of. The story is fairly simple. You're a new member of the CSI team but you're still on probation, so you will always have a CSI member with you on a case. There are a total of five cases, each having what may or may not be a seperate story. The stories feel like they could very well be an episode of the show. The problem is, the game never really lets you make a lot of choices as you would think. There is never a way to mess up. The control is so simple that it isn't funny. You use the mouse and just the left button on it. That's it. No real problems here since it's a point and click game. Simple control is always a plus as it doesn't require a whole lot of fooling around with the controls. The voices are provided by the actors from the show which is a big plus for fans. Heck, the characters almost look like the actors but not quite. The music does seem lifted from the show, of course the theme song is missing here. I was actually watching my season 2 DVD set before finishing up the last couple of cases and noticed a few songs from the show. The sound effects are decent. Nothing really special. The graphics are all around good. Things looked sort of real but not exactly real. The lab and stuff looked pretty much like it does on the show which made the game a lot more fun. Character models are good and detailed. The only problem I had was in the first case and in the last case. For some reason I couldn't get a background on the first area of the first case at first, it finally fixed itself. The last case just glitched up on me and repeated old backgrounds, so I was sometimes left in the dark on where to click. The main focus of any game is the game play. CSI is a point and click adventure so it's all pretty basic. You're given a crime scene and you can move around in a 360 degree angle. Your arrow will turn green on anything that you can check. This limits the actual game play but it does make it a little easier. You're given a variety of tools, all of which you will use at least once in a game. At the labs you can have Greg look at the evidence you've collected and you can use the computer to match tires, finger prints and look up criminal records. It really does capture the show well but the problem I had is that the game isn't as interactive as it could be. Hopefully the announced sequel will solve some of these problems. Oh and let me just say the final case is the hardest one and probably the most confusing. With games of this type the replay value is kind of low. But in this game you can complete a case without 100% but if you get 100% and don't get any hints from your CSI partner you can unlock bonus items. Nothing special but it's something. There's a total of 75 bonus items to look at, most are art but some are little movies. Over all, CSI is a great game for fans of the show. It has it's flaws but it's still fun to play. Maybe it isn't for everyone but I enjoyed it. Control: 10 Gameplay: 7 Graphics: 9 Replay Value: 4 Sound: 9 Story: 8 Final Score: 82/100 Reviewed by: Americanpieflute Reviewed on: September 13 2003