“As G.K. Chesterson once said, the criminal is the
creative artist – the detective only the critic” – Gil Grissom (3
Dimensions of Murder)
You’re a rookie crime scene investigator on the first day of your new
job with the Las Vegas crime laboratory. There’s no time to sit and fondle
the comparison microscope, as there’s a dead body at the art gallery, and
this lady met her death by means most foul. With toolkit at the ready, you
enter the crime scene and avail yourself of it with ease. A picture taken,
a fingerprint dusted and lifted, a blood sample swabbed. Then on to the
Morgue, on to subject interviews, on to follow-up with Captain Brass, and
on to the delightful task of analyzing your accumulated evidence with the
varied technical equipment in the lab itself. A thorough examination of
your evidence will make it clear that further investigation of suspects is
in order, and criminal warrants for search and seizure or for arrest
beckon. Your first instinct may not be correct, for the stories twist and
turn most satisfyingly as hidden motives surface and alibis flourish. With
the assistance of fellow CSI Warrick Brown, you ultimately unravel the
truth.
However, there’s no time to rest on your laurels, for there are other
cases to be solved. There’s a dead body at a gaming convention, a bloody
apartment with no body, a dead camper in the wilderness, and finally a
fifth case that has ties to elements in the other cases. You’re
accompanied at each case by one of the investigators from the hit TV show
CSI, and they stand at the ready to be helpful with hints if the need
arises.
What is CSI?
In regard to the game, it is based on the top rated drama on network
television with some twenty six million weekly viewers and winner of the
People’s Choice award for three years in a row. Beginning with CSI, the
original TV show that takes place in Las Vegas, there have been spinoffs
into CSI series in different parts of the country, such as CSI: Miami, and
the newer CSI: New York. Ubisoft publishes the computer games associated
with this franchise, and has sold more than 1.6 million units worldwide
since releasing their first CSI title in 2003.
In regard to real life, crime scene investigation is the documentation,
collection, analysis and preservation of evidence. Photographs and
sketches of the scene will be obtained, and then the hunt is on.
Fingerprints are the best evidence to collect in many cases, as this will
tie the individual to the crime scene. In addition, there are many other
items to seek, such as hair and fibers, blood, shoeprints, tire treads,
weapons and tool marks, paint, glass, and other fracture matches (matching
what is left at the scene with what may be in a subject’s possession),
handwriting exemplars, and a myriad of other items specific to the
individual scene.
In real life, the crime scene investigator uses his or her skills to
access, document, collect, analyze, and preserve the evidence from a crime
scene, and often testify in court. They do not question witnesses or
subjects, or arrest anyone. They don’t carry a gun. Often they find no
evidence whatsoever at a crime scene. For purposes of playing a game,
obviously real life would make for a generally dull game with a fragmented
story line, so the game has made the crime scene investigator a detective
as well.
GAMEPLAY CONTROLS AND OTHER STUFF
“I just can’t allow you to go flinging your fingerprint powder
around and spritzing your various sprays!” (3 Dimensions of Murder)
CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder is contained on one disk, which must be in
the computer drive to play. There is a paper manual, which is duplicated
via acrobat reader on the disk itself.
When you begin the game, in addition to the options of graphics
quality, volume and subtitles, you have a choice of playing in three
different expertise modes or even customizing your own, although you can
elect to change this at any time during game play. What you can elect to
utilize (or not) to change the difficulty of game play are tool assist,
active navigation hotspots, active tool hotspots, and evidence and
location tagging.
Utilizing “tool assist,” a correct tool category will be automatically
selected for you when the toolbox is opened, and the number of tools from
which you select what you need to use is reduced. If you use “active
navigation hotspots,” the cursor will change color if it is placed over an
area that can be investigated further, and if you use “active tool
hotspots” likewise the cursor will change color and the toolbox icon will
appear when the cursor is placed over and area in which a tool can be
used. If you opt for “evidence and/or location tagging,” a tag will appear
indicating when there is no further investigation possible.
As previously mentioned, you can also ask your CSI “partner” for hints,
which detracts from your overall score. At the end of each case, your
“boss” Gil Grissom will award you with one of three performance ratings,
rookie, investigator or master, depending on how many hints were
requested. In the two previous games, your rating made a difference in
obtaining some extra material after the game was completed, such as
artwork. This is no longer the case, and the only purpose of the ratings
is to indicate a job well done. Be secretly smug without hints, or ask
away, as you choose.
The object in each of the five cases is to gather enough evidence and
information to lead to the arrest of a suspect. You’re armed with a
variety of real life tools such as fingerprint powders, luminol to detect
body secretions such as blood, and a digital camera. Kudos go to the
developer for the addition of the camera, which was lacking in the
previous CSI games. In the lab itself you have a variety of high-tech
computers at hand, such as the comparison microscope, and the DNA
analyzer. Not all of these are actually available in real life, but they
do make analyzing a lot more fun!
You’re able to talk to witnesses and suspects, and what you are able to
ask will depend on what you have learned in the case to that point. Your
goal is to show a relationship between the victim, the crime scene, and
the suspect. When you can show this relationship (evidence trinity) by a
totality of the evidence, you are able to instruct that an arrest warrant
be issued, and a confession will soon be forthcoming.
There is a lot of dialog in this game, and if you so choose you can hit
the space button on your keyboard to skip through it, and any evidence you
receive from it will still be collected. This is a nice feature if you are
playing through a second time to better your score.
If this sounds confusing, there’s a tutorial that can be played before
you even delve into the five cases. However, there’s no rush during the
game, and you can investigate at your leisure. No timed sequences, no
mazes, no puzzles outside of the puzzle of investigating a crime scene and
bringing the evildoer to justice. Actually there are a couple of shredded
letters for you to piece together, if you wish to regard that as a puzzle.
Your inventory is the evidence.
This is a point and click game, and some screens can be scrolled from
left to right for additional viewing.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
“When she’d get mad, she’d get in your face and your teeth and
eyeballs would melt” (CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder)
In a departure from the previous CSI games, this game is 3D. The
environment is fully modeled, although you are unfortunately restricted
from wandering everywhere you would like to go. I longed to look at
Grissom’s bug collection, but couldn’t even get an explanation for what
the objects were on his shelves. While the objects around you are a vast
improvement in this game, the characters are just plain ugly. The lip
synching and facial expressions are well done, but the characters
themselves are blocky and only vaguely resemble the CSI TV show characters
that they are supposed to portray. More freedom to wander and better
character rendering would be a huge improvement for this series.
There are great cut scenes of Las Vegas shown every time you switch to
a new location for the first time. Neon abounds as you are taken on a
bird’s eye view of the town below, with hundreds of twinkling lights and a
dramatic score. Also, when you recover a crucial piece of evidence, you
are treated to a mini-movie, which illustrates what happened as a result
of that object coming into play. You can watch the mini-movies as many
times as you desire, at any time after they first occur. So stunning is
the cinematography that it makes what happens afterward when you switch to
game mode all the more jarring.
In addition, when you examine the evidence you have collected, the pop
up screen is also in 3D, enabling you to turn the evidence from side to
side, or top over bottom. This is a tad sluggish, and sometimes in
collecting additional evidence from these screens, the cursor is picky or
unresponsive.
The voices are all professional and very good across the board, with
most of the CSI regulars doing the voiceovers (the regular actresses for
the female staff were not used). The score of instrumental music will be
familiar to the fans of the CSI TV show, and it is lovely and subdued,
ratcheting up at dramatic moments. The ambient sounds are good, and quite
lifelike, with car alarms, door openings, a cat, and various street life
noises in the background.
MATURE CONTENT
This game is rated M, for Mature, 17+, with a warning for the
following: Blood and Gore, Language, Sexual Themes, Use of Tobacco, and
Violence. Since when did games start worrying about tobacco use? That’s a
new one on me. OK, there are dead bodies, there’s a lot of blood, and
there are some violent re-enactments of crimes. There are references to
sexual activity and body fluids. There’s also some salty language here and
there, of the sort you would hear on TV.
A BIT OF TRIVIA
VISA USA made its first foray into the gaming world in this game,
purchasing the right to intersperse itself in the game world. This is
common in movies or television, but will this be a new trend in gaming?
SUMMING IT UP
“What an unfortunate burst of hyperbole!” (CSI: 3 Dimensions of
Murder)
Although the characters are blocky and only vaguely resemble the
characters on which they are based from the CSI TV show (no doubt
incurring the ire of those fans), the cases are interesting with twists
and turns, and the innovation of processing the evidence oneself rather
than handing it over to a technician is a clear improvement over past
games in the series. I especially enjoyed the one case which took place at
a video game convention. Although the 3D rendering makes the game world
more palatable with the exception of the characters, it is lacking in
allowing access to areas other than those utterly necessary for evidence
collecting. The close-up of evidence in 3D is sluggish at best.
It is obvious that the developers of this series listen to their fans,
for each game in the series has made successful progression through
eliminating things that gamers didn’t like, and adding aspects which they
have requested. In this spirit, I am giving the game a B, or 75%.
System Requirements:
Supported OS: Windows
98/ME/2000/XP
Processor: 1 GHz or better when
using video cards which hardware T&L, 2 GHz when using video cards without
hardware T&L
RAM: 256 MB (512 recommended)
Video card: 64 MB DirectX 8.1
compliant (Check with the game website if in doubt. Laptops are listed as
not supported).
Sound card: DirectX 8.1
compliant
DirectX version: DirectX
version 8.1 or higher (DirectX 8.1 included on disc)
Hard drive Space: 1.4 GB
This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may
conflict with some disc and virtual drives.
4-2006
design copyright ©
2006
GameBoomers
Group
