CSI: Deadly Intent

Let me start off by saying that I'm a pretty big fan of the series. I haven't seen the most recent season, but I have seen all the episodes up through season seven. However, I'm an even bigger fan of the CSI games. I've played all of them back to the first one released in 2003 (except apparently for the one released on the iPhone that I just learned about). Critically these games have all received pretty terrible scores, but I actually enjoyed all of them. The cases were all pretty well written and getting to use the tools to collect and analyze evidence was always fun. Obviously these games are all meant for a very niche crowd who are  fans of the series. As one of those people though, I have to say I think this game is pretty bad.
 
First off, I didn't find any of the cases in this game to be particularly interesting or well written. There are always a few duds, but generally there were some really neat cases to take part in and they always bring them all together with the final case. This time they just all seemed to be duds. 
 
Next, the game play was always a big draw for me. It pretty much stayed consistent through the entire series. You go to a location, scour it for clues, gather evidence with your tools, and then head back to your lab in order to analyze all the evidence with more tools. This was always the part I found most enjoyable. Unfortunately, this is probably my biggest problem with this game. Telltale has dumbed this game down so much that it almost plays itself. 
 
Normally when you find a clue in the scene, you have to decide which tool to attempt to gather that clue with. If it was blood you'd first use a tool to identify it as such, then use a swab to collect it. Different fingerprints had to be collected differently depending on the surface they were on. All things that added more depth to the game and even, dare I say it, taught you a little bit as well. Now, when you find something that can be examined in the environment you're only allowed to choose from a couple of tools instead of your whole kit, and once you select the tool and tell the game where to use it, it automatically does the rest for you. For example, if you find blood, you spray it with the latent blood spray to be sure, and then the game just automatically collects it for you. Perhaps it was a meaningless step, but I really feel it takes a huge amount from the depth of the game. I mean when you remove nearly half of the aspect of collecting evidence, all you're really left with is the story to keep the game interesting, and I've already covered that.
 
As far as graphics go, they're not bad, but they're nto good either. I have loved just about all of Telltale's work, but I have to say I've always thought their 3d CSI graphics were pretty bad. Some of the models look alright, but some of them are absolutely terrible. And to this day I do not understand why they get the men to voice their parts but never the women. Did the sound recording studio get in trouble for harassing the ladies so they refuse to do it? I mean they even got Laurence FIshburne to voice his character, so it can't just be a financial thing. Also, about Laurence, I haven't seen him on the show, so I can't say whether he's being true to character or not, but I thought his voice acting was pretty bad. Of course he's not the sort of actor I would really see going for this sort of thing, so I'm not overly surprised, but then again, maybe he was just being true to the character. 
 
So with no real game play left and rather bland stories, what does that leave? Well the game is good for 1000 gamer points. But even here Telltale has changed things up. Now instead of getting points for simply completing a case, you are also graded on skill, thoroughness, and cunning. While certainly not a bad thing to make the achievements a little more in depth and varied, this actually adds a bit of a nuisance factor if you're just playing for achievement points. For thoroughness, you simply have to make sure to examine everything. For cunning you have to make sure to ask people all the right questions. There are times when you need to provide evidence to back up a claim, and if you present the wrong evidence you lose cunning. Finally, there is skill, which is a huge pain in the butt. When analyzing evidence, if you make any mistakes your skill goes down. Of course, unless you've memorized every bit of evidence, you're can't have a perfect playthrough. So getting that achievement is a bit of a nuisance. Again, this would be fine if it added something to the game, but it really doesn't. Why am I penalized for trying every possible combination?

So in summary, other than the CSI: New York game, this game is easily the worst of the entire series. Telltale has removed much of the gameplay and now penalizes the player for trying different combinations in the game as far as score goes. That just leaves the story to save the game and in my opinion these five cases are by far the most uninteresting so far. I was hoping Fishburne's character would bring an interesting dynamic to the show, but as far as the game goes, he falls flat too. My recommendation is to rent it only if you want the mostly easy achievement points, use the walkthrough on Gamefaqs, and then return it.