In the midst of its 11th season, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is no stranger to television and the result of the success was bound to feature a series of videogame installments. Since 2003 the franchise as enjoyed a new entry every year and this one is no exception. CSI: Fatal Conspiracy continues the series’ established trend of solid crime-solving action despite some low production values and awkward advertising.
Crime is indeed afoot in Las Vegas and it’s up to the player to gather enough evidence to put the proper guilty party behind bars, but beware of unexpected twists and turns! Throughout your duties you’ll be in control of a nameless, faceless LVPD Crime Lab detective or, as one of your recognizable partners from the television show will call you, You.
The game contains five cases; each usually beginning with either Jim Brass or another colleague setting the stage for the crime scene and describing the immediate events that aspired from when the body was discovered. They’ll even throw in one of the show’s standard, occasionally clever one-liners before cutting to an abridged version of the opening titles (approximately four notes of the “Who Are You” theme song). It feels slapped together, especially coupled with the not-so-like likeness of the character and the under-delivered delivery of that aforementioned one-liner.
It’s then the player’s turn to interview witnesses and gather evidence from the scene. Throughout each case you’ll swab a wide variety of surfaces ranging from floors, to walls, to dirty underwear. You’ll also dust for prints which always seem to be from just one carefully placed finger as if all these victims and criminals alike pick everything up with that one finger. I can’t image firing, let alone aiming, a handgun in such a similar fashion. There’s also plenty of plaster casting and photo-taking fun to be had as well. It’s all pretty straight forward and there’s no shortage of hints in case you’re lost. Everything is done with the push of a single button and the movable reticule will reveal what is collectable evidence when hovered over, but that’s not to say that as a casual CSI fan I didn’t always get a sense of instant gratification from gathering every last bit of fiber and dirt I could.
From there it’s off to the crime lab where, through a succession of mini-games with each piece of evidence, the whos, whats, and whys will begin to reveal themselves, hopefully enough as to acquire a warrant from Detective Brass and bring a suspect into questioning. The interrogation sequences are about as simple as they can get. There are multiple dialogue options, but choosing one over the other only changes the order of the discussion and has no effect on the outcome. Here, new information will produce new leads and new suspects. Eventually when enough incriminating evidence is gathered a suspect will crack under the pressure and confess, completing the case. Rinse and repeat four times. The cases are all interesting enough and there really were some unexpected surprises, but each usually followed the same formula: introduce the “obviously guilty guy” and later divulge that it was in fact the least obvious person involved.
If playing on a high definition console the first thing most will notice are the visuals. With the exception of some extra surface shine here and there, Fatal Conspiracy for PS3 is an obvious high resolution port of a game designed for Wii. A lot of the textures are muddy and the animations are awkward. Some of the characters at least somewhat resemble their appropriate actor while others look like malformed bobble heads. Despite being initially off-putting the graphics do get the job done and are stylized just enough so that I didn’t mind as much in the end. The game has a nice softness in its lighting.
The presentation is pretty bare bones and consistent with a budget title. The menus look bland and most of the options and text is formatted to an in-game phone anyway. What’s odd though is the somewhat obnoxious product placement. I don’t so much mind that everything is Asus branded, but I find it a little absurd when Trend Micro© “checks for viruses” (during which you must wait a few seconds) every time you fire up a computer at the lab after starting a new case. You’ll see that about twenty times in a single playthrough. The game even goes so far to have Sara Sidle remark that “Trend Micro has detected a virus…” when you run a search on a corrupted hard drive in evidence. Branding is fine, but I draw the line when it is feels that invasive.
The audio in the game is adequate and about what one would expect. Most of the show’s cast lend their voices to the game with varying degrees of success. Some appear to phone it in, but that could also be blamed on the mostly unconvincing mannerisms of the character models. The sound-alikes used for Sara and especially Catherine are surprisingly accurate and most will probably not even notice the difference. The music seems to use tracks ripped straight from the television show which actually works since it’s obviously from the same source material. There was a weird moment however when what was clearly one of the show’s “comic relief themes” was still being played when investigating a homicide scene. It just felt a little out of place for my taste.
A lot of this may seem negative, but there is some passable, guilty pleasure fun to be had in CSI: Fatal Conspiracy that will last about 8 hours or so. It is what it is and delivers on the small promises it makes. Collecting evidence will definitely appeal to the obsessive compulsive tendencies of players (myself included) and the game certainly captures the atmosphere and feel of the show making it an easy recommendation for fans. The initial budget price, $29.99 in the US, doesn’t hurt either.
NOTE: This same review I wrote can be seen on ps3trophies.com as a user review, but I decided to post the same text onto here as well.