Crime Scene Review

I first heard of Crime Scene from a video on YouTube. It showed investigators combing through evidence, collecting fingerprints and using lab scientists to solve the crime. Sounds interesting, right? I thought so too until I actually tried it. This is one of those games that sounds good on paper but just was not executed right to make for an entertaining experience.

You play as Matt Simmons, a new recruit in the police forensic unit. They get you started on a double murder straight away. One of them is a fellow detective and the other victim his wife. This is where you first put your crime scene skills to use. What happened? Was this a murder or a double suicide? Any signs of forced entry? Your job is to find out.

The tools that you use are the most relevant to the gameplay. There isn’t a whole lot of talking or storyline involved. You basically get to the crime scene, do your field work and go back to the lab to examine your finds. This is more of a forensics simulation than it is an adventure type game (i.e. Heavy Rain). You will be swabbing blood stains, using your dusting brush to look for fingerprints, and pulling bullets from objects using tweezers.

While none of this makes for overly interesting gameplay, it does at least seem to be honest to the trade. Frankly, the developers threw you into the wild with very little knowledge about investigations. There is no tutorial to speak of and the help system is more or less useless. While a Criminal Justice major might be happy to hear that, it creates unneeded frustration from not knowing what to do. At the very least, they could have showed you how to properly use all of the equipment.

I hate this game. That may seem like a harsh statement, yet it is the only way I can describe Crime Scene with complete honesty. It’s boring, monotonous and at times confusing. Plodding around a crime scene with no training, unforgiving difficulty and a storyline that is generic at best is not what I call a good time. I would rather watch an entire season of CSI before playing this game again. That says a lot.