CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Fatal Conspiracy

This is a new concept of gaming for me. I tried the CSI games on the recommendation from a friend that they are good to play as a couple. I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve never really watched CSI but you don’t really need to in order to play the game. It’s essentially five episodes which have an overarching storyline and you are basically on a mission to crush Beatrice Salazar’s drug empire.

CSI’s gameplay can be easily compare to the old point and click style adventure games where you have to investigate crime scenes in order find evidence and prove murders. You have a lab in which to analyse the evidence which includes DNA, chemicals, microscopes and computer analysis to name a few.

There are also interrogations where you can use the evidence to force people’s confessions.

And that’s pretty much it. It is a very simple game which can be really frustrating when you can find that last piece of evidence in a scene. However there were several moments that were actually quite funny as result of under development of story and just horrendous gameplay.

Covering the story element first, some of the characters are really under developed. The interrogations could have been a lot better. You gather all the evidence to nail someone with the crime and they will deny it until they are blue in the face. Then you present them with a piece of circumstantial evidence that could be easily thrown out or argued against but instead of expectedly arguing on, the suspect folds instantly like a wet napkin and confesses everything!

What we found most annoying is that we were figuring out what had happened and what we needed to do but then the game would send us patronising emails telling us what we already knew. We had the hints set on low as well so this was exceptionally irritating. We were also thinking of different questions to ask suspects based on the evidence we had collected but didn’t have the option to ask the suspect because we hadn’t complete a prerequisite to another part of the investigation. It was like the game was saying, ‘No you can’t solve this your way. You MUST solve it our way!’

As far as the gameplay goes, the microscope stuff was very, very irritating. We couldn’t get past the first investigation because of the bloody thing no matter how many different combinations we tried.

We were tasked with analysing a piece of evidence under the microscope. The tutorial indicated that we could move the microscope around to look at different bits of the piece of evidence, but in reality this was not the case and you were fixed on the one area.

There are three levels of zoom you can use and you can adjust the focus accordingly but after trying every possible combination, we resorted to looking it up online. Apparently we had to adjust the zoom first and then the focus in that exact order or else it won’t work. We only had this problem for the first microscope bit so I can only imagine that it is an unfixed glitch.

Achievements – 1,000 points – 25 Achievements

There are no missable achievements and I think they are all story related. There are three which may require replaying certain missions but it’s not too time consuming to do so.

Downloadable Content – N/A

So CSI is another achievement farm but it is fun to play with others. The one issue with this type of game is that there is next to no replay value as once you’ve played it through, you know what will happen. Due to the hand-holding nature of the gameplay, there are no alternative routes to the solution which is its biggest let down by far.

Saw

I went on an end of year achievement spree and found a list of ‘easy’ games online. Saw was one of the games I picked up for a quick hit. I’m not a fan of movie/game adaptations and Saw was no exception to the rule. However it did have some good points as well as bad.

The story of the game takes place between the first and second movies and is quite well constructed in that it uses Detective Tapp as the protagonist assuming he didn’t die after being shot at the end of the first movie. Instead, he was saved by the serial killer only to be put into a mental hospital to punish him for his ‘obsession’ with catching said serial killer.

They put quite a lot of work into the story to make it fit with the series as well as work as a standalone. Detective Tapp has to face all of the people whose lives he has destroyed in his quest to catch jigsaw and, with a few notable exceptions, the characterisation in done remarkably well for a movie adaptation.

They have put a big emphasis on lighting as well. You need a light source to get through dark areas and you pick up different light sources throughout the game. One of these light sources is a camera which you can use the flash to light up dark places. This was great in the movie and really added to the ‘jump’ factor when Adam was being hunted by Pigface. However, in the game you cannot see where you have to go before it reverts to total darkness again so it doesn’t work as an adaptation. At one point I had to navigate through a bomb-filled corridor which would have been straight forward with the lighter, but it made me very angry when I switched to the camera just before having to do this bit and without being able to backtrack and switch to the lighter.

The gameplay elements consist of fighting bad guys and solving Saw style puzzles. The puzzle solving element was okay, but there were only five different ones throughout the game so after the first two sections, it became a bit repetitive.

The combat sucks a fat one too. It is unintuitive and the game would be better without it. The last fight is bizarrely flawed in that all you have to do is stand there and grapple with the boss for five minutes before he dies. Most bad guys can be killed in the same way despite their class differences – what is the point of have a ‘berserker’ type character that isn’t berserk and fights in the same way as a regular minion? I would have expected Tapp to have to employ different methods of dealing with different foes but it is all very samey.

In all games there is always a major element designed to piss off all gamers and in Saw, it is the booby traps. You can’t see shotgun trip wires until you’re dead and then you have to go back to the last checkpoint which, in some cases, can involve a lot of backtracking... only for me to forget the trap was there and die again!

Achievements – 1,000 points – 46 Achievements

The achievements in Saw are varied but not exhaustive. For example, there are achievements for getting kills with various weapons but not all the weapons. There is an achievement for finding your first asylum file but not all of them. By adding achievements such as ‘Find all asylum files’ could have added a little reply value.

The non-exhaustive achievements have good and bad points. On the plus side you are not going to be frustrated looking for that last file or trying to find the only weapon you haven’t killed someone with. On the negative side, it felt very unrewarding getting to the end of the game, almost like a hollow victory. This is a real shame because the achievements get everything else spot on.

All the secret achievements are unavoidable and story related. There are two achievements for both endings but you only have to replay the last section to get both of them. It’s almost like the developers have realised they have a repetitive game and don’t punish their gamers by making them play the whole game again.

The only achievement that required me to replay certain levels was stomping five evil dudes to death. This was mainly due to the inconsistency of evil dudes falling over when I was punching them and the horrendous quick-time events required to stomp them to death.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Saw is definitely good for farming the points but is not a great game and isn’t very rewarding for completion. I wouldn’t play it again for fun and it hasn’t changed my opinion towards movie/game adaptations.

Alan Wake

Story 8/10

Most of the points for the story go to its originality. You are Alan Wake, a writer who travels to a lakeside town to rekindle his relationship with his wife and not to do any writing – the opposite of the cliché. However, when she reveals that she set up a typewriter, he goes ape shit and storms out. And then his wife is kidnapped by dark forces and he goes on a quest to save her. With a torch.

During a week of unconsciousness, the dark forces make Alan write a novel which has the power to release them from their prison and destroy the world. And that’s where I gave up trying to understand what was going on and started playing the game.

Picture 6/10

I honestly thought the majority of the scenery and the enemies were quite poor in their appearances in comparison to some of the other games released at the time.

I gave it a six because the developers obviously were looking at lighting at being the key selling feature of the game. For example, when you shine your torch in the face of one of your allies, they will cover their eyes. I thought this was a nice touch.

However, other lighting effects were annoying and did not add to the atmosphere, which I believe was their intention. Some lights blind you for no reason other than to fuck you off. It doesn’t add to the atmosphere and ruins my gameplay experience.

Sound 5/10

The sound effects don’t really pull any punches and don’t go above and beyond trying to be a little mysterious. There were no jumpy bits enhanced by the sound so it was pretty safe and middle of the road. It didn’t stand out as a negative factor though, so that’s a major positive.

Gameplay 4/10

The majority of the game is walking from one place to another shooting bad guys after shining a torch on them. After the second episode, it became very repetitive and I found it a hell of a slog to get through the rest of the game.

The added element of having to shine a light on an evil dude before shooting him is a pain in ass, not scary and simply annoying.

Considering the main element of the gameplay is shooting, I was really surprised that you gain absolutely nothing from headshots and the only way to speed up killing dudes is by using flare guns or flashbang grenades. The game becomes more about hording the good stuff for the tough parts which adds to the boredom even further. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to rename the game Alan Asleep although that is a pretty obvious joke.

Achievements – 1,500 points – 67 achievements

In terms of earning the 67 achievements for this one, it is not too taxing and the biggest problem is falling asleep while playing. The game commits the cardinal sin of making you play through the game twice to get all the achievements. This is due to the Nightmare difficulty not unlocking until you have completed the game on a lesser difficulty first.

I really resent being told by a game that I can’t play it on the hardest difficulty until I’ve proved myself on some lesser one. It’s like the game has some kind of bizarre God complex.

Other than that though, the achievements were varied enough to keep me playing. There was one other one that I must complain about though.

If you are going to have an achievement for making it through a large section of the game without dying – or turning off the console – you absolutely cannot leave any room for glitches. For example, the achievement, Run-On Sentence  for completing The Signal DLC without dying was made to be overly frustrating when I was forced through the graphics and got trapped under a building, unable to continue and having to restart wasting half an hour of my time!

Downloadable Content – Value for money?

I thought that both DLCs were value for money and add to the gaming experience. The second DLC, the Writer adds a bizarre twist to Alan Wake’s world and mixes it up with semi-tricky platforming sections.

The biggest addition to the game is the amount it adds to story though, however it still didn’t reach a final conclusion and it also frames the whole thing as the writer’s internal dilemma – a bizarre spin to put on a computer game.

They add an additional 500 points to the Gamerscore and the costs are very reasonable, especially now that they have abandoned this Microsoft Points system which means you can pay the actual price rather than overpaying for the Microsoft Point packages.

Summary

It is definitely worth getting from an achievement perspective. The game was repetitive but the storyline got me through the first playthrough which was enough to net the majority of the achievements. There is next to no replay factor though, and most of my deaths on the Nightmare difficulty were due to me not paying attention due to increased levels of boredom.