CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Hard Evidence

Being a stickler for playing a series of games in order, I’m shocked at my own lack of research. Hard Evidence is the first in the series and that is evident (ha-ha) straight from the off.

Released in 2007, the controls show a real return to the dark ages. It took a little while to sink in, such was my shock but, you have to use the D-Pad to go through the menus which I found really alien after years of using an analogue stick.

Other than that, the controls are essentially the same as Fatal Conspiracy, although the forensic science bits are a lot simpler which is to be expected from an earlier release. In order to finish the game, you have to complete five cases. Unlike Fatal Conspiracy, these cases are not linked with an overarching story and they don’t really increase in complexity.

The characterisation throughout the game leaves a lot to be desired. You can tell which characters are guilty by talking to them when you don’t have any questions left to ask – they each have one blanket response so if someone is cooperating at the beginning of the case, you know they are going to become hostile because their ‘one-liner’ will be overly aggressive and out of character.

It is also very linear. You can’t progress cases if there is one piece of evidence left outstanding, meaning there is only one way to solve a case. It’s nowhere near as bad as NCIS’s approach of A=B but B≠A, but several times I had missed one tiny thing and couldn’t progress the story. One of the cases, I was required to go and talk to the doctor for a second time in order to progress and the only reason being that it triggers a cut scene, but I didn’t get any prior clues to this and it was just random luck that I happened to look in the one place where there was guaranteed to be no additional evidence! What was he going to do? Perform another autopsy?

Also there were two unexplained game crashes where the game seemed to get confused about whether the menu was open or not and, like all games, when it doubt, completely freeze. This wasn’t too bad because the auto-saves are generally quite good meaning that I didn’t lose loads of progress.

There is a side part to collect bugs in the various crime scenes which does really make a lot of sense from a reality perspective. When you get to the end of a case, you get evaluated on your performance and part of that evaluation is a thank you for collecting bugs for your boss’s collection. This is a great way to suck up but I have to ask the question – how many different bugs can you possibly find (inside luxury hotel suites and casino floors, may I add) that are uncommon?

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 5 Achievements

There is nothing major to add here. 5 cases; 5 achievements. You don’t have to do very well at the cases, just getting to the end is enough.

Downloadable Content – Not Applicable

It’s a relaxed kind of game where the only element of frustration is the controls. Although I pointed out the errors with the characterisation, is it a nice relaxing 1,000 points but won’t give you much of a sense of achievement, which kinds of defeats the point of achievements.

Viking: Battle for Asgard

As you may be aware I am registered to a site called True Achievements which compares Xbox360 Achievements earned versus those earned by others and generally uses this as a measurement to assess how easy some achievements are to earn.

They also have a section called ‘Easy Achievements’ which looks at games you’ve played with achievements that are ‘Easy’ to earn. This was a bit of a kick in the head as when I chose to look at this, it told me that there were loads of achievements for this game which were ‘easy.’ I had only earned three of these and took it bit personally that the rest of the game was rated as easy, so I went on a 1,000 point mission and was quite successful (hence, the review).

I can’t remember why I stopped playing the game three achievements in, but it did become apparent after about twenty minutes of game time, but more on that later.

The story line of Viking is a basic one. You are the Viking, Skarin and you are working for your God, Freya, and she has tasked you with ridding the world of Hel’s demon Legion forces as they have been trying to destroy all the Vikings on three small islands in the Viking Empire. However, these demonic legions don’t kill the Vikings. Instead they tie them to poles or keep them in cages for no explained reason, especially if they are hell bent on destroying all the Vikings.

The God rivalry between Hel and Freya gets quite bizarre during the last few sections of the game. Freya appears to go a little bit insane with power, to the point where I was anticipating a plot twist and be asked to destroy Freya instead. This never came despite being really hinted at. I could almost imagine Freya, red eyed and frothing at the mouth as she’s telling me to destroy Hel for her. This kind of one-way storyline is very in keeping with the rest of the game.

The whole game feels very flat in every aspect. There is no real variance between the different islands and you have to complete the same tasks over and over again. It goes like this:

Step 1: Go to location A

Step 2: Kill enemies at location A

Step 3: Free the Vikings at location A

Step 4: Complete obligatory quest for Viking A, which means going to location B to kill generic enemy A before the Vikings you’ve freed will join your army.

Step 5: Repeat steps 1 through 4 moving the letters on to B and C respectively.

The game only deviates from this when you have to do the big battles once you convinced all available Vikings to join your army. I have two major contentions with this.

Contention number 1: If the evil Hel’s legion had done what they were supposed to have done, there wouldn’t be any Vikings to save as they would all be dead.

Contention number 2: After saving the ‘already should be dead’ Vikings from their deaths, why do I then have to complete another assignment to prove myself to them before they will join forces with me to destroy the evil forces that captured they in the first place!?

To sum up, the game play is very repetitive and the premise for the whole thing is weak and that is being kind.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

Earlier I mentioned that I started playing but stopped after earning three achievements and the reason for this was that I couldn’t be bothered to play the game twice so dived straight into it on hard mode. There are three achievements for completing the game on hard and all of the fifty achievements can be obtained on one playthrough.

Hard mode isn’t that different to normal mode but after clearing location C of demons (see the above description) I must have become bored or moved on to a high profile release. Either way the main difficulty with obtaining these is that you will become very bored with having to do the same thing over and over again.

Also there is no real punishment for dying, other than having to return to the home village to then fast travel back to closest fast travel point to your point of death. The sheer mindnumbingness of the task in front of me caused me to die over and over again in some places.

There are also a few missable achievements for collecting some skulls which I was aware of, but then completely forgot about. This meant I had to replay the first island to get one of the ones I missed. I hold my hands up to this – completely my own fault.

Downloadable Content – N/A

It is an easy game to add to the ‘completed’ collection but it was not fun. I think enjoyed about half an hour of the game but once I’d figured out the gameplay pattern it became so repetitive it made me want to kill myself. The achievements didn’t push me outside of the main game constraints enough to give me a sense of actual achievement from completing it and I wouldn’t recommend this to friends or Vikings. Not that I know any.