CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Deadly Intent

Deadly Intent is the second game in the CSI series, not that it matters much as there is no direct linking between the games. It seems a bit futile to label the flaws that were present in the other games here so I will try to concentrate on those unique to Deadly Intent.

After the D-Pad/Analogue stick separation from Hard Evidence, the developers decided to go roughly somewhere in the middle with their next game. You can use either the analogue stick or the D-Pad to cycle through the menus this time, however it seems that the D-Pad has a little more power than the analogue stick. I had a continuous problem of opening a menu and trying to use the analogue stick to select a piece of evidence only for the game to cycle backwards though the evidence to the beginning.

I thought there must have been something wrong with my controller and the hardly used D Pad was getting stuck. My controller is very old to the point that my left analogue stick has lost its shape and the hard plastic underneath has started showing.  Also, the left shoulder button only works if you press on the far right of it.

You may be thinking, ‘how are Adam’s controller issues relative to CSI Deadly Intent?’ Well, considering the above paragraph, I went out and bought a new controller with the expectation of the above mentioned problem going away. It did not. Glitches that prevent you from being able to play the game the way it is meant to be played are the biggest problems with games.

So despite forking out for a new (much needed) controller, I still had to do battle with a fucking computer to select a piece of evidence that I wanted to use! Needless to say, I was not impressed in the slightest.

I know I said I would focus on the main elements of this game, but it’s tough not to mention the characters’ severe personality switches. Another brilliant one revolved around one suspect, who clearly thought they were going to get away with it, who was being really forth coming and nice to us... until we got a sniff that they were involved with the murder and then started being really uncooperative and demanding legal representation.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 28 Achievements

Again, it is a very straight forward run through these achievements. You can net the majority of the achievements on a single playthrough and any that you do miss can be easily obtained by replying one of the cases.

That said, they commit the cardinal sin of having secret achievements that are not story related and you have to do something out of the ordinary to get them. I don’t understand why games do this. It’s like going to work and getting to the end of the day to have your boss turn around and say, ‘You were shit today, you didn’t meet all your objectives.’ which I would then follow with, ‘what didn’t I do?’ for him to then say, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s a secret.’ Fuck. Off.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Bugs and shitty controls aside, it is an easy 1,000 points but the menu control error thing sucked any kind of fun out of playing the game. The series does show that they improved the games as the series went on though. Fatal Conspiracy is by far the best in terms of cleanness, variety and character development and that’s enough to encourage me to get the next instalment, if one is ever released.

Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider has been a long standing franchise in the gaming industry. Lara Croft first graced our screens with her oversized cone boobs on the Playstation which is now three generations ago (not including the XboxOne). Longevity. This latest edition takes us through her early years, hence the slogan, ‘A Survivor is Born.’

This latest instalment is dark and gritty, removing much of the female chauvinism from the series and showing Lara’s frail yet strong character develop through a series of ordeals as she tries to save her friends and colleagues... after she directed them to an island and got everyone trapped by the evil wind goddess, Yamatai. She also refers to everyone evil as ‘bastard’ is a rather stereotypical British accent.

I have to say that this aspect - the frailty, not the accent - is really well done.  Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix have teamed up and done to Tomb Raider what Christopher Nolan did to the Batman franchise. Without casting Christian Bale.

The single player campaign is one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I’ve had in a while. The platforming element is really well done and was challenging but not stupid. The developers had obviously put a lot of work into it because it was completely glitch free.

Weapons were also great. The shooting system was not overly complex and there was no auto-aim, which meant I was free to determine the biggest threat to my survival and not the game. All weapons could be upgraded as well and I love this kind of stuff. It actually feels like you are building your own custom arsenal rather than scavenging enemy guns.

Aesthetically, the game is beautiful and not detrimental to the game environment. As mentioned above, the platforming is really good and this, in part, due to the amount of effort put in to the environmental development as the scenery doesn’t get in the way of the platforming sections. This has been a major frustration in past games where you try to jump to a ‘ledge’ that is actually just background scenery.

General annoyances, however, come in the form of Lara’s dialogue. She has an insanely bad British accent that makes her more upper class than David Cameron and she is full to bursting with self encouragement one liners, the most common being, ‘You can do this.’ It seems a bit hollow for her to be saying these things after you’ve already done them five hundred times.

To really ram home this point, the first time she kills someone on the island is the first time she kills anyone, so for her to notch up one kill and then not have a problem annihilating any other twat stupid enough to get her way is unbalanced character development, especially when she is saying ‘you can do this’ to herself when faced with a mediocre hill clime.

Achievements – 1,000 Points- 50 Achievements

Right, so how much bollocks is there to do? Fuck loads being the best answer. Aside from completing the story, there are achievements for collectibles, getting a certain amount of kills with various weapons, killing people in various different ways, doing random things, playing online and secret achievements which are missable.

I’m not going to go on another rant about missable achievements but one of these really fucked me off. You have to have every conversation with members of the crew of your ship and this means if you don’t do this as and when they come up, you won’t get the achievement and you will have to play the whole game again. Yes, of course this happened to me, I didn’t know it was a fucking achievement did I?!

Multiplayer

I can’t get enough of multiplayer these days. There are two types of multiplayer achievement. Ones you need to play with people to get and ones you don’t. That’s right, online required, but you don’t need to play with anyone in order to get them.

I thought I was ahead with this at release but it was still challenging to get a game in every game mode when I played it so I joined a boosting session, my first ever in fact! As a group, we worked our way through the achievements that require actual multiplayer in less than two hours.

Now, you don’t need to play online to get the two big ones of unlocking everything and getting to level sixty. You can do this alone by playing Rescue mode. Alternatively you get a friend and blow each other up but I wasn’t willing to subject anyone else to mindless bollocks (despite one offer) so I did it myself, and what a thankless task it was. I actually felt depressed once I’d completed it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I enjoyed the single player very much but for me, Tomb Raider has no place going into the online arena. It works really well as a single player but the multiplayer element is poorly done, undeveloped and not a lot of fun, even in the legitimate matches I managed to find. The whole experience has detracted from me buying the Definitive Edition version of the game. Oh yeah, and the fact it is completely the same game is not a good selling point either.

Gray Matter

Before I gets balls deep into this one, I want to give a brief opinion on point and click adventure games as I seem to be playing a lot of them at the moment (if you count the CSI games). They are obviously very tricky in their own right as many of the classic games, such as The Secret of Monkey Island, have really convoluted ways of getting from start to finish. I can see the unique challenge in this, however I think that point and click adventure games should have a strong storyline as their main selling point.

I don’t think I’m clever by any stretch which is why I had to use a guide for Monkey Island and I’m not ashamed of that at all. I wondered around the dock for about three hours before giving in and being forced to look up the solution. This brings me to my next point for these games – the music has to be good because if you are stupid (like me) and playing properly (not like me) then you are going to be listening to a lot of background music –more on this later.

Anyway, on the matter at hand. Gray Matter, that is!

Gray Matter is a classic style point and click adventure game designed for easy use on a PC. The story follows Sam Everett, an American orphan trying to make her way to London to become a full on magician and member of an exclusive club. Her bike breaks down in Oxford and she wakes up in a strange house with her rabbit Houdini. Seriously.

She later entwines herself with reclusive neurobiologist David Styles with hilarious consequen... I can’t even lie about that, there is nothing hilarious about the game. Like I’ve said above, the main selling point of a point and click adventure game is the story so I won’t go into detail. But I will say this – it’s horribly depressing.

Along those lines, the music is also dreary and depressing. I was playing at around ten o’clock at night, not to subject any other members of my household to having to watch me play it, and I fell asleep twice. The storyline – coupled with the music – is enough to drive anyone to the verge of suicide. If you are going to play this, make sure you put aside an hour of gentle comedy to cheer yourself up after you’re done with a session.

As intricately put together as Gray Matter is, it was mildly disappointing when I discovered that the characters have generic responses similar to the witnesses from CSI: Hard Evidence. You play as David and Sam and at one point, as David, I had just witnessed a traumatic incident. But when I returned to my house afterwards, the housekeeper asked David how he was which he responded to with a quite cheery, ‘Fine thanks!’

He does have a moment of pure quality towards the end of the game. He makes a phone call to get some information and gets given loads of confidential information... so fully lays into the person on the other end of the phone and reduces them to tears!

In other positives, the Oxford depictions are really close to those of real life. They do look a bit dated though and the whole game feels very Americanised. The English speaking characters are clearly Americans and the lack of any kind of vehicles and cobbled paths seems to indicate that America thinks England is stuck in the nineteen-fifties.

In terms of the gameplay, point and click adventure games are best played with a mouse but in a world where we have an analogue stick... sorry, make that two analogue sticks, I don’t understand why I have to hold down the right trigger to be able to click on stuff. Basically, the point and click interface registers a -9 out of 150 in terms of user friendliness and this is the main reason that playing the game was a fucking ball ache.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 41 Achievements

As far as the achievements go, most of them are simply story driven with a few missable ones sprinkled in. It gets it completely right it terms of secret achievements though – all the missable ones are non-secret.

I do have one massive issue with one particular achievement called Fast Play. You get this achievement for completing the game in less than five hours. Now, a game of this type is not designed to be played in less than 5 hours. I’m pretty sure that it can only be done by skipping all the dialogue and by knowing exactly what to do before you do it. This makes playing the game properly completely redundant.

I used to be the kind of person who would aim to get all the achievements in a single playthrough and this can be done with a guide but what’s the point? I took the extra hit and played the game properly once before getting Fast Play but I don’t think a game’s objectives should make the game redundant.

Downloadable Content – N/A

To sum up, it’s not the most straight forward 1,000 points I’ve ever earned and the puzzles are a massive let down in terms of what they offer. It’s a gettable 1,000 points, but not necessarily the most enjoyable. Unless you’re a masochist of course.