Crime Scene (DS) Review

Posted by Josh Boykin on 03.06.2010

Crime Scene takes a new approach to the crime scene game by staying out of the court room and right at the scene of the crime, but the dry dialogue and stiff characters take away from overall experience.



Title: Crime Scene
Publisher: Southpeak Interactive
Developer: White Birds Productions
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1
Rated: M for Mature

Southpeak's Crime Scene puts you in the shoes of Detective Matt Simmons, a new member to the police force responsible for crime scene investigation. Like his Capcom-published counterpart Phoenix Wright, Simmons is responsible for solving crimes by combing over crime scenes and talking to witnesses. Crime Scene's focus lies in evidence procurement and analysis, requiring you to look over scenes and find bullet fragments, take blood samples, and lift fingerprints among other tasks while solving the case.



After being given an overview of the case, you'll be transported to the first scene and will spend time taking evidence from wherever you can. The main action of the game revolves around gathering and analyzing data, speaking to witnesses, and taking case-review quizzes given by your superiors to obtain arrest warrants and other clearances that move the storyline forward. Should you ever become stuck, there's a button which you can tap that will give you a hint on how to progress, but will lower your detective score for the level. This comes in handy, as the goals for any particular level are exceptionally undefined, and Crime Scene throws you into the deep end of crime scene analysis with no lifejacket. Often times you'll find yourself simply tapping around the screen, hoping the cursor will change to signal to you that you're near a focus point. Tapping on the screen in specific key locations will cause the camera to zoom in on that portion of the scene, allowing you to use your forensic tools on elements of the scene.

You're equipped with tweezers, swabs, and various other tools; using the proper one will trigger a small mini-game in which you'll follow a small direction to successfully acquire the item. Failing at using the tool will lower your detective rating; fail too many times and you'll be fired, resulting in a game over. Many actions throughout the course of the game (including succeeding at many of the mini-games) can raise your detective rating, so failure is not frequently a concern, but the touchy controls can often result in forensic foibles, lowering your detective score and overall rating. The scalpel is the worst of all of these tools; cutting often requires multiple failures before allowing you to carry on. Particularly annoying is the action cancel button's presence in the upper-right hand corner of the screen; often times I would be trying to cut or drag something from one place to another and accidentally brush up against the cancel button, kicking me out of the mini-game and requiring me to start all over.

After getting the evidence from the scene, it has to be taken back to the lab for analysis. A new set of mini-games becomes available, each one representing a different analysis technique. These range from bullet analysis, where players tap highlighted parts of the screen as quickly as possible, to substance analysis, where the player uses a laser to destroy bad particles in fluid samples. The first few times you do the games they're pretty fun, and it's satisfying to do things like blow in to the DS mic to blow extra fingerprint dust off of the screen, or to Though this sounds like fun (and is the first couple times,) you're required to take so many fluid samples and analyze so many bullets through the course of a chapter that it becomes a chore, and there's no challenge to make the experience exciting. Particularly frustrating is the DNA sequencer, a mini-game which has you sort 16 different non-descript bar sequences into four different groups. The 16 sequences come at you at high-speed, and with no tutorial to speak of, learning how to identify the groups and sort them takes trial and error, something you never want to feel like you're doing in a game where you're a police officer.



Of course, being a touch-and-explore adventure, much of the game's action is conveyed via text which, unfortunately, is one of the game's weaker points. I understand that English is English, but many of the game's locations and terminology are from a British background, constantly taking me out of the element of the game. Simple statements like "The window is 15 metres above the ground" required me to stop thinking about the game's actions and start thinking about American-to-British conversion, which is obviously not good for the dark, adult mood of the game. And though it tries to move in a direction that the Phoenix Wright series does not by taking on a mysterious, modern cop drama-noir tone, the poor writing and shallow characters makes the overall product anything but effective.

Adventure games make their mark by having compelling storylines and equally compelling characters, but Crime Scene loses this in the midst of the murder and mayhem. On one hand, the game takes on exceptionally adult and complex storylines, even having Simmons investigate his own police department for murder from very early on in the game. The music is deep and foreboding, and the washes of dark colors add to the overall feeling that the game is quite suited to the mature audience the ESRB rated it for. Seeing dead bodies and reading gruesome descriptions of murders adds a layer of seriousness that's refreshing to see on a handheld, particularly on the DS. But the writing itself is stiff and unnatural, and the characters are developed so poorly that interest in continuing the story is hard to find.


This is a terrorist, complete with trendy scarf.

Matt Simmons, the hero himself, has virtually no personality and nothing about him is interesting or exciting. This bland feeling washes over every character in the game, as they all speak with roughly the same tone and diction. The game's attempts at humor consistently fall flat, and any stories that are meant to enrich the player's knowledge of characters just end up ringing shallow. Even when the suspect you're talking to is a socio-political terrorist intent on government reform, both Matt and the suspect being interrogated seem to be rather calm. That is, until the "Pressure" dialog command is selected, which basically just involves Matt suggesting jail time, and then the suspect singing like a canary. All dialog choices between Matt and the people around him work in a similar way; you choose from one of three dialog choices, two of which are generally pretty far astray from the right answer. Sometimes the "right answer" is so random though, that all you can do is venture a guess as to which one you're supposed to choose. This carries over into the game's review sections, where the Chief Supervisor or Matt's partner will ask about details regarding the case.

After receiving a certain amount of information about the case, you'll be quizzed to see how much of the information you've gleaned correctly, thus propelling the story forward. Sometimes you'll choose from one of three dialog statements, and other times you'll have to present certain pieces of information in order to justify a point or accusation you make. Just like with the DNA analysis, wrong answers will lower your detective rating, and too many wrong answers will get you punted from the squad. After answering enough questions correctly about that section of the chapter the case will continue, lather/rinse/repeating suspect interviews, evidence analysis, and case quizzing.

Overall, Crime Scene presents a new, dramatic feel and mature tone to the law-adventure series, but the poor characters and writing, combined with repetitive evidence analysis and dry characters composes a package that's very hard to stomach. It's interesting to see a game that focuses more on the CSI-side of law and crime investigation, and the adult tone is fun for a while, but Crime Scene seems to forget the basics of how to create a good story-based game because it's so busy trying to be edgy. If you're looking for a solid way to spend your money and buy a DS law title, track down one of the Phoenix Wright games, or get the new Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations game. You'll be happy you did.

Graphics	7.0	The graphics match the tone of the game well, and the character models look good.
Gameplay	6.0	The mini-games are fun for the first few times, but become repetitive after doing 15-20 of the same type of analysis. Imprecise controls and vague directions only add to the frustration.
Sound	6.0	The music is dark and foreboding, but doesn't change much throughout the course of the game.
Lasting Appeal	5.0	One playthrough will be more than enough for this game, assuming you get that far.
Fun Factor	6.0	The novelty of playing the CSI is fun for a while, but dealing with the bland characters and plain writing the story offers is not. Once the thrill of lasering away bad particles in fluid analysis has faded, the story is not strong enough to hold interest
Overall	6.5   [ Average ]