CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Hard Evidence – 360 – Preview

PAX 2007
Preview

Telltale
Games was happily working along on CSI: Hard Evidence when publisher Ubisoft
threw a curve ball at the dev team. Instead of merely developing it for the PC,
Ubi wanted it also for the Xbox 360 and the Wii, and they wanted them all to
release at the same time.

The PC game
is, more or less, completed and the team is feverishly working on the console
editions, but what they showed at the Penny Arcade Expo in the Washington State
Convention Center in Seattle was a crime investigation game that does a
wonderful job in mirroring the popular television show.

Telltale is
not the first company that has tackled the license, but they are doing a solid
job in building on the work that has gone on before by tightening up the
interface, allowing players to adjust difficulty by either turning on or off the
tool tips. The game features five different crimes to investigate, and they are
all seemingly unrelated … or are they? Maybe one or two overlap, but that is
part of the game’s effort to both intrigue and delight those that pick up the
title.


The PC
version was the only one shown, and the graphics were absolutely terrific. It
was important to CBS (the television network that has the show) that the in-game
characters look like the actors that portray them and Telltale has done a
remarkable job in that regard. The fly-bys (those interludes between the scenes)
are taken from the show itself. Even the same forensics expert that works on the
show gave technical pointers to the team to ensure that element was spot on as
well.

When it
comes to the dialogue, the man who is authoring the CSI novels wrote that
element, so the game’s characters are totally in line with other elements in the
franchise.

This is
still a point-and-click adventure where players will move around a crime scene,
using the cursor to search for clues, interviewing people and amassing evidence
to find the perpetrator of the various crimes. And there is bonus material as
well.

Look for
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Hard Evidence to release in the fall.