I imagine that real crime scene investigation isn’t much fun. I mean, there’s all that hard work and effort, and looking for stuff, and not jumping to conclusions and blah blah blah. Luckily, however, a standard episode of CSI manages to cut out all the crap and get to the cool stuff. So it’s only natural that there’s been a whole series of games about it, right? The latest one of which is CSI: Deadly Intent.

I’ll be honest, I’ve only ever played one CSI game before, and I wasn’t exactly enthralled. I mean, there’s all that looking for stuff, and hard work and effort… in fact, it’s pretty much all the boring stuff I mentioned above. Deadly Intent doesn’t appear to want to stray far from that formula. It plays as a point ‘n’ click adventure, a dying genre in today’s modern world of racers and shooters, and one that I’m happy to see fade away as well. You get to look around the crime scene, pick up evidence, look closer at the evidence, piece together the clues, and pretty much everything else a crime scene investigator would do (except whip on some sunglasses when making a witty statement). My main problem with this is that the mouse cursor is WAY too sensitive, and decides to fly off the screen too much. There isn’t even an option to change this, which is even more annoying.

Now, I may not be in Mensa or anything, but I’m not particularly dumb either. So, either Deadly Intent is really frickin’ hard, or my parents have lied to me all my life and I’m actually an idiot. Too often was I sat on my arse wondering what I had to do next, with Laurence Fishburne (acting as helpful guy) being totally useless. Luckily however, a member of the team will send you an email giving you a clue if you’re still wandering around clueless after an amount of time. Even more useful is the fact that you can increase the regularity of these messages, making the game about five times easier to play through. Although most people might find that a little boring, since it completely defeats the point of the game. Each to their own though, right?

Graphically this game is pretty disappointing. I mean, it looks almost identical to the last CSI game I played, and if memory serves I played that two years ago. Everything is just pretty standard and unimpressive, and that’s a real shame because you’d hope that this kind of series would really try and make itself look good at least. Ah well, at least Laurence looks like the real him, for the most part.

As you might expect from a point ‘n’ click game, there’s a ton of dialogue going on here. It’s just a shame that it really isn’t done all that well. The voice actors are a bit dull, and even people who are angry don’t sound very convincing. Aside from the dialogue, there isn’t much else in the way of noticeable sound, so not much to comment on there.

CSI: Deadly Intent is probably a good game for all those who watch the show, crave a point ‘n’ click adventure, or just like putting their mind to work to solve some tricky puzzles. Unfortunately, I’m none of these things, so I personally wouldn’t recommend it. Still, give it a try if you liked the last one. It seems like pretty much the same game.

CSI: Deadly Intent is out now. Why not use the links below to buy it?