Thoughts on "CSI: Hard Evidence" for the Wii.
It's bizarre how incomprehensible this game is from the non-player perspective. I can only hope Laura is getting a lot more interest out of it than I am having to sit here watch it.
The main part of the game is where you visit various scenes, which you can "search". The way you search is by waving the mouse pointer around and watch for changes when you hover over various items, in much the same manner that a blind man would rub at a page to read Braille. Except that you can see stuff, although they make most things so small you can't actually see them so you do have to do the whole blind person thing. You also get transported from place to place like someone who can't see: there's no actual travel involved, no getting into cars and stuff. You just pull out your phone, click on a place, and Zap! You're there.
As a CSI, you get to go the lab, which is a series of five computers or each, each of which is "different": DNA, chemical analysis, etc. But when I say "different" I really mean "the same": you get a flashing exclamation on screen when the computer can do something, so you go to it and it has you press a series of buttons. So you press the buttons and you have evidence. If you're lucky, your CSI partner will insert some witticism to liven up the proceedings.
You can interrogate people. That is to say, you go to a room with a person in a computer, and a question instead of a button, and you click on the question a few times and you have evidence. If you're lucky, your CSI partner will insert some thinly-veiled insinuation of guilt to liven up the proceedings.
Capt. Brass is of course there, although in this game he appears to be unable to extricate his lardy ass from behind his desk. He sits there, looking part-dead, and allows you to visit new places occasionally. In fact, most of the characters look part-dead; this is less-heard of pasty white zombie version of the series, "CSI: Uncanny Valley". The few non-zombie characters look mostly like Mysterons.
Back to the lab with you, because the computers demand more button-pushing to create evidence. Unlike in the CSI series, where the computers are unfathomably smart - able to create images from the grainiest of video and find DNA trace on a teflon frying pan - these computers appear to be irredeemably stupid. To do DNA comparisons, you have to load each one up side by side and see if they "match". You press the "match" button when you think it matches, and helpfully Computer Says No if it doesn't. It just can't do that on it's own, you have to push the buttons to make it say No. Same with fingerprints, each match has to be done manually, to create The Evidence.
In order to do as well as possible in each scene, you have to earn "Thoroughness Points" (TPs). The long and short of this seems to me that there are parts of each scene which are entirely empty and devoid of any entertainment, so to make up for forcing you to slog through them, they give you a TP. It's a bit like an "Endeavour" badge for scouts or something. You also get points for picking up insects; in the same way you get a TP for visiting an empty scene, you get a bug point for visiting an empty scene with a bug in it and then picking up the bug. Being a competent CSI means doing insect extermination it seems.
Being a competent CSI apparently doesn't mean knowing which tool to use, though. If you're collecting evidence, you have this box of tricks with tweezers, luminol, a camera, and all sorts of other goodies. However, you don't need to actually figure out which one is the correct one to use: you wave your blind-person-white-stick over the box and the relevant tools jump out, for you to do some clicking on (the entirety of the CSI evidence collection/processing system is basically clicking on stuff). If, by some chance, it gives you a couple of different options, you can pick the wrong one - but then your smart-ass CSI partner will tut at you and stop you using it. You don't seem to lose any CSI Investigator points by attempting to pick up a fingerprint with a plaster-cast, but that's just life.
Now and then you get these video interludes. These mostly seem to occur when the game needs to give you some new piece of evidence, but there is no available method of pointing and clicking at something in order to create the evidence.
Much of the interesting stuff I remember from CSI doesn't appear to be here. There is no ballistics lab in which you can fire bullets at pigs or blocks of jelly. You can't stuff a mannequin with bags of blood and throw them off tall buildings.
At the end of each "investigation" (which generally ends with a confession; this does seem much like the series - finally something similar!), you get an "eval" by "Gil Grissom". I say "Gil Grissom", again, it's unlikely to be him: inability to get out from behind his desk and the way his face doesn't move makes me suspect that this is merely the animated corpse of Grissom. Almost certainly there will be a plot twist later in the game where you have to click on him to reveal the mechanism or something.
I'm not sure where the "Hard Evidence" referred to in the title of the game actually comes in. "CSI: Point and Click Evidence" appears more apropos. Or maybe just "CSI: Pointless Clicking".
The main part of the game is where you visit various scenes, which you can "search". The way you search is by waving the mouse pointer around and watch for changes when you hover over various items, in much the same manner that a blind man would rub at a page to read Braille. Except that you can see stuff, although they make most things so small you can't actually see them so you do have to do the whole blind person thing. You also get transported from place to place like someone who can't see: there's no actual travel involved, no getting into cars and stuff. You just pull out your phone, click on a place, and Zap! You're there.
As a CSI, you get to go the lab, which is a series of five computers or each, each of which is "different": DNA, chemical analysis, etc. But when I say "different" I really mean "the same": you get a flashing exclamation on screen when the computer can do something, so you go to it and it has you press a series of buttons. So you press the buttons and you have evidence. If you're lucky, your CSI partner will insert some witticism to liven up the proceedings.
You can interrogate people. That is to say, you go to a room with a person in a computer, and a question instead of a button, and you click on the question a few times and you have evidence. If you're lucky, your CSI partner will insert some thinly-veiled insinuation of guilt to liven up the proceedings.
Capt. Brass is of course there, although in this game he appears to be unable to extricate his lardy ass from behind his desk. He sits there, looking part-dead, and allows you to visit new places occasionally. In fact, most of the characters look part-dead; this is less-heard of pasty white zombie version of the series, "CSI: Uncanny Valley". The few non-zombie characters look mostly like Mysterons.
Back to the lab with you, because the computers demand more button-pushing to create evidence. Unlike in the CSI series, where the computers are unfathomably smart - able to create images from the grainiest of video and find DNA trace on a teflon frying pan - these computers appear to be irredeemably stupid. To do DNA comparisons, you have to load each one up side by side and see if they "match". You press the "match" button when you think it matches, and helpfully Computer Says No if it doesn't. It just can't do that on it's own, you have to push the buttons to make it say No. Same with fingerprints, each match has to be done manually, to create The Evidence.
In order to do as well as possible in each scene, you have to earn "Thoroughness Points" (TPs). The long and short of this seems to me that there are parts of each scene which are entirely empty and devoid of any entertainment, so to make up for forcing you to slog through them, they give you a TP. It's a bit like an "Endeavour" badge for scouts or something. You also get points for picking up insects; in the same way you get a TP for visiting an empty scene, you get a bug point for visiting an empty scene with a bug in it and then picking up the bug. Being a competent CSI means doing insect extermination it seems.
Being a competent CSI apparently doesn't mean knowing which tool to use, though. If you're collecting evidence, you have this box of tricks with tweezers, luminol, a camera, and all sorts of other goodies. However, you don't need to actually figure out which one is the correct one to use: you wave your blind-person-white-stick over the box and the relevant tools jump out, for you to do some clicking on (the entirety of the CSI evidence collection/processing system is basically clicking on stuff). If, by some chance, it gives you a couple of different options, you can pick the wrong one - but then your smart-ass CSI partner will tut at you and stop you using it. You don't seem to lose any CSI Investigator points by attempting to pick up a fingerprint with a plaster-cast, but that's just life.
Now and then you get these video interludes. These mostly seem to occur when the game needs to give you some new piece of evidence, but there is no available method of pointing and clicking at something in order to create the evidence.
Much of the interesting stuff I remember from CSI doesn't appear to be here. There is no ballistics lab in which you can fire bullets at pigs or blocks of jelly. You can't stuff a mannequin with bags of blood and throw them off tall buildings.
At the end of each "investigation" (which generally ends with a confession; this does seem much like the series - finally something similar!), you get an "eval" by "Gil Grissom". I say "Gil Grissom", again, it's unlikely to be him: inability to get out from behind his desk and the way his face doesn't move makes me suspect that this is merely the animated corpse of Grissom. Almost certainly there will be a plot twist later in the game where you have to click on him to reveal the mechanism or something.
I'm not sure where the "Hard Evidence" referred to in the title of the game actually comes in. "CSI: Point and Click Evidence" appears more apropos. Or maybe just "CSI: Pointless Clicking".