Buggy game that’ll make you want to kill someone yourself.
CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder is based off the hugely successful original CSI television program that ran a jaw-dropping 15 years (2000-2015). Ted Danson was even in it at one point? And Elisabeth Shue?? AND Laurence Fishburne!? Where was I for all of this?
So anyways – Ted Danson, Elisabeth Shue and Lawrence Fishburne weren’t around to save CSI: 3 Dimensions Of Murder. Not that it was the cast’s fault. The voice acting for its time is pretty good. I mean compared to a lot of shit I’ve played it holds up. But the game is just so damn buggy.
Developed by American developer, Telltale Incorporated (known for their licensed game efforts, The Walking Dead arguably being their most notable) and published by Ubisoft it was released for Windows in 2006 and later ported to PS2 on September 25th 2007. Which is probably why the game is so close to being good and just falls short. Telltale surprisingly went defunct in 2018.
The writing is good. It has five cases (which seems a bit small but they are pretty dense stories packed with twists like your typical CSI show). The voice acting is solid. Some of the shit the suspects say is hilarious and boss like this prime example of fed-up-with-the-world-biatch:
What’s frustrating about the game is that the only reason is it takes long is the constant load screens. Even for its era – even if it was early PS2 era it would have too much load time. Let alone 2007. The “playable” crime scene areas are super small – and will have a ton of evidence all basically in one place. Which is fine. Being an older gamer I still love point and click exploration.
BUT what sucks you out of the game is that once you collect the evidence you immediately have to go to the lab to analyze your evidence. *Load Screen*. Analyze your evidence. Now you need to question your suspect again. *Load Screen*. Ask one question. Get another piece of evidence. Return to lab. *Load Screen.* Analyze Evidence. Suspicion arises. Need to question suspect more. *Load Screen.* Question suspect. They tell ya to piss off. Now you need a warrant. *Load Screen* interrogating is granted. *Load screen*
I think you get the point. For every hour I play I might actually get about 35 minutes of gameplay in. That’s like fucking college loan interest rate ratio shit. It’s a six hour campaign but with load times you’re looking at sixteen.
So… aside from that… the controls are horrible. You can see a splatter of blood but ya just can’t… nope… little to the left… shit…to the right…fuck… back to the left. Got it. Sure is hard handling a Q-TIP out in the field.
After all of that – if you can get past it – and that’s a legitimate IF – it’s still pretty fun. Just don’t expect to solve any cases in a hurry.
Overall: 71%
