The game cut's straight to the point
as soon as you hit new game. You are presented with
three case files. A colleague explains each case to
you and you can then pick whichever one you want to
do first. I chose the murder in the hotel room.
You'll start at the scene of the crime
where you'll be able to examine the victim and look
for any clues that might be of use. If you feel that
there might be something more to a clue then you can
send it to the guy's at the crime lab and let them take
a look at it. You come equipped with a pretty snazzy
Nokia PDA. If the boy's (and girl's) at the Crime Lab
discover something they'll give you a call and tell
you to pop in when you can for a report. The PDA is
also used as an inventory and stores all the Witnesses,
Evidence and Documents you might find. You'll also need
the PDA to get from place to place.
As you find more clues and talk to more
Witnesses more places will appear on your map. You can
get to any of them by simply clicking on them. An interesting
feature when questioning witnesses is the ability to
choose what tone of voice you want to use. For example
if you need to question a friend or relative of the
victim due to the fact they just found out their friend/relative
is dead you will need to use an empathetic tone. Or
if you feel the witness is being a smartarse you can
choose to be aggressive. While talking to witnesses
there will be two bars. A green one and a red one. The
green one will fill up when you do something right.
The red one will fill up when you do something wrong
such as use the wrong tone. If the green bar fills up
you've got all you can squeeze out of this witness.
Sometimes though the witness is harder
to crack and you'll need to find a piece of evidence
first and it's got to be something that means something
to the witness in order to encourage them to spill.
In order to find out who committed the crime you're
going to need to profile your criminal first. This can
be done with the criminal profiler on your laptop back
at the Major Case office. You submit pieces of evidence
and if it's relevant it will be inserted into the profiler.
Once your profile is strong you can start submitting
suspects and the profiler will tell you how likely it
is that this person committed the crime. If you're suspicious
about a witness you can order the surveillance department
down at Major Case to tail them and give you a report
afterwards. The research department will also give you
a report which contains their details and a quick background
check. This work's with item's you find as well. As
you find more clues and question more witnesses it will
lead you to new area's and new people to question as
well as an array of devious puzzles to test your mind.
One thing I haven't touched on yet is
the music. It's perfectly suited to this kind of game.
Every tune will haunt you even when you turn the game
off. It almost feels like you're playing a horror game.
The graphics are also excellent. Albeit sometimes the
character's look like they have a bit of an overbite
problem but they are easy on the eye. The only thing
that really annoyed me about this game, and I don't
know if this is just my laggy computer, but sometimes
when you click somewhere Rob will walk there but when
he turns to face the object he sometimes gets stuck
in an endless loop of turning animations. This can be
really annoying and requires a few clicks to put right.
I've even seen this happen to computer characters and
once you click on a computer character you can't move
so if they don't stop turning then you're screwed.
Overall I think this is a pretty good
game. Fans of the show will love it but if you're into
this sort of thing I highly recommend it.
Review by Michael Dolotko.