Game Overview
CSI stands for Crime Scene Investigation, the basics to the game are very simple, someone been murdered you have to work out who done it! Unfortunately though with CSI: Hard Evidence its more, someone’s been murdered you follow what we tell you to do.

It really is a big shame, this is the first game of its kind on next gen consoles, with 5 "missions" potentially there was a lot to get your head around and a lot of places to get stuck, begging for a walkthrough! The game however doesn't really offer any resistance at all in terms of difficulty and almost holds your hand through the entire game pointing out what to do next, the only thing that could hinder your progression through the game is your lack of thoroughness when looking for evidence at the crime scene, however to be honest, its not hard to find the evidence, most of it is right there in front of you and is marked out by your on screen indicator turning bright green.

When you come across one of these pieces of evidence whether it be a bottle, foot pedal or weapon your indicator will turn green at which point you hit A. Your investigation kit then appears on screen, but rather than being able to choose any tool out of the kit, the game tells you which tool to use, 9/10 the gloves to pick up evidence. Fairly straight forward and not very challenging.

Once you have collected all the evidence from the crime scene the game will even tell you that the area is cleared and a green tick appears on the locations list, talk about handing it to you on a plate. You then need to go back to the lab to analyze your findings, which once again is something you are virtually walked through step by step.

There are 4 different computers in the lab, all which analyze different pieces of evidence, if you need to use one of these computers for any reason what so ever then an exclamation mark flashes on its screen. You are then required to use that PC to analyze a certain piece of evidence, usually the one that doesn't have a green tick next to it.

Once you have followed all the steps throughout the level you'll call suspects in for interrogation and eventually you'll get your guy. However, once you have made the arrest there really is no feeling of accomplishment, even when the Achievement indicator pops up rewarding you with 200 points per level. That’s another gripe, the achievements are fairly simple to get, they could have made the game so much harder and the achievements would have lived up to their name! But they don't.

Graphically the game lags behind other titles we have seen on the 360, the sound is quite annoying in the fact that when a fellow officer is talking to you at times some music plays over the top of them which makes it quite difficult to hear what you are being told. There is a hints option which quite frankly is laughable as to why anyone would need it, and throughout the levels you collect bugs for your "chief", 5 per level for his collection. Surely achievements would have been more rewarding if you got them for finding all 5 bugs on a level, mind you they are easy to find as well.

Our Conclusions
It's not great and that is the honest truth, one thing it has done is get us hooked on the TV show which is a lot more thrilling. The game holds your hand from start to finish, almost telling you what to do and where to go, hire it out for a fairly easy, although not very quick, 1000 achievement points but at £40 it’s asking a bit much. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together will breeze through it in a couple of days.

Overall Score: 5/10

Thanks to Ubisoft