Have you ever wondered how cool it would be to be a CSI agent? The thrill of finding the clue that sends a mass murderer to jail? Well, SouthPeak gives you the opportunity to feel like a real CSI agent but without those witty comments from a co-worker that rolls the show into the theme song. Kind of like this one. “This reviewer is trying to be witty, but seems to fail.”

Crime Scene is a story of a fresh young detective named Matt Simmons, who has just been promoted to forensics in the city of Crossburg. Simmons first case is solving the death of the officer and his wife who he is replacing, while at the same time trying to gain the trust of his Chief and respect of the other officers.

The game is pretty straightforward. By collecting and processing evidence and interviewing witnesses, you try to solve a wide range of different crimes.

For those of you who are fascinated with what it takes to solve crimes, you will love this game. Those of you who are more into doing the crimes yourself (in the video game sense) you will probably loathe this game. Crime Scene is not for the first person shooter, gun toting gamer. A lot like a real investigation, Crime Scene takes time, patience, and a really keen mind to pay attention to every detail and find clues.

While at the crime scene, the stylus is used to search through the scenes looking for anything that stands out. The search is helped a little when the cursor lights up when hovering over an object of interest. Once that item is clicked on, the game zooms in for a closer look. With this closer view, this is where the wide arrange of tools are used to check for finger prints, collect blood samples, and collect different fabrics or other evidence that are lying around. Not everything at the crime scene is collecting evidence, but observation as well. While looking around the scene you may notice a window open or a mess on the floor, these things should be noted and may help when coming up with the conclusion of this crime.

Before leaving a crime scene, witnesses will need to be questioned and in some cases interrogated. This is done of course by asking question after question, but do not worry, you do not have to remember the whole conversation. A script of the conversation will be put into the evidence bag which can be viewed later. After all the evidence has been collected, it’s time to head back to the lab to process your findings.

In the lab, the evidence is taken and processed in different ways. Finger prints are run through a database and it becomes your job to match up finger prints to the samples that are found. Blood is processed by putting the sample onto a slide and looking at it through the microscope. While peering through the microscope, a laser is used to zap away the parts of the sample that is not needed but keeping away from the DNA that is needed. Trust me, you do not want to zap the DNA you need. There is a LOT more to do in the processing of evidence; matching bullet fragments, going over the scripts from the interviews and so on. Everything that is collected at the crime scene needs to be processed. When all the processing is done it’s time for the last step, presenting the evidence to get warrants to bring in the suspect.

This last step is where all the hard work of paying close attention to every detail pays off. This is also the part where I struggled the most. (if this tells you what type of gamer I am) You may recognize this part of the game in other games. After all the evidence is processed, it is then taken to the lead detective to present your findings. She will ask you a barrage of questions. It becomes your job to answer her questions and defend your answers by backing it up with the right processed evidence. If she asks a question, for example, “who shot the sheriff?” or if the evidence you present is not what she is looking for, you will lose a little in your, for lack of a better term, ‘respect bar’. Once this bar reaches zero, by mistake after mistake, you will be fired and end up on the streets. Which happened to me at times.

Conclusion

I’m not sure if I can give Crime Scene a proper score, so I am not going to try. I will leave you with this conclusion. If you enjoy games that take patience, thoughtful processing, and time, you will enjoy this game. If you do not enjoy any of those things, like me, you probably will want to look elsewhere for a new DS game.