- Site: CSI: NY
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Developer: Ubisoft
- Genre: Simulation
By Brad Cook
“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” Those words, spoken more than six decades ago at the end of the classic film noir “Naked City,” still ring true today. “CSI: NY” presents five such tales of murder and woe, but rather than sit in the role of passive observer, you step into a pair of well-worn detective shoes as you collect evidence, interrogate witnesses, and ultimately pin criminal charges on the guilty party.
As you travel New York City’s mean streets, you’ll have plenty of help, including detectives Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise), Danny Messner (Carmine Giovinazzo), Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes), and Donald Flack, Jr. (Eddie Cahill), along with medical examiner Dr. Sid Hammerback (Robert Joy), DNA technician Adam Ross (AJ Buckley), and other members of the cast. All of the characters’ voices were recorded by the actors and actresses who portray them on the TV show.
Don’t be surprised if you hear a flippant comment or two along the way; the naked city has a way of doing that to detectives after a while.
Playful Investigations
“We’ll need all the king’s men on this Humpty Dumpty,” detective Taylor remarks after you snap photos of the first victim, a young man found dead on the ground near the Empire State Building. The scene follows the same routine as each subsequent scene involving a victim or a witness: scan the objects that fade in along the bottom of the screen and click on them in the environment. Some are key pieces of evidence, while others begin a mini-game or can only be clicked after you complete a mini-game.
The mini-games present a variety of challenges that mimic a detective’s deductive skills. For example, a combination lock must be solved by assembling images in a logical sequence, or a computer simulation must be completed by figuring out the height the jumper leapt from, along with the speed he was traveling at the time.
“Lethal dose of gravity meets pavement,” observes detective Flack as you discuss the crime scene with him. You can click underlined words in his dialogue to explore topics in more depth, as well as show him pieces of evidence to hear what he thinks of them.
Follow the Clues
Repeat the process as you pursue the investigation, but don’t be surprised if some witnesses are less candid than detective Flack. Their responses will be more guarded, and they may not reveal everything they know about the evidence you show them. You may sometimes need to visit someone more than once before they’re willing to confess to anything, even the simplest piece of information.
Back at headquarters, your support team analyzes the evidence you collect, often with help from you in the form of a mini-game. Each task you complete moves you a little closer to the truth. At the conclusion of the first case, detective Taylor tells the guilty party that the victim “was not a product to be thrown away. In our business, we call it murder.”
And that’s just one story from the naked city; four more follow.
If you liked this game, check out:
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
- CSI: Hard Evidence
- Law & Order: Dead on the Money
- The Movies
- The Movies: Stunts & Effects
- iPod Games: CSI: Miami
Game Hardware
Check out our systems for your best gaming experience.
You See Dead People. Each victim’s body reveals vital clues about the crime, so explore all possibilities.
Height + Velocity = Splat. The outcome of this mini-game will not be what you expect.
A Bloody Job But Someone Has to Do It. Trace the outline of the splatter to collect an important sample.
System Requirements:
- Mac OS X version 10.5
- Intel Core Duo processor
- 512MB of RAM
- ATI Radeon 9000 video card or higher
- 1.2GB hard disk space
Tips and Tricks
- When examining an environment for items to click, pay attention to the ones that seem to stand out from the background a little bit. They’re likely the objects you want.
- As the images of what you’re looking for fade in along the bottom of the screen, you’ll notice each one is the same size, whether it’s a bag of golf clubs or a pair of sunglasses. However, they’ll be proportional to their real-life sizes in the scene above, so don’t limit your search only to small items.
- Some items may be partially obscured in the scene, so don’t be afraid to click on the edge of something sticking out from behind a chair or other object.
- You can pass on up to two mini-games per episode, but save those freebies for when you really need them. The puzzles tend to get more difficult as the story progresses.
- Sometimes a mini-game won’t become active until you find a specific object in a scene, so if nothing happens when you open one, close it and keep looking around.
- You can click the “Hint” button as often as you want, but you’ll lose points off your score each time, and you’ll need to wait for its icon to refill before you can click it again.
- While the game offers few penalties for mistakes — other than causing your cursor to disappear if you randomly click around a scene too much — you will lose credibility with a witness by handing them incorrect items. Even if an object is the right one, sometimes you have to specify which part of it you’re talking about (this is key with photos, for example) to keep your credibility bar full.
- You also lose credibility with witnesses by clicking on inappropriate subjects to ask them about. The lower your credibility, the worse your score.
- If you find yourself stumped, visit this walkthrough at Gamezebo to figure out what to do next or how to solve a puzzle. As of publication of this article, however, the walkthrough doesn’t include case number five, although the author promises it will be there eventually.