Forensics: Crime Scene Detective

[strike] This is a recommendation, but a tentative one. [/strike] Scratch that. In hindsight, after fully writing this review, I can’t bring myself to recommend this game. I wanted to, I really did, but I just can’t. Read on to find out why. So, Forensics: Crime Scene Detective. Or as I like to call it “Where The F**k Is That Last F**king Fingerprint Simulator 2026”. This game starts out promising. The tutorials show you how to use your various tools, gathering evidence at the crime scene and then analysing it back at the lab. And then, you get to the missions, and find out that, barring the layout of the room, they’re all the EXACT. SAME. F**KING. THING. Go to crime scene. Open tool case. Take out UV Light. Search around room for obvious evidence when scanning every vaguely flat surface with the UV Light for the 5 million fingerprints you need. Return to tool case. Put away UV Light. Take out Evidence Markers. Go around to every single piece of evidence you found, including the 5 million fingerprints and mark them. Each one. Individually. Yes, you have to mark each fingerprint separately. Return to tool case. Put away Evidence Markers. Take out Camera. Go around to every single piece of evidence you found, including the 5 million fingerprints and take a photo of them with their Evidence Marker. Each one. Individually. Yes, you have to photograph each fingerprint separately. Find out that you placed an Evidence Marker just a [i]little[/i] too close to a fingerprint, so the completely-transparent square around the fingerprint is overlapping the marker, “obscuring” it, making you unable to take the photo. Swear. Try to move the marker, only to find out that you can’t move them after they’ve been placed, only dispose and replace them. Swear again. Return to tool case. Put away Camera. Take out Evidence Markers again. Place another evidence marker down, hoping that it’s not too close this time. Return to tool case. Put away Evidence Markers. Take out Camera. Okay, you can take the photo now. Return to tool case. Put away Camera. Take out Fingerprint Dusting Tools. Go around and dust every single fingerprint. Make sure you put on enough dust, otherwise you won’t be able to read it properly back at the lab. But careful! Not too much, or the game won’t let you take the print, and you have to brush away the excess. Oops, now there’s not enough, better put some more back on. Oops too much, you’d better [repeat ad infinitum] Return to tool case. Put away Fingerprint Dusting Tools. Take out… other forensic equipment that I don’t really need to go into. There’s other stuff like blood sample collectors and bullet-trajectory calculators, but I mainly just wanted to complain about the fingerprints in this review. Return to lab. Do things with other evidence in the lab. Decrypt data, compare bullet markings, analyse DNA. Then go to the fingerprint station. Select a suspect, then pick the first of the 5 million fingerprints. The fingerprints clearly do not match, select ‘no match’, then move on to the next one. The fingerprints clearly do not match, select ‘no match’, then move on to the next one. Ah, now this one does match. Find at least 5 similarities, selecting from things like Loops, Forks, Ends and Deltas. Mark it as a ‘match’, then move on to the next one. The fingerprints clearly do not match, select ‘no match’, then move on to the next one. Ah, now this one does match. Find at least 5 similarities, selecting from things like Loops, Forks, Ends and Deltas. Mark it as a ‘match’, then move on to the next one. Ah, now this one does match. Find at least 5 similarities, selecting from things like Loops, Forks, Ends and Deltas. Mark it as a ‘match’, then move on to the next one. (Sorry for the repetition, but if I had to put up with this, so do you.) Submit evidence to bosses via email. Close case, get results. You only got 99/100, as you missed one fingerprint hidden in a dark corner of the room. Swear once again. Repeat above for EVERY. SINGLE. MISSION. Now, I admit, you don’t HAVE to do all of this to simply complete the mission, only if you want to get 100%. You can just waltz around and pick up everything without marking or photographing any of it if you want. But it just doesn’t feel right to a completionist like me. But the game is just SO REPETITIVE. It started out kinda fun, but by the end of it, I was just finishing the game out of spite; this game would not beat me. I honestly could not bring myself to 100% every mission. I did my best, finished every mission, got every achievement, and uninstalled the game. Aside from the repetitiveness, there were other issues with the game. It got annoying having to return to the tool case every time I wanted to switch tools (which was often), and the case was in a fixed location near the entrance of the level, which is usually nowhere near the evidence. I wish I could just carry all the tools with me and switch between them on the fly, but I know that’s not “REALISM”. I should have been able to at least move the case to a more convenient location. Also, the fact that you can’t move evidence markers after you place them, just remove and replace, is extremely frustrating. As I said earlier, if the marker is just a bit too close to a fingerprint or blood puddle, the completely-transparent “hitbox” overlaps and “obscures” the marker so you can’t take the photo, which is just really dumb. I really wanted to enjoy and recommend this game, but its incessant repetitiveness just wore me down by the end. If you want to buy this game, wait for a sale. I bought it full price for AUS$34.95, and it wasn’t worth it.

[h1]Forensics: Crime Scene Detective[/h1] I'll say this: I was engaged for all 10 hours. But I stayed for the collecting and matching play. This game is not "simulation" material, nor complex to solve cases. Forensics is a confirmation sim, not a deduction game. The game narrows the suspect pool for you. You never build your own suspect list or type a name into a database. Your job is to gather the evidence, run it, match it, cross-check fingerprints, and upload. Validating a chain the game has already built. You do not build one. Mostly I was fine with that. Deduction is someone else's role in the fiction, and I didn't buy this expecting to be the detective. If deduction with evidence is what you're after, [b]Scene Investigators[/b] is the game to look at instead. [h3]The loop[/h3] The scene is sealed and empty. No people and you can't walk out of bounds. Lights are setup already so you can never look in the wrong place. You pick up your tools one at a time and drop numbered evidence cards next to the items the game highlights (If you stare at it long enough.) Then you walk back to your case, take the camera, and photograph every card against its evidence. Fingerprints: dust the print, brush the excess, lift it with tape, all interative steps, no QTE. Ballistics: pick up the laser arrow, place in the hole, set the camera over the projectile view, set the timer, spray the air to reveal the trajectory line, capture. You repeat this until every piece is recorded. It's all automatic by design, and the tool work itself is valid and sometimes satisfying to set up. [h3]Where it falls short as a "simulation"[/h3] Evidence is a binary 100% or 0% match. There's no fail state, if you match something wrong, the game doesn't flag it or fail you, it simply won't advance until the match is correct. Your "analysis" can't incriminate or exonerate anyone the way the store page implies; the outcome is fixed and you're just surfacing it. The front page and title shot sells drama the game doesn't have. The loop never changes across all 15 cases (plus 4 training cases). Later cases don't get harder, they just hand you more to collect, I found around 20 pieces in some. Evidence never conflicts. Nothing goes wrong. You execute a fixed procedure and the game waits for the correct input. I like simulation games, and I don't mean it needs to be complex. Farming Simulator isn't complex, but its systems actually respond. Crops fail, machines break, and you can mismanage them. Forensics: Crime Scene Detective has none of that. Nothing pushes back: no fail state, no accidents, no consequence for doing it wrong. Fingerprint matching is the most tedious part by far. You pick the pattern type, then point out matching grooves and loops across two prints side by side. With one suspect it's fine. As more people get involved, it becomes a slog. If matching evidence is already a chore to you, this is where the game will lose you. [h3]Also worth noting[/h3] There are no bodies or blood at the scenes, you arrive after everything's been cleared. The bloody scenes shown on the Steam store page are not in the game. [hr][/hr] [b]Verdict:[/b] A competent evidence-matching game wearing a simulation's coat. I stayed engaged, but it's billed as forensic simulation and the forensic work is too automated and trivial to earn that.

I expected way more ways to analyze evidence. Looks like its mostly about finding hidden fingerprints and doing the same 4 things over and over. Gameplay doesnt get deeper. There was so much that could have been included as far as forensic science goes but this is very surface level and levels are just repetitive. And since you just analyze the evidence and not actually investigate, there is nothing interesting with levels either. My expectations were to use bunch of different forensics tools, sadly this fall short. Refunding.

I really wanted to leave a good review for this game, since I love evidence collecting and processing and I feel a lot of the bad reviews are made by people who don't understand the point of the game. However, at a $25 price point, the game is just way too clunky. I played through until I got to the pool bar crime scene and had to rage quit after 30 minutes trying to get a photo of the [spoiler] cell phones in the box behind the bar. [/spoiler] I tried placing the markers every which way and it would not let me take an acceptable photo. I understand and enjoy the mechanic of not having inventory so you don't contaminate evidence, but when you're just trying to take a photo of one thing and the game keeps making you adjust your marker and the suitcase is on the other side of the map, it quickly stops being enjoyable. Adding the ability to move the suitcase where you want it would greatly help this issue, as well as ensuring that nearby evidence doesn't clip through solid objects when trying to take a photo so you don't get the "too much evidence" message. Another idea is to allow changing the placement of the existing marker without having to discard it and go back for another one. I also sometimes have to delete previous markers because other evidence is way too close to get a proper photo, and this is not realistic. Overall, I would not recommend the game in its current state because some levels are unplayable. Without these major QOL issues, it would be a fun game and concept.

Dies ist meine erste Rezension, bitte übt Nachsicht. Das dieses Spiel eine mostly negative Bewertung hatte, motiviert mich hier zum ersten mal eine Bewertung zu schreiben, da ich diese Bewertung wirklich ungerecht finde. Ich kann einige der negativen Bewertungen verstehen, wie zum Beispiel die kurze Spieldauer bei dem angebotenem Preis. Aus meiner Sicht ist das aber etwas ignorant. Die Spieldauer mag nicht sehr lang sein, aber das hier ist auch kein grinding game. Hier wurde mit sehr viel Liebe zum Detail, in Zusammenarbeit mit echten Kriminalbeamten und Forensikern ein Einblick in eine Welt gegeben, die man sonst nicht erkunden kann. Der Wert liegt hier an dem Wissen und den Erfahrungen, die man macht. Ich kann mir gar nicht vorstellen, wie viele Stunden daran gearbeitet wurde, diesen kritischen Teil unserer Gesellschaft zu verstehen, zusammenzufassen und in ein Spiel zu transformieren. Haltet euch vor Augen was dies für eine Leistung ist. Einen exakten Einblick in ein Berufsfeld zu geben, der Jahre lang erlernt und dann weitere Jahre durch Erfahrungen ergänzt werden muss. Ich für meinen Teil finde es faszinierend, einen kurzen Einblick in diesen "geheimen" Teil unseres Lebens erhalten zu können.

The scoring system is encouraging, but it would be much more satisfying if each deduction included a brief explanation. I don't mind earning a lower score—I just want to understand how to improve. A debrief explaining things like oversaturated DNA samples, incomplete fingerprint comparisons, or missed analysis steps would make replaying scenes much more rewarding.

Apesar de nunca ter jogado um jogo nesse estilo, eu tenho gostado bastante da experiência. Antes de comprá-lo li muito as análises anteriores do pessoal e também dos desenvolvedores e entendi a proposta que eles estão passando. Eu tinha certa convicção de que os bugs seriam corrigidos, pois, caso contrário, acredito que eles nem se preocupariam em responder aos jogadores. Meu conselho é o seguinte: antes de comprar o jogo, leia as análises negativas anteriores e acompanhe os patches de atualização. Agora, um comentário para os desenvolvedores: apesar de vocês já terem explicado diversas vezes nas análises anteriores que nosso papel é apenas investigativo, a descrição do jogo acaba ficando um pouco subjetiva. Quando o texto diz: "...Investigue cenas de crime, colete evidências e identifique culpados com análises de DNA e digitais...", o trecho "identifique culpados" dá a entender que também seremos responsáveis por concluir quem é o culpado da cena do crime, quando, na verdade, nosso papel é apenas fornecer as evidências para a investigação. Quem sabe em um futuro próximo, em algum caso poderíamos também identificar o culpado? rsrsr Também estou criando uma playlist do jogo quem poder deixar um joinha por lá agradeceria demais ❤️https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFBRItfGY4E&list=PLRkw7x2-YU9w

I've only played 2 cases excluding the tutorial. I don't know how authentic the forensics work is, but it feels real enough. Maybe it's just my misunderstanding, but you don't actually get to use much critical thinking. You're basically 'generating' data, and not really interpreting it. In my word, you're doing a lot of 'forensics', but none of the 'detective' things the popular notion of the job would have you believe. (No, I don't know what authentic detective job involves.) If you're looking to connecting the dots, solving mystery, and all that, this game probably isn't for you. In my opinion, this game should be named 'forensics simulator' or something like that, without 'detective' in its name.