[RLacey]

I'm basing this only on the pre-Telltale CSI games, but anyway...

I think that's the real point. Investigating a real crime requires thought (one would presume), whereas playing a CSI game requires you to click on every available hotspot. It's not about thinking about where one would search (unless you turn off the smart cursor, at which point the game becomes stupidly hard because the hotspots aren't always well placed).

I'm sure that there's so much more that could be done with this format.

(Note that this isn't meant as a criticism of Telltale; I have no idea how much control, if any, they have over the format.)