[Figment]

Mind, I have never played either a CSI or L&O game -- the only "commercial adventure" that I've played is a Nancy Drew game that a friend gave me -- but the main thing that stops me from it is the seeming unimportance of the characters. Plot, characters, and graphical prettiness are the main three things I personally enjoy most about adventure games. Whether I find plot or characters more important changes depending on my mood, but in the case of these commercial adventures the lack of interesting characters seems most glaring. Like that Nancy Drew game I played -- she was flat as a pancake, completely nonexistent, and totally uninteresting! Unless it's a game like Myst, where the player is the main character, I like to get the feeling that the characters are real people.

This is a problem that might relate directly to the TV show that inspires the games. Most people who play CSI probably have a preexisting interest in the show, which means a familiarity with the characters, something that automatically seems to require that less time is spent developing them. After all, we all theoretically know who they are. But the in-show characters are boring to begin with, and don't translate over to gaming well. I have never found any of the CSI characters even remotely interesting, and feel the same about almost every single one of the other detective shows. I couldn't even tell you their names, and I watch these shows all the time with my mother! The show of this sort that I like best is Law and Order: Special Victims Unit -- and all because of the main detectives.

If there were one distinctive main character who really appealed to me, I would buy every single one of these CSI games.