CSI Hard Evidence is the first of 3 CSI games on the console and it is actually quite well known. Mostly known for how easy it is to get achievement points (if you care about that), CSI HE should probably should be know for its horrible acting, graphics and facial animations, which are comical and a real highlight. So how does a game like this work? Well, it's surprisingly quite interesting and a bit of a unique experience. You play through 5 episodes of point and click detective style gameplay. You investigate crime-scenes, find evidence, process it in the lab, and question suspects. This gameplay style is certainly different, but it's not that great in practice. It's nearly impossible to miss clues and you can't really fail a mission, so the game basically plays itself. That being said, if treated as an interactive TV show, it is quite nice. The episodes are detailed, with interesting stories which feel like they were real TV episodes. There is some fun to be had in the lab, where analysing evidence is turned into small fun mini games like matching pictures. It's nothing special but it works. I'm sure there's a lot of people who hate this game but for me it was moderately enjoyable. It's not too long and doesn't overstay its welcome. The bitesize chunks were a nice break from other epic games and campaigns on the console. Worth picking up just to experience and see if you like it.

I have no clue why but I guess you can play a fuckton of shitty mobile games with no ads in your browser now through YouTube??? Maybe these are supposed to have ads, this feels like a game that only exists to serve you ads, but my adblocker seems to have caught them anyways. So brave of Google to step up their game and give you keys jingling in an environment even more interactive than YouTube Shorts.

At level 20 the sky changes from blue to orange, and then at 40 it just alternates back. I locked into this for 30 minutes for a third color, God damn it

This game's dedication in making every part of its world feel like a real lived place is outstanding, it's something I have always enjoyed about Final Fantasy as a franchise but this one particularly excels at just making you want to have your own adventure at your own pace
I've been fully on board with their vision of making more than a remake of the original story since the beginning but Rebirth truly fully sold me on the idea.
While not flawless by any means, it will be a long time until I encounter another game that feels this ambitious and for lack of a better word, "magical"

extremely ambitious and i respect that!! with that being said, this is worthless as a source of fun. it is basically not functional as the game it’s meant to be, but the fact that it’s even trying is valuable to me. this is a unique game! they could have bullshit a 2D platformer with no personality (like the first one) and called it!! obviously a very circumstantial 6/10 but i think the context that this existed in makes it very interesting to me. if you spend half an hour with it you can see that it was clearly cared about.

with all of this out of the way: you couldn’t force me to keep playing this, but i would love to go through the assets soon