NCIS, or Naval Criminal Investigative Service, is an organization that conducts investigations on crimes involving the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. The show, which has aired since 2003, has been fairly successful, yet has only just produced a game in which you can take control of the characters of the show, investigating and analyzing evidence in order to bring down the bad guys. The result of the game is...well, it's not a good one.

I'm not a huge fan of the show, but I have caught a couple episodes when nothing else is on. As far as I can tell, it's as if JAG and CSI had a baby, then gave it some witty characters and personal storylines. In the game, which I played on the Xbox 360, you take control of pretty much every main character that features in the show (the game, incidentally, takes place after season 2, when Ziva has joined the crew). If there's a body to autopsy, you take control of Donald. Abigail takes care of analyzing the evidence, Dinozzo does most of the hacking work, while Ziva and DiNozzo do a bunch of the field work. Interviews with suspects are generally left to Gibbs.

The game is essentially a series of find-the-pixel hunts, combined with minigames and some puzzling when it comes to checking out the evidence. Anytime you find yourself at a crimescene, you'll need to photograph the evidence, but finding it (done by using a cursor) can be a pain in the neck. Almost everything else is done by playing minigames, typically comparing forensic results, searching for a mark on a corpse, hacking, tracking via satellite feeds, and so forth. Any actual puzzling in the game comes from when you have to link parts of evidence together to form a cohesive story, but even then it's not exactly rocket science to piece together.

Really, the game is like a series of interactive episodes from the show (each case is actually called an 'epsiode'), which is alright if you like watching the show, but not so great if you actually want to play a game. It's just a linear string of tasks to do with little difficulty in doing any of them – well, any intended difficulty. The graphics aren't that good either, with some blocky looking characters and awkward animations to boot. Not even all the actors from the show reprise their roles.

Fans of the show might enjoy this game, but even so, you might as well just watch the show. If you're looking for an adventure game, there are better ones to go on. This one just isn't worth it.