Crime scene investigation has always looked dead exciting on television. A couple of photographs, a dramatic stare at a footprint, and someone in sunglasses announces who did it before the advert break. FORENSIC – M.E. Protocol takes a different approach. It recreates the painstaking reality of forensic work by trapping you in an endless cycle of confusion, frustration, and repeated trips back to a van. In that respect, perhaps it’s the most realistic game ever made.
Gaming Heaven
Buried somewhere beneath the mountain of baffling design decisions is actually quite an interesting investigation game. The crime scenes themselves are detailed, and piecing together evidence can occasionally feel rewarding. Matching fingerprints, analysing samples, and separating relevant clues from useless distractions requires genuine attention.
The cases also avoid spoon-feeding solutions. When the game finally decides you’ve suffered enough to understand its systems, solving a case can be satisfying. For about three minutes.
Gaming Hell
The tutorial deserves special recognition for being one of the least educational tutorials ever created. Rather than teaching players how anything works, it effectively hands you a collection of forensic tools and wishes you the very best of luck.
Simple tasks become exercises in patience. Taking photographs requires standing in precisely the correct mystical location, as though evidence only exists from one approved camera angle. A gun can fill the screen and still somehow not count as a photograph.
Then there’s the inventory system. Apparently, this highly trained forensic investigator can only carry two items at once. Need a fingerprint brush, lifting tape, sample vial and camera? Tough luck, mate. Better start jogging back to the van again. And again. And again.
The constant backtracking feels less like investigative work and more like being employed as a delivery driver for your own equipment.
Final Judgement
FORENSIC – M.E. Protocol occasionally hints at being a clever crime-solving experience, but it buries those moments beneath awkward controls, baffling limitations and a complete refusal to explain itself. By the time I finally understood how everything worked, I’d already solved the mystery of where my patience had gone.
