This is the kind of game you can easily give to an elder family member if they are a fan of the show, without ever having to explain how it works. It offers a couple of casual evenings worth of extra NCIS entertainment with your favorite characters, and for some fans that might be just what they want.
Your level of enjoyment in playing NCIS will largely depend on two factors - 1) what kind of NCIS fan you are, and 2) what kind of gamer you are. If you're not a fan of NCIS, you might as well stop reading now and find something else to play, unless you already love detective games or pixel-hunt games like Mystery Case Files and Cate West. Otherwise, NCIS is a game made for its fans, featuring all of the major characters from the series (although few of them are actually voiced by their respective actors), and the game's case scenarios were written by the same people who script the TV show. And in case you haven't noticed, Ubisoft published the game to appeal to the same players as its CSI games, but NCIS actually improves in this area, as development was shifted from the Chinese company that handled CSI to an internal Ubisoft studio that would better understand the property. All-in-all, NCIS pulls off everything that it tries to do in a reasonable fashion. Analog controls are quite manageable, considering you have to move a cursor around to point characters in the right direction. The cases are relatively compelling, and some of the storytelling is genuinely interesting. Graphics won't knock your socks off, but they're functional. The sound matches many of the show's mainstays, from the "thump" sound with its black-and-white snapshot at the beginning of each scene, to the opening theme and other tracks pulled straight from the series. Gameplay is varied, allowing you to pixel-hunt for evidence, photograph crime scenes, move bodies, help with autopsies and other forensic analyses, and even interrogate suspects. That being said, the simplicity of each task, combined with a completion meter, make it impossible to mess up, and once the 5 hours of crime-solving is done, there is little reason to play again. On the flipside of this, if you're looking for some quick achievements, NCIS is a pretty easy way to get them, and the game retails for $39.99 instead of the usual $60. So, if you're a fan of the show and enjoy video games on a casual level, NCIS is a decent purchase. However, the most discerning NCIS fans and hardcore gamers will find a lot to b**** about here. As I have already mentioned, the characters are not voiced by their actors, aside from David McCallum for Ducky and Robert Wagner for DiNozzo's dad, neither of which perform as well as they do on TV. Ducky even comes off as seriously creepy without the support of NCIS's on-set chemistry. The character models don't always look great, either. DiNozzo looks nothing like Michael Weatherly, McGee and Ziva look good from some angles and bad from others, and Abby probably would've been okay if her body movements weren't so unbelieveably stiff. Gibbs fares the best in his appearance, but his voice and lines are so non-Harmon that it's annoying. Everything about the game could've been more ambitious, especially considering that NCIS is the highest rated scripted show on television and has climbed in viewership every year for nine seasons. CBS could've taken a paltry $10 million out of the show's multi-billion-dollar revenue and really contracted something special from Ubisoft, but instead, they made something that's only slightly better than the other games of its type. In that way, NCIS is a missed opportunity, but it will still hold some interest for casual fans of the show or of detective gaming. Could be worse...â
This game is nothing ground breaking. There also isn't anything that good about it, but still if you can this for $10 it's a good game to spend one evening playing. The bottom line is that detective games are almost always fun for me. So even though the game is objectively very mediocre. I still enjoyed it more than a lot of other games I played. However, CSI: Hard Evidence is a lot better then this.
Overall, NCIS feels like another procedural tie-in, attaching a well known property - this time a hit US TV show - to a procession of rather dreary mini-games that becomes a long advert for the show.
You're left with awkward, stilted voice-acting, serviceable graphics, and rote button-pushing that feel less like a game experience and more like channel-surfing on your couch. Skip.
A spectacular show and its fan base were given a huge black eye with this one, and someone committed Murder on the franchise as a game when they released this game.
With terrible dialogue, a horrible story, and gameplay that's equivalent to matching shapes and colors at its most complex, I can't imagine the person that would be entertained by this game… but if he exists I hope I never meet him.
I love NCIS. I am a huge fan of the show, but I was disapointed with the game.
First the graphics were a joke. I thought that they could have been better, Gibbs doesn't look like Gibbs, Tony doesn't look like Tony.
The voice acting was a pile of trash. None of the actors from the TV show did any voice acting for the game which made the characters seem less interesting. This game should have had the actos doing the voice overs, and it should have had LA Noire esque gameplay and graphics.
The only reason I got this was because I am a fan of the TV show.
I love the show and I got the game cause I thought it would be good. It was not worth the money I paid for it. To only have 4 episodes was a joke I've scene better games. I would not suggest other people to buy this game even if they like the show. Worst game I've played.
NCIS is a great show, have cool moments, but do a videogame? Ubisoft dont' learn with the CSI games? But what do you believe? The game is awful, worst than all the CSI Games. Sorry NCIS but this game is terrible.