NCIS Xbox 360
User Score
2.8 out of 10

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 4 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 3 out of 4

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  1. MegWhiteley
    May 17, 2012
    1
    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.
  2. illage2
    Nov 25, 2011
    3
    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 ha    ve 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.    … Collapse
  3. JPoppaWUSC
    Nov 5, 2011
    7
    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… Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
35 out of 100

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 11 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 11
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 11
  3. Negative: 9 out of 11
  1. Machinima
    May 17, 2012
    10
    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.
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  2. Official Xbox Magazine UK
    Mar 4, 2012
    40
    Not really worth investigating. [March 2012, p.91]
  3. XboxAddict
    Jan 17, 2012
    34
    This is unfortunately not a good detective game, nor is it a good game period.
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