DETECTIVE – Scene Crime Review: One Mess of a “Scene Crime” (PS5)

One of my favourite genres in storytelling has always been crime, especially classic detective stories. I’ve loved detective games like L.A. Noire, The Sinking City, and the Sherlock Holmes games. So, when I saw DETECTIVE – Scene Crime, I knew I wasn’t going to get the same experience. However, what I played for the next 90 minutes was not only the worst game experience of 2025, but possibly one of the worst games of my entire life. Without further ado, I present you DETECTIVE – Scene Crime (still can’t believe that’s the name).

DETECTIVE – Scene Crime is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S for $10.49/£9.29.

Here are some other recent reviews: 

1. Hotel Barcelona Review: A SUDA SWERY Collab for the Ages (PS5)
2. Battlefield 6 Review – From Rubble To Redemption (PC)
3. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Review – The Best Stealth Game Of All Time, Visually Improved (PS5)

Story – Five Cases of Easily Solvable Crimes

Unlike their previous games, DETECTIVE – Scene Crime provides five small cases to investigate and solve. They range from a mysterious death in a hospital, a murder in a subway, a massacre on a country road, a shooting in a convenience store, and an absolute bloodbath at a hotel. Each level includes its own story and twists, as you seek to uncover who committed the crime and why.

You don’t play as any particular character; you’re just a detective who needs to solve the case. Within each case, there are small references to other cases, like a booklet showing details of all the gangs in the city. However, they are mostly separate stories. 

If you look at the trophy list, the hardest case is listed as the first crime scene….odd

Sadly, even though each case is unique, they’re not that interesting. This is mostly due to them being independent, but other detective games have done similar and succeeded in providing intriguing tales. Some of the cases are quite dark, like the supermarket case and the roadside accident case, but the others feel too mundane. It doesn’t help either that all the cases are too easy to solve, even though they have different difficulties. It’s worse when you can solve them all by just guessing, which sometimes is the only thing you can do to complete the case. 

Look all around each crime scene and collect clues to solve the case

Gameplay – Searching For Clues 

With this basic detective game comes simple controls, though frustrating and somewhat unresponsive at times. Gameplay is played through a first-person perspective, where all you can do is walk around each environment and look at everything in detail. The game features a mouse cursor that is mostly imprecise, and you can’t change any settings to fix the sensitivity. This made viewing documents on computers and using mobile phones frustrating.

One thing the game advises is to have a pen and paper at the ready to note down names and clues. I’d advise this too since it’ll help with immersion and simply remembering the important details. This would become more helpful in the higher difficulty cases. It’s worth noting that any of these five cases can be selected at the start in any order. 

The mouse cursor is quite a chore when using mobile phones

Now, I’ll give them credit for not holding the players’ hands with the investigations; always a fan of that. The issue is that DETECTIVE – Scene Crime doesn’t feel like a pure detective game, but more like a pure speculation game. You’re given a PDA that provides important info on each case alongside a few questions to answer to complete the level. Then, once you’ve figured it out, you select all the desired answers and submit them for the game to inform you if you’re correct or not.

This would all be fine if the game didn’t provide ALL the possible answers to each question and if it penalised you in any way if you’re incorrect. In some cases, I had to just guess some of the answers. This was due to some clues not connecting to the actual answers, some horrible spelling mistakes, like mis-gendering characters and providing false info. 

This PDA mechanic definitely needs work for this to be a challenge

Graphics & Audio – Barely Anything To Enjoy

In regards to DETECTIVE – Scene Crime‘s visual design, it’s simply ok. Each of the five levels is unique from one another, but they all appear as a collection of shared, reusable assets. They’re likely used in some of the other detective games they’ve created previously. Like I’ve said previously, the game is filled with spelling mistakes and some sentences not making sense, possibly due to localisation mistranslation or worse AI. One in particular misnamed one of the suspects, who was actually one of the killers in a case. This caused me to have to guess to succeed, continuing the major issues with DETECTIVE – Scene Crime. 

Outside of the visual design, the audio doesn’t provide any positives either. There’s not much sound design beyond hearing some footsteps that sound like you’re wearing iron boots at times. I say at times, because the audio will cut out a lot of the time, where you’re practically gliding without making a sound. Considering the game expects us to be in a crime scene for a large amount of time, you’d think we’d have a few pieces of music to listen to. Hell, I’d of taken some corny elevator music to pass the time. 

DETECTIVE – Scene Crime was reviewed on PS5 via a key courtesy of JanduSoft.