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A quick check into the Aspr Media project status page has revealed good and bad news regarding two of Aspyr's upcoming titles. The good news: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the mystery title based on the popular CBS television series, has been upgraded to Final Candidate. The bad: the release of the all-driving, all-fighting, all-shooting action title True Crime: Streets Of L.A. has been delayed 'til February.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation immerses players in the gritty world of forensic science and violent crime on the streets of Las Vegas. Featuring the characters, tools, locations and music from the award-winning TV series, the title requires players to sleuth out and solve five individual crime scenes "using forensic skills, puzzle-solving prowess, and unflinching nerves."

The title requires a 500 MHz G3 CPU, a 32MB VRAM-equipped 3D-accelerated graphics card, and OS X 10.2.8 or later. The sleuthing game is scheduled to hit store shelves by the end of November of this year wih an MSRP of $29.99.

Out of the gritty streets of Las Vegas and into the gritty streets of Los Angeles - Aspyr's upcoming action title True Crime: Streets Of L.A. is proving to be a trickier project to complete than originally anticipated, and has seen its completion date pushed back until February of next year.

The title, being ported to the Mac by San Dimas, California-based Trihedron LLC, puts players in control of Nick Kang, an undercover cop hell-bent on the destruction of the crime syndicates that rule the streets of Los Angeles. Players will have to beat driving missions, gunfights, and martial arts showdowns spreading across 240 square miles of Los Angeles landscape. The Grand Theft Auto-type game supports five different online multiplayer modes, a vast array of deadly weaponry, and sports over 80 different original tracks from such artists as Snoop Dogg and Westside Connection.

This isn't the first setback for the Mac port of the Activision title. The game's release date was originally set for November of this year when the title was first announced in late summer, with the release date getting pushed back to January 2005 when the port reached the Alpha stage over two weeks ago. According to Glenda Adams, Director of PC and Mac development at Aspyr, the game's engine has proven to be a greater task to master than originally anticipated -

We had hoped to get [the game] out for Christmas, but the 3D engine that powers the game is proving more complex that we anticipated, so we're spending extra engineering time on it to get it running well on the Mac. The True Crime Mac developer, Trihedron, was actually out at Apple a few weeks ago working with Apple engineers to get over some rough spots, so I think everything is going smoothly on it now.

Update: Aspyr's Glenda Adams dropped us a line after this article was posted to inform us that the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is being ported by the team over at Critical Path Software. Thanks for the clarification.

Aspyr Media Project Status Page

Aspyr Media

True Crime: Streets of L.A.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Critical Path Software

Buy True Crime: Streets of L.A.

Buy CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

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