24: The Game Review

To say that the TV show 24 has been a massive success is a bit of an understatement; already well into its fifth year in both the US and the UK, the real-time adventures of Jack Bauer and the rest of the crew at Los Angeles' Counter Terrorist Unit have been gripping audiences since its debut. Originally announced at the end of March 2005, 24: The Game is a PlayStation2 exclusive title developed at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's Cambridge Studio, and aims to provide fans of the show an insight into the events that took place in the eighteen months between season two and three.

Delayed from an Autumn 2005 release, 24: The Game sees players take control of all of the major characters from the TV series including Tony Almeida, Chase Edmunds, Michelle Dessler, Kim Bauer, and of course Jack himself. Events take place (as expected) within a twenty-four hour period in LA although the game length is significantly less than that magic number. Opening with a raid on a cargo ship in the city's docks, a typical 24 narrative duly unfolds, including the classic 'seventh hour' plot twist, a technique that fans of the series will recognise.

Following the iconic "The following takes place..." line, and a cutscene that immediately oozes pure 24 with split screen and wobbly camera work, the raid on the cargo ship acts as a tutorial piece to what makes up a significant section of gameplay. It doesn't take long to realise that there's something desperately wrong with 24: The Game, and that's something that becomes blatantly clear right from the point when the opening cutscene ends and the gameplay begins. Most of the game takes the rather unoriginal form of a third-person shooter as Jack (or whichever of the other controllable characters) wanders around locations filled with Half-Life like "Health Stations", blasting away at the generic looking enemies with lacklustre AI, before reaching a predetermined waypoint with no real use of that key 24 element: time.

Like many of SCEE Cambridge's titles, 24: The Game suffers from a failure to execute the fundamentals of game design and development. Never mind that they're unoriginal, but the fact that the third-person shooting missions feature an aiming system that makes it too easy for gamers to take down the opposition (not to mention that the auto-targeting doesn't even work at times), just doesn't make it fun to play most of the time. Away from the range of weapons available in the game, which include Magnums, Carbine Rifles, and shotguns, melee attacks lack any sense of impact; it just doesn't ever feel like a connection between fist and face is being made. In addition, one of many things that was disturbing in the game was the sheer amount of terrorists there seemed to be wandering about. Pretty much every mission will see the player-controlled character gun down a few dozen armed enemies leading to a body count far surpassing that of an entire series in a matter of minutes! If I was in the US Office of Homeland Security, I'd be rather worried about that.

In all fairness the quality of the 24 cast's character models is impressive considering the platform, though the rest of the visuals leave a lot to be desired. Bland textures and uninspired level design, not to mention that there only seems to be a handful of enemy models in the entire game, you never feel like you're in a sprawling city at any point in the game. There's just not any life in the gameworld.

Enemy AI is a further problem of the game, and one that never fails to pull the player out from the sliver of immersion offered in the missions. The game implements an order system, which enables gamers to call for a perp to surrender or to tell bystanders to run to cover. A neat idea that's twitchy in its execution, especially when it comes to getting a suspect to surrender, the order system never fulfils its intentions since it rarely works. However for some reason after they've taken a few rounds to the chest, certain criminals decide to drop their weapons and surrender, when in reality they'd be critically injured at best and dead at worst. Adding to the already disappointing AI is the lack of awareness shown by enemies. On many occasions when players dive past firing enemies, it takes them a few seconds to even realise that you've moved position; Bauer can be standing right next to a criminal who's still blasting away at the point where he came from before the delayed reactions finally end and Jack becomes the target once more.

As if the generic running around shooting segments weren't bad enough, Cambridge has also seen fit to develop driving sections into the game. Whereas such scenes in the TV show itself are filled with tension building action sequences, the game's equivalent are slow, sluggish, and dull. Driving around the in-game streets of LA without any opposition isn't fun at the best of times, but sequences where players find themselves trying to stave off vehicles intent of ramming them off the road, or when gamers try to evade the police, are just frustrating. It doesn't feel like 24, and the fact is that like much of the game, there's very little originality in the missions. Think a poorly executed Driver running at half speed and you're pretty much there. Also the pedestrians that walk the streets can be just as annoying as they shout a limited number of bewilderments and screams as the player's vehicle gets too close or runs over them. They certainly don't add anything to the realism of the LA environments, which feel more like sets than the real world, so leaving them out wouldn't exactly detract from the experience.

Think 24, and most fans of the show will visualise the trademark split-screen dynamic that helps to raise tension in the audience. 24: The Game also utilises split-screens (which is quite impressive considering the power of the PlayStation2), but sadly it's just not used as effectively and creatively as perhaps it could have been. In fact during early missions the splits just point the player in the direction of some unseen guards or the mission objective, taking umpteen hours before the device is employed to a more creative effect. In that instance, players control CTU's Tony Almeida as he chases after a group of hostage takers in the bottom segment of the screen. At the top section of the screen, a news chopper broadcasts live footage of the player as Almeida tracks the group down. What makes the scene is the voice over of the news reporter describing the scene, adding a desperately needed boost to the level of immersion in the game.

Although they may come across as patronising at first, it turns out that the most creative and immersive sections of gameplay comes from 24's mini-games, which dot themselves throughout the levels, and aim to convey some of the tech-heavy sequences of the TV show. Just over half a dozen mini-games are available in the game with varying amounts of frequency, though the ones that crop up the most are the Hacking and Data Retrieval games. Breaking up the screen into a grid of coloured squares, the Data Retrieval game sees players press the correct button according to the colour of the selected squares. Gamers are given scope to make a small number of mistakes as they race against the clock trying to clear the grid. It's certainly a mini-game that becomes increasingly more challenging as the 'day' goes on with the addition of more colours escalating the chance of mistakes being made. More a case of chance is one of the hacking games, which sees players rearrange a selection of letters into their correct sequence; not one of the most original in the game, but certainly one that crops up time and time again. Later mini-game missions string two or more together so players will have to complete them in an even tighter time limit. Other mini-games include sniping missions, and satellite surveillance missions, which are more successful in recreating the TV show.

By far the most interesting and immersive of the mini-games are the interrogation sequences. Faced with a terminal situation, be that discovering where a specific set of snipers are or calming down a hostage taker, players are set the task of breaking a person through a series of questions posed in one of three manners: Aggressive, Coax, or Calm. A graph displays the level of stress experienced by the person that's being interrogated, as well as a line marking the 'sweet spot', which has to be hit on several occasions before players get the information they need. One thing that does have to be said about the interrogation sequences is that it can sound a bit silly at times when Jack or Tony goes from shouting at the individual to trying to reason with them and back again, but on the whole it's one of the few tense moments allowed in the game.