24: The Game reviewed

Spoiler Alert: If you have not watch any of 24, there will be spoilers and references which you may or may not get for the show.

At the end of the second season of 24, Jack Bauer stopped terrorism again, but there was a twist. The real masterminds were still at large and as a final act, they tried to assassinate President Palmer using some sort of flesh-eating virus. So we waited until Season 3 to see what would happen....and we were disappointed. It wasn't a direct sequel at all! All we knew is that Palmer lived and there was a throw-away line about those terrorists being brought to justice. But then it was announced that this game was coming and questions will be answered and we were happy. Did this game live up to expectations?

So once again Jack Bauer has to stop some overblown terrorism though some badassery and a few DAMMITS! It involves a vice-presidential assassination, earthquake-power bombs, probably some other things that has to be stopped by our lovable friends at CTU. Oh yeah, I forgot that CTU gets attacked...again. And Kim gets kidnapped.....yet again, thankfully there are no mountian lions in sight but she doesn't not wear a wife-beater while braless. So it's basically like a hodge-podge of the first two seasons but without anyone being a mole or turning evil....so it's got that going for it, which is nice.

The game's greatest success is replicating the look and feel of 24. The cutscenes look like a scene from 24, down to the camera-work and editing. The main characters yell at the tech guys The voice-acting really benefits from everyone and I mean everyone voicing their own characters. But the voice-acting feels flat at some points and Kiefer never really lets loose on the Bauer-isms, out of the five dammits in the game only one of them feels like a real DAMMIT! And the terrorist attack at CTU has that evil Anyone Can Die quality with this quote "If I don't get the harddrive, I will kill someone every 10 minutes...starting now."

But in the gameplay is where things go wrong. It's broken down in four sections: shooter, driving, puzzle and interregation. The shooting levels are fun, pretending your Jack or Chase Edmunds or Tony killing the terrorists and every so often breaking thier necks. However, the camera is clunky and a bit clumsy. The aiming system is decent but it could've been better, you can only free-aim when there's no enemies. If there are enemies, you aim at them regardless if you're close to them or not and then you waste ammo trying to kill them as they easily kill you! The driving levels are basically horrible, the cars have horrible handling. They drive if they were like weeble-woobles and they're very prone to exploding when you ram into a car. The puzzles...simplistic crap but a welcome change of pace. The interragation levels are pretty fun, you yell at people, demand they tell you what you want to know. But the main problem with those is that you don't have that much time and the dialogue goes on a bit longer than it should as the clock keeps ticking down.

Then there's the Kim level, the obligatory Kim story where she bumbles and fumbles about doing stuff. Here she's the sole non-kidnapped CTU personnel during the CTU attack. Also, she's the only one that can get a hard-drive with undercover agents information that the terrorists want. So you're in a stealth mission armed with a taser and you have to get to the data room. So it's a stealth mission since you're not supposed to use real guns you can get from the terrorists since Kim has no weapons training. But you can use the guns and you can use them like you're a pro, most of the time without consequences. Granted if you use them at the last part, you will be responsible for a massacre and you'll get captured but the other times it's fine. And speaking of Kim, there are a few levels where failure equals the death of Kim....by you. Needless to say you will be failing them just to prove who's boss....and they're a bit hard.

In the end though, especially in this stage of 24 this game is like hanging out with some old friends. A good 80% of the people from the show are dead. 10% are still alive but haven't been seen in quite some time. The rest are Jack, Kim, Chloe, Agent Pierce and Tony, but Tony doesn't count since he came back from the dead and became evil, so it's nice to revist the past. As for the game itself, if you're a really forgiving 24 fan, like me, then get this game and think of it as an interactive movie where you can make your own awesome Bauer-ism, mine was shooting three guys in the head with one bullet. If you're not, then give this game a rental or hell, just borrow it from some 24 fan.

7/10