24: THE GAME

Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force one of our team to play their most feared game

Despite everyone in the office telling me how wrong I am, I have a strange appreciation for Jack Bauer’s PS2 outing. Maybe it’s the fact I want to know what happens between seasons two and three of the show. Perhaps I get misty eyes over how the game chucks you rapidly between different sections. Mainly, I just love supporting star Tony Almeida’s soul patch.

So why am I afraid? Well, despite the distinctive ticking clock and Kiefer’s vocal cords, I fear time will finally get the better of Bauer and my colleagues will be right. And within seconds of the opening credits, I discover I’m right to worry. Kicking off in a dockyard is lazy, even by 2006 standards, and the visuals are fuzzier than a mouldy orange.

It’s not much better when you take control. It’s a struggle to wrestle Bauer through grey corridors, and when it comes to popping caps into asses, there’s a distractingly long delay between shooting a terrorist and their reaction. The final twist of the knife is the signature split-screen effect turning out to be a lot less stylish when you’re actually in control of the action.

To be fair, there are some interesting ideas amid the wreckage. The ability to arrest surrendering enemies adds an element of complexity to shoot-outs, and the interrogation scenes are where the game comes closest to standing up to scrutiny. Having to vary your approach to get info out of blubbering evil-doers is at least intentionally fun.

What’s fun for a different reason is the voice acting. Coming across like an am-dram adaptation, there’s more ham in these performances than in a foot-long sandwich, with every person displaying only two emotions in total (either angrily yelling or dramatically whispering). So yes, it’s pretty dump… but at least it’s better than season six.

I’M RIGHT TO WORRY: THE VISUALS ARE FUZZIER THAN A MOULDY ORANGE.

A younger — less critical — Ben wrote a reader review of 24: The Game for predecessor mag OPSM2. He even liked the voice acting. It’s the most embarrassing thing he did as a teenager.