Any game that has as its objective to coerce a subject into the ‘Co-operation Zone’ is my kind of game – and as you will see this game seamlessly blends by truly ‘co-operating’ with its TV series namesake, well at least as story line goes.

Whilst I have never really watched the TV series, I can with fairness think the game does not trash all over its good name by falling flat as most multi media leaps tend to do.

For the pundits of the series you will be glad that most of the characters, including Kiefer…I mean Jack Bauer, are played by their original actors; and I am told so is the music score produced by its series counterpart (for those who care for that kind of detail).

In a bombshell, it is CTU vs Those Dirty Bastard Terrorists again and the game is broken into a series of 1 hour blocks (starting at an ungodly 6am I recall) and each of those hours is broken into a series of objectives, with
the primary objective being of course to defeat the aforementioned ‘Those Dirty Bastard Terrorists again’. I have read that (as I don’t follow the series and need some background here) this game plays out as a mini subplot
between series 2 and 3 for the TV enthusiasts. So whilst I can’t extrapolate too far into what objectives and missions arise, as this was just a 4 part preview, I can say from what I played, I found to be reasonably challenging
and fun.

Some missions break into fun mini challenges, such as defusing a bomb, deciphering door locks, satt scans for terrorist targets on Presidential Car Route and best so far, the interrogation of an unwitting terrorist which you
just happened to pop 1 or 2 bullets into to soften up. Compared to some of the running and shooting FPS style musings I did enjoy these sideline mini challenges for their quirkiness and freshness.

The game play formats range from classic FPShooter to elements of team play with fellow agents, to elements of Grand Theft Auto car chase action to Sniper action.  Some of the FPS gunplay is pretty standard but I did like the auto lock on targeting and ease of toggle to next target plus use of cover feature. I did however some times find the alignment in a vertical aiming plane a little awkward and painful at times – but you always get that camera angle vs targeting problem and can live with. If anything I can say the gun targeting was a little too easy.

Whilst none of the game formats are particularly challenging for pundits of any individual genre, as mentioned it is variety which is king here and tended to work well in keeping with the Jack Bauer action sequences you would expect from a modern day Anti-Terror Spook type.

The array of game play formats and stylised direction of scenes, aka the actual multi screen 24 TV series, deliver a fair game to market without killing the franchise but as mentioned it does not really deliver on any format in an exciting way for game pundits as opposed to series pundits.

So if the variety I faced in the first 4 missions is any guide to go by then I think the game will pan out nicely as a parlay into the series on a gaming platform.

Without further waffle, in my less than esteemed opinion if you’re a series pundit buy as you must, if you’re a games pundit wait for the next 2 for price of 1 sale as an esteemed colleague of mine is now quoted for posterity.

Rating 3/5