Law & Order: Double Or Nothing is another attempt to make the perfect detective game. (And, of course, cash in on the enormous popularity of the TV series…) It is certainly a good attempt, although not perfect.

Overview

I’ve not seen a huge number of episodes from the Law & Order series, but I’ve seen enough to know that the style and presentation is very similar to what you see – which isn’t a bad thing. All the familiar characters seem to be here – that is to say, I recognised most of them! Detective games on the computer have been around for quite a while, starting with the old text adventures by companies such as the legendary Level 9. Most have been decent enough affairs but suffer from a common problem – linearity of story line and gameplay, resulting in a slightly restrictive experience for the player. I was intrigued to see whether this game addressed that problem, and how well it did so.

First Impressions

Once you’ve had a look at the two tutorials – Detective and Lawyer - (accessible at any point during the game through the main menu if you forget) – and chosen up to two of four skills (evidence gathering, teamwork, etc) you get thrown into the crime scene straight away. The familiar face of Lennie Briscoe is there to give you occasional hints or make sardonic remarks, but you’re basically in charge of the case. It all looks fairly impressive and you get into the game quickly – though you don’t always quite know what you’re doing. Certainly there seemed to be plenty of things to do, and it even seemed possible for a while that this could be the best detective game I’ve ever played (though, since they’re not exactly my favourite type of game and I haven’t played a great many of them, that’s not all that hard)…

Interface

As you would expect, Law & Order: Double Or Nothing is almost entirely mouse-driven (about the only time you use the keyboard is to name your saved games, or press the spacebar to access the control panel or bypass cut scenes).

There are four main areas to the control panel:

City Map - which you use to go to the various places in the game – the further you progress, the more people / places open up to you.

Phone - actually this is only there for you to get messages, mainly about lab reports etc being ready, though you occasionally get calls out of the blue, ranging from useful to bizarre.

Case Materials - you can view a description of each piece of evidence collected, request lab test, research, surveillance, apply for search / warrants (which you have to back up with sufficient supporting evidence), and conduct your case once the trial starts. This screen seems very confusing at first but is in fact very simple once you get the hang of it.

Menu - to access the main menu again, for loading / saving games, viewing the tutorials, aesthetics quality, sound / music levels, etc.

These can be accessed at any time by pressing the spacebar. As you move around you can gather evidence, interrogate witnesses, and talk to colleagues about the results they’ve collated for you. The interviewing is reasonably well portrayed but could do with allowing you more flexibility.

The fact that you continue the detective work to some extent during the court case is a really nice touch – it stops it from feeling like two separate games – even though in reality that’s what you have here!

Difficulty

The difficulty level is gauged about right – you rarely find yourself with nothing new to try if you’re stuck. However this is part of the problem – it takes a lot of the skill and enjoyment out of a game when you feel compelled to try absolutely everything in an effort to get somewhere. There are still those very annoying times where absolutely nothing you do seems to accomplish anything. And the inherent problem with all of these types of games – including not just detective but all adventure games – is that with a linear story line, the gameplay itself is also somewhat linear. In adventure games you often have great dialogue and humour to help negate the effect of this, and both of these are missing in Law & Order. The dialogue is good, it’s just not great, and while there’s a little sly humour wafting about, it’s not pivotal to the game. Relying mainly on the novelty of being able to do lab tests and the like would possibly work, but the fact that 90% of everything you send in comes back with no or inconclusive results is a little too frustrating, albeit realistic.

Aesthetics

The music is good (well it is the music from the show), although it does get slightly annoying after a while. The speech samples are clear but sound rather clipped – in the tutorial it’s really bad, but thankfully it’s not so noticeable in the game itself.

There aren’t may options for changing the graphics quality – I didn’t have any problem with it but if you have a slower computer / 3D card (mine’s 2.4GHz and GeForce4 64Mb) then you might wish for more flexibility. (Though it’s only 800 x 600 resolution anyway.) I’m not quite sure what to say about the quality of the graphics – they look pretty but are far from the best I’ve seen, however the animation is very good indeed. The characters seem to me (I could of course be wrong) to be digitised photos mapped onto 3D models – which results in a slightly odd effect. The characters certainly look like their TV counterparts, but they also look… well… odd. So overall the aesthetics are certainly good, but they could have been significantly better.

Will You Still Be Playing it in 6 Months’ Time?

Unlikely. I think you’ll either have solved it before then through natural genius (the least likely option), come up against a brick wall and got bored ot it, or (most likely) refer to online hints every time you’re really stuck. That’s not to say that the game won’t last you quite a long time, but another inherent problem with games that have a linear story line is that you’re unlikely to play it again once you’ve completed it. If you’re a real fan, you might try it again with different skills selected at the start – or even without any skills! But then it would just be a case of how much you could remember, rather than working things out.

There also aren’t a great number of locations in the game – I don’t want to give an exact figure as I haven’t quite finished it yet – but I would say it’s not more than 20, which isn’t very good for this sort of game.

Is it Worth the Money?

Overall, it’s a very decent effort with a good storyline and features that nearly, but not quite, work very well. It’s a very good 3 stars (3.5 stars to be honest), but I prefer all of the games listed in the links at the end of the review. But then I’m not a particular fan of detective shows or Law & Order - I can enjoy them every now and again, but I can definitely have enough of them too. What I’m saying is, in my own long-winded way, is that if you are a fan of the genre / series, you may well enjoy this game more than I did. At the end of the day though, I was left with the nagging feeling that if the game’s creators had focused more on the gameplay than the TV tie-in, it could have been a lot better.

So if you’re a fan of the series and like this sort of game, it’s definitely worth the money. If not, you’ll have to see whether what I’ve said in the review puts you off or not. If it does, I very much doubt that you’d consider it money well spent.


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Final Ratings

Graphics: - 78% - pretty good but looked a bit odd… I know that’s a funny way of putting it, but it’s the only way I can describe it…

Sound: - 81% - good quality sound samples but poorly edited – resulting in a “clipped” effect sometimes.

Playability: - 76% - pretty easy to pick up, the problem is with the linearity rather than the playability itself.

Longevity: - 66% - it’ll keep you going for a while but you’ll either complete it fairly quickly or get fed up of it.

Replay Value: - 62% - they’ve tried to give you a reason to play again with the different skills you can have during the game, but it’s just not enough with only the one case to solve.

Value For Money: - 60% - not bad, but not particularly good. Probably better if you’re a fan of the series.

Overall Rating: - 69% - a good effort, but not good enough to stand out from the crowd.


Thanks for reading,


CaptainD


Related Links

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For more detective fun, this time set in Discworld, try Discworld: Noir. This graphical adventure game is very funny and tries to do something genuinely different with the interface – and to a large extent succeeds.

If your leaning is more towards science-fiction, you might want to try Bladerunner. This excellent game is puts you in the role of a young Bladerunner handed your first big case – but it becomes far bigger than you could could possibly imagine…

For a more traditional adventure gaming experience, you must try some of the classic LucasArts games – starting with The Monkey Island Archives (MI1-3) and Escape From Monkey Island (MI4) – the piratey adventures of Guybrush Threepwood (I kid ye not) are among the greatest graphical adventure games ever created, and the first one still plays as well as the day it was released – well over a decade ago! The same software house also brought us the excellent Grim Fandango - something smells fishy in the underworld, and it’s not just the cadavers…

Look out for my forthcoming reviews of Broken Sword 1 & 2!



Recommended: Yes