Ian clued me in on the Law & Order 2 game demo not too long ago. The first game based on the popular television series recieved pretty good reviews according to GameRankings.com, especially considering the flop that usually follows licensing television and movie programs such as this one. Anyway, the demo caught my eye because it looks like it takes you back to the good ole days of adventure gaming a la Sierra's many famous Quest games.
You spend half your time as Detective Briscoe's partner collecting evidence on the crime. All of the demo takes place with you playing this role. All in all, it lasted about 15-20 minutes. I don't think there'll be much freedom in terms of what you do, however it seems to have a pretty good depth to the game. You have the ability to put people under surveillance and get psychiatric evaluations. You can send evidence items off to the lab for analysis or research department for more information. Interviews are structured with you picking from a list of questions to ask. Your line of questioning determines how much and the type of information you get from the person. Ask the wrong questions and you'll get nowhere.
The other half of your time is supposed to be spent teaming up with Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn. As the demo doesn't allow you to try out this part of the game, I don't know how it works or have any impressions on it. The web site has some screens and info on this portion of the game.
The sound is average. I think they could have done more with the ambient sound in the demo to immerse you in the case a bit more. The first time you step in to the car where a murder took place, they could certainly do a few things. Perhaps they tried and it sounded cheesy so it was removed. The voice acting is quite good as the actors and actresses supply their voices for the game. The graphics are average. I like the stylization of the graphics. The characters are portrayed in a way that almost borders on a caricature, but not to an extreme that you would laugh at it. Just enough to highlight facial features that distinguish the actors and actresses. I like it. On the flip-side, the graphics could use more polish. They're very fuzzy in many areas and are a bit too similar to those of the Sierra Quest series of games in ways that a game of this age has no business being like. There's also some amateurish graphical artifacts that disappoint me. During the demo when you're in the car at the crime scene, it's obvious that they use a cube-map to create the 360 degree environment that you are able to rotate yourself within to view and manipulate the scene. Why is it so obvious? Because the borders of the images used to create the cube map are visible as you rotate. Kind of annoying to say the least and kills the immersion factor.
I have two major concerns with this game. The first is the length of the game. A game like this will have no replay value whatsoever. It's like a mystery book. Once you know the butler did it, it's not worth doing again (unless Tim Curry is the butler). When gamers can't have replay value, they demand a superior first-time experience to compensate. Longevity plays a big role in this case in creating that superior experience. In about 15 minutes, I discovered the victim's name, company and job title, interviewed his wife, and interviewed the only eye witness, and submitted several key case items to the lab and research departments. My fear is that this game will be over in an hour or two. After all, how much can you milk a single case that could be probably be wrapped up in the one hour show slot?
My second concern is how much of the game will be thinking and acting versus simply "doing" everything that's possibly available to you until you're told you have all the pieces to proceed. What kind of checks and balances are there? One of the things I was able to do in the game was search a trash bin next to the car where the murder took place. Inside, I found a half-eaten donut, a paper plate, and a crushed soda can. Can I send all these things to the lab for analysis and "accidently" discover a case-cracking clue simply because I was sending EVERYTHING to the lab just because I can? I'd like to be rewarded for thinking things through in this game and would hate to have to employ the dreaded brute force approach to move forward with the case.
As an occasionally self-professed Law & Order junkie guilty of watching too many episodes of the classic series as well as the SVU series, I'd love for this game to succeed and take off. The adventure gaming genre has received a distinct lack of attention for what seems a decade. I think a license of this kind of popularity could do the genre good.