Review Law & Order: Justice is Served Developer: Legacy Interactive Publisher: Legacy Interactive Genre: Adventure Release Date: October 2004 Platform: Review by Bob Freese November 23, 2004	Law & Order Week	Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Law and Order - thirteen television seasons, and still counting. A massive and dedicated audience. A good show? Yup! Legacy Interactive has recently released its third game based on the show. This iteration is titled Law and Order: Justice is Served.

It’s one week before the US Open Tennis Championship. Elena Kusarova, a highly ranked player from Ukraine is in the hunt. Unfortunately, as the game begins, we find her dead on the locker room floor. YIPES! Was this an accident or murder? Enter the venerable, astute, and very likeable Lennie Briscoe. Jerry Orbach is back reprising his voice for Detective Briscoe. So is the very lovely and intelligent Elisabeth Rohm, providing the voice for Asst. District Attorney Serena Southerlyn. Also presented is Detective Ed Green (voice provided by L&O character Jesse L. Martin).

As in the past two (very successful) games, the format is the same: investigation first until we have an arrest warrant, and then the trial phase. This game is truly massive in scope. I think I counted about 30 unique locations to visit, and even more characters to interrogate. As you proceed, you’ll pick up zillions of clues – well, a whole lot, anyway. These clues are added to one of your inventories. Yes, you heard right, there are four inventories; namely: important people you’ve met, objects, relevant documents, and police and medical test results. You’ll get these test results by submitting objects, your notes of people, lab samples, etc. at the 27th Precinct in midtown Manhattan. Get this – when I finished the investigation phase of the game, I had approximately 15 essential characters (the game has maybe 40), 19 important objects, 10 crucial documents, and 15 police and lab test results. And we’re only half done.

The interface is smooth as silk and very intuitive. Essentially, you have your four inventories at the screen’s bottom, and a slider bar hiding in the lower left part of the screen. Hit the bar, and out slides your map (which builds new locations according to your actions during the game), cell phone (you’ll get loads of calls), a log containing the important things you’ve accomplished during the game, and your game menu. The action screen is larger than that of the first two games – this one is very full screen. Of course you have your morphing cursor which highlights items to inspect and allows you to pick up objects, speak with people, and navigate. The movement allows full 360 degrees of view. One thing I really appreciated was that by laying the cursor over anything in inventories, a description caption popped up. Ransacking apartments, houses, and the like reminded me a lot of the old Tex Murphy games. Briscoe and Green talk often about the objects they find and people they encounter. The graphics are very nice, but not the best I’ve seen. The characters are very lifelike, and the music decent. I must say that I found the ambient, extraneous sounds to be fabulous. Perhaps the best I’ve ever heard – and I think this says something about the production crew’s really caring about this project. Oh, the lip synch is on the mark as well. Very nicely done.

During the investigation phase you may call your Lieutenant back at the precinct and ask if you have enough evidence collected in order to get a search or arrest warrant. Usually, you won’t and, darnit, it would be nice if the Lieutenant would give you a clue as to where to go next, or whatever, but you don’t get very much here – you’re pretty much on your own. When you DO have enough evidence, you’ll jump for (the proverbial) joy! You dun good! The arrest warrant is the crown jewel and you will be taken into the second phase – the trial.

During the proceedings, as prosecutor, you have to have to be careful what questions you ask and how you ask them – you don’t want to get slapped around by the Judge too much, now, do you? Not to worry though, Lennie and Ed have provided you with an arsenal of evidence and witnesses – you’ll be fine. Likewise, you have to keep a lid on that evil defense attorney by listening closely to his line of questioning and object to his questions as appropriate. That devil!

This game has a moderate number of “puzzles” throughout, and I thought they were very well presented and context relevant. One – a tile puzzle of sorts, has you moving boxes – one step at a time as Lennie walks into the one and only space you’ve opened for him. See, he needs to cross the room to snatch up an important item. But these boxes consume one, two, or three “tile blocks”. Poor Lennie. I found this my favorite puzzle of the game – extremely well done and downright fun (yeah, frustrating too ;)

In getting ready to play this game, I read our own Harriet Gurganus’ interview with Jerry and Elisabeth and found it a lot of fun. You might check for it in the JA interview archives.

When you beat the game, you’re given a very cool and innovative bonus! You’ll get an Internet address where you can find a number of cool remarks by two of the game’s stars, Jerry and Jesse. Another nice touch.

Oh – included with this game is a freebie full copy of the initial game of Law and Order.

The verdict? A winner! A wonderfully produced high quality game worthy of your attention. It’s a huge game of moderate difficulty, and loads of fun. I recommend it to any adventurer or fan of the television show.

Oh, stay tuned – Legacy Interactive plans another Law and Order release in the Fall of 2005!

Final Grade: A

System Requirements:

• WIN 98/2000/Me/XP
• Pentium III 600 MHz
• 128 MB RAM
• 1.5 GB available hard disk space
• DirectX 7
• DirectX 7 compatible sound card
• DirectX compatible 16MB video card
• 12X CD-ROM drive