Law & Order: Justice is Served Review
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Review Law & Order: Justice is Served
Review by James Saighman |
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Apartment of Jim Saighman
Little Rock, Arkansas
Friday, Oct. 1
FedEx man arrives with my copy of Legacy Interactives third L&O game, Justice is Served at 1:43 pm. I install it immediately, but cant begin playing it for a couple of hours because L&O runs on TNT from 2-4:00 pm local time, and I dont miss L&O on TV if I can help it. I note that the game comes on two discs, one for installation and one used for actually playing the game. To my surprise, I find that JiS also includes the first L&O game, Dead on the Money, as a bonus. Bettern a slice of pepperoni pie and a jelly donut.
Saighman computer room
5:17 pm the same day
An hour into the game now and I have to set it aside to go to work. First thing I noticed is the different setup. The first two L&O games required the player to choose between a list of skills to make some parts of gameplay easier and others more difficult. For instance, you could choose Teamwork and get hints from Lt. van Buren, but that might come at the expense of choosing Evidence Gathering, which would preclude your cursor from lighting up over hotspots. All that is gone from JiS, as is the annoying limit of how many pieces of evidence you can collect. This may sacrifice realism and even difficulty, but it sure enhances gameplay.
Other immediate point of interest is that S. Epatha Merkersons Lt. Anita van Buren is gone this time around. Instead, we get Jesse L. Martins Det. Ed Green as well as the ever-dependable, ever-sardonic Det. Lenny Briscoe (Jerry Orbach). The character modeling of Green is the best yet of any of the L&O game characters, and the writers have finally found the perfect touch with Briscoes dialogue. (I found the constant references to his ex-wives a bit repetitive in L&O1.)
The plot so far is both original and yet familiar to both fans of the TV series and to those who follow sports: a young female tennis phenom is found dead in the locker room on the eve of the U.S. Open. The medical examiner quickly determines two interesting facts: 1) the girl was injected with a lethal overdose of steroids and the angle of the injection indicates that it wasnt self-administered, and 2) she was 5-6 weeks pregnant. Suspects range from her competition to a bitter former agent to her secret boyfriend to an obsessed fan. I have my own theory and will try to pursue it when I get back home from work.
Saighman apartment patio
Saturday Oct. 2, 2:24 am
Pacing and thinking as I smoke. My initial theory doesnt seem to be panning out. I got warrants to search the apartments of the vic and the obsessed fan. Along with some evidence, I encountered puzzles! Thats right, there are a good number of puzzles in this newest L&O game! Most of them involve finding the right combination to open locked doors, lockers, safes, etc. In general, these are fairly easy, with the necessary clue always in the same location as the lock puzzle itself. In addition, there is also one fairly well-designed music puzzle and perhaps the first slider puzzle that Ive ever enjoyed. I gotta give a big thumbs up to the designers for finding a way to integrate a slider puzzle into the game and make it seem both logically placed and interesting.
Anyway, Ive now talked to the dead tennis players coach (played by tennis star Patrick McEnroe), her career-driven mother and spoke on the phone to the lawyer who handled her will. Seems like there may be a lot more suspects than I originally thought. Waiting on lab results for some of the evidence Ive collected and some background checks. In the meantime, its back to pounding the pavement.
Saighman apartment patio
Oct. 2, 6:37 am
One last butt before I hit the sack. Jeez! How could I have thought that the developers had sacrificed difficulty in this newest game? While they may have removed the skills which made certain parts of the game easier, they made up for it by giving us red herrings galore and lots of avenues of investigation that turn out to be dead ends. Fortunately, any time I am completely at a loss about how to proceed, Det. Green will offer a little hint about where I should take the investigation next. I now have nearly a dozen suspects and have only managed to conclusively eliminate a couple of them. I think I know who the perp is, but Im gonna need more evidence. Gotta come up with some probable cause so I can get a search warrant for his place. Maybe if I have the surveillance unit put a tail on him .
No doubt about it; this is the longest, hardest, most complex of the three L&O games so far. Not that Im complaining.
Saighman kitchen
Oct 2, 11:56 pm
Making a celebratory beverage I arrested the perp! The surveillance on one of the suspects led the investigation in an entirely new direction that paid off. My total playing time for this first half of the game: about fourteen hours. This compares with a total of about six hours to play the entire first L&O game. Next comes the Law section of the game. I play as Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn, portrayed by series regular Elisabeth Rohm. Now that I have all the lab and surveillance reports, background checks and evidence, I have yet more investigation and interviewing to do as I prepare the case for trial.
I guess that means switching from Italian food to take-out Chinese and giving up rum for scotch.
Computer room
Sunday Oct. 3, 2:41 am
I was stuck at the end of the first day of the trial. Had to do a bit of investigation that wasnt really logical or apparent. However, a hint from the D.A. pushed me in the right direction. Ready to move on to day two now.
Gameplay in the trial phase has been almost identical to the first L&O game, which is both good and bad. I had to collect the witnesses, evidence and documents I wanted into a subpoena folder and submit it to the D.A. to get his go-ahead to start the trial. This meant more investigation and interviews. Once the trial began, I could choose in what order I wanted to put my witnesses on the stand and what questions I asked. Asking an improper question (leading, vague, asking for speculation, etc.) results in an immediate objection from the defense attorney. Similarly, I can object to any of his cross-examination questions, though doing so improperly leads to my rating being lowered. There is a computer in Serenas office that contains a legal database concerning improper/illegal cross-ex and testimony issues.
The down side is that my favorite part of the trial phase from the second game (Double or Nothing) has been abandoned. In L&O2 there were occasions when, after an objection, you and the defense attorney were called to the bench for a sidebar with the judge. You each argued your side of the objection. This forced the player to have actually read through the data on the law computer and be able to cite the relevant rule of law. According to my contact at Legacy, a lot of people found this bit too difficult, so they went back to the original easier format.
Saighman patio
Oct. 3, 1:14 pm
Time for a drink and cigarI convicted the perp! Although requiring more time and investigation than in the first two L&O games (and even another puzzle), the trial phase of the game was significantly shorter and easier than the police investigation phase. I ended up with a prosecutor rating of 97%. Not bad, eh?
Now I can take some time and reflect back on the experience while I sip my scotch and puff my stogie. Legacy Interactive has given us, in Justice is Served, perhaps the first game in the franchise that is truly satisfying for adventure gamers. It is longer, harder, deeper and more complex than the first two entries in the series. Writer Suzanne Oshry managed to produce a plot that is both convoluted and logical, perplexing us with lots of false leads and red herrings, sprinkled with little bits of wit and sarcasm. In other words, she makes us feel like we are actually participating in an episode of the TV show.
The voice acting was generally great. Jesse L. Martin was particularly good in his series debut, and Jerry Orbach was his usual reliable quality self. My only complaint was with the actress who played the victims motherher Russian accent sounded about as authentic as mine, and Im Irish-American. The character modeling was decent if not outstanding. Det. Green looked particularly good while a couple of characters were merely adequate. There were occasional distracting looped actions from some of the characters, but this is a minor quibble. After all, you arent really playing this game to be dazzled by the graphics.
Overall, Justice is Served is far and away the best of the series (so far) from an adventure gamers perspective. Because the game will (I assume) be marketed on TV during/after this falls telecasts of Law & Order, there will likely be many non-gamers who end up purchasing JiS. They might find the puzzles and complexity a bit daunting. However, the inclusion of the much shorter and easier Dead on the Money as a bonus with Justice should give those folks the background experience they need to enjoy the newer game.
If you are even an occasional fan of the series, Justice is Served is an absolute must-play. Even if you have never watched an episode but enjoy mystery/detective adventure games (or those few legal/trial-based games that are out there) then I can pretty much assure you a good time from Legacys newest offering.
Final Grade: A
System Requirements:
- Windows 95/98/2000/XP
