24 The Game and the progressive scan easter egg
I recently picked up 24 the game for $35 at a local EB. Being an avid fan of the show, I thought it'd be interesting to see how good (or bad) it was. From a story perspective, it's just like the show - in fact it seems to be the remains of the original 3rd season - that is to say chronologically it takes place between season 2 and 3 and features a lot of interesting "oh, that's when that happned" moments. The herkey-jerkey camera bobs just like the show's action sequences giving you a feeling of urgency, and although PS2 graphics are really feeling their age at this point, it manages to pull off a passable in that category. The inane and wildly inaccurate techno-babble is here too - for example they show a picture of what is clearly an encrypted code generator used by banks and the like, but inaccurately describe it as a PDA, and the stereotypical nerdy guy has to try to decrypt its "hard drive" to get at the info (neither PDAs nor code generators have hard drives). I've only played through the first 8 hours or so, and I've been stuck wondering what to do or where to go at least twice - my little guide arrows were either gone, or pointing me somewhere I couldn't go. The level design needed a bit more tweaking, but I've played worse. At the same time, the game is entertaining. The interrogation sequences are clever if repetitive. All in all I'd give it a 7 out of 10.
There was one point of much frustration that I hope to save you from. The game supports progressive scan (which is a big plus in my book) but good luck finding instructions for turning it on. After reading through the manual and coming up with zilch, I called 2k games for support and the scottish guy who answered the phone scratched his head, told me it was my TV, then said that the game actually performs some sort of magical evaluation and evidently decided that my TV wasn't worthy of progressive scan. When I explained the absurdity and technological impossibility of that to him (it's pretty much a one-way street, the Playstation might be able to tell that the cables were connected, but there is no return signal for evaluating the capabilities of the TV it's plugged into), he thought it might be that my Playstation was too old, and then told me (it sounded like he might have been reading this somewhere) that PS2's before model 50000 weren't capable of outputting in progressive scan. When I explained that I have several games that seem to have ignored that limitation and display in progressive scan anyway, then maybe it was only available in the UK/PAL version of the game. When I asked him why the back of the box clearly stated progressive scan as a feature, more head scratching ensued. Remembering the way that games like Star Ocean III and Radiata Stories require you to hold down X and (triangle) as the game starts up to access the progressive scan menu, I tried that and lo and behold it brought up the secret progressive scan menu. The 2k games support guy was very relieved to hear that I wouldn't be grilling him any longer. He was a nice enough fellow, but 2k games ought to at least give these guys some technical manuals for these games if they're paying for me to call all the way to the UK to talk to them.
There was one point of much frustration that I hope to save you from. The game supports progressive scan (which is a big plus in my book) but good luck finding instructions for turning it on. After reading through the manual and coming up with zilch, I called 2k games for support and the scottish guy who answered the phone scratched his head, told me it was my TV, then said that the game actually performs some sort of magical evaluation and evidently decided that my TV wasn't worthy of progressive scan. When I explained the absurdity and technological impossibility of that to him (it's pretty much a one-way street, the Playstation might be able to tell that the cables were connected, but there is no return signal for evaluating the capabilities of the TV it's plugged into), he thought it might be that my Playstation was too old, and then told me (it sounded like he might have been reading this somewhere) that PS2's before model 50000 weren't capable of outputting in progressive scan. When I explained that I have several games that seem to have ignored that limitation and display in progressive scan anyway, then maybe it was only available in the UK/PAL version of the game. When I asked him why the back of the box clearly stated progressive scan as a feature, more head scratching ensued. Remembering the way that games like Star Ocean III and Radiata Stories require you to hold down X and (triangle) as the game starts up to access the progressive scan menu, I tried that and lo and behold it brought up the secret progressive scan menu. The 2k games support guy was very relieved to hear that I wouldn't be grilling him any longer. He was a nice enough fellow, but 2k games ought to at least give these guys some technical manuals for these games if they're paying for me to call all the way to the UK to talk to them.
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