24: The Board Not Necessary Game

Best Mate and I are huge fans of 24, we go silly at the mention of Kiefer's name and are more than happy to disappear for the best part of a day with the newest box set.

(Not a full day, of course, for it's 24 telly hours, which is 18 of your normal, everyday hours.)

(Also, before I continue, please forgive the presence of my jim jams in the photo to the left.)

We were most excited, therefore, to find the 24 board game on sale in HMV, offering an interactive CTU experience involving, we assumed, engaging plots and an opportunity to prove our spy-foiling mettle. The PS2 game is fantastic, even if we're a bit shit and can't get past the car bit with the tunnel, so a board game has to be more than enough for a fantabulous night in, no?

No.

First of all, there are no instructions. I never claimed to be the brightest spark in the Marks &, I need a bit more guidance than "congratulations, you're playing a game". So I was a bit edgy wondering if my tiny mind would be able to comprehend the game's brilliance.

While the DVD dithered about wondering whether to like my player (not entirely the DVD's fault - anyone got a cleaner thingum?), we worked out - proudly - that the little square card things are supposed to go on the little squares on the board. In any old order, doesn't matter which.

So, if it doesn't matter where the landing places are....how can it matter how and where the lines between them run? And if the lines don't matter, how do you know where to go? And why are there no dice? And what do you do once you get to a square?

We trusted, foolishly, that the DVD introduction would make everything clear and tell us, if nothing else, how to play. But no, it merely repeated the happy, yet vacuous, instructions from the flimsy and unhelpful sheet in the box.

Clinging helplessly to the thought that the clue cards would make everything clear, we greedily grabbed at the pile whenever we were (entirely randomly) directed to do so. I came quite close to a hissy fit about an hour in when I only had one card and Best Mate had been offered a fourth (WHY?), but in the end it didn't matter, for they told you NOTHING. One informed me that the fictional company in question had recently begun exporting to Japan. Why in God's name would I give a monkeys? They weren't just 'not much help', they were completely and utterly irrelevant.

So...the board is useless, the cards are useless, the little plastic characters are useless, there are no dice, there's no end point and you don't gain anything by moving round the board, not even a flimsy cash bonus. Not really a board game then, you might say.

Did it redeem itself by being a halfway decent DVD tellybox game?

No.

Aside from the fact that you only ever need the one button (not the greatest test of skill, really - not to mention the fact that they don't give you any instructions that might enlighten you to the one-buttonness, so I was mashing away at my poor remote like a joypad for absolutely no reason), most of the mini-games were like badly put together versions of Pong. After an hour of trying to work out the logic, we still had no idea why there was a huge delay between pressing the button and anything happening and had to rely on luck to complete them.

Bollocks to it, she's giving it to Oxfam. With my blessing. Pity the poor bastard who picks it up, two pound fifty or otherwise.