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The clock is ticking, so let's get straight down to business. Unless your days have been crammed tighter than Jack Bauer's for five solid years, there's every chance you'll at least have heard of 24, Fox's high-concept, anti-terrorism series - 24 episodes per season, tracing, in more or less real-time, 24 action-stuffed hours at the Los Angeles' Counter Terrorist Unit - debuted while the world was reeling from 9/11. Right or wrong, it maintained into viewers' fears of the 'hidden enemy' but it also stoken their fantasies that heroes like CTU field agent Jack Bauer existed. True blue protagonists prepared to do whatever it takes to hunt the bad men (and women) down.

Four seasons in, and for the legions of 24 fans, the mere sound of the show's trademark chi-bonk, chi-bonk digital clock ticking down to a fresh hour is enough to have them salivating like dogs at dinner time. And it's a sound that carries a lot of expectation - ludicrous plot twists that place high drama above logic; eccentric cast members, none of whom (with the exception of Jack) are guaranteed to see the end of the season; occasionally patchy pacing and duff sections (the writers themselves only write five episodes ahead, so eve they don't know how things will end), and most last-minute climaxes than a Tera Patrick boxset.

That's 24: the series. And now virtually the entire production crew have lent their talents - and in the case of the cast, voices and faces, too - to create this, a third-person action adventure that sets out to be an entire missing season, covering events during the three-year gap between the televised seasons two and three. As game concepts go, 24 is a godsend - shooting, driving, hi-tech espionage - but is the end result any good? Well, in true 24 style, it all comes good in the end, but not before the game takes you on a dizzying rollercoaster of highs and lows that'll leave you spinning, spent and reaching for the oxygen.

Early doors and 24: The Game makes a strong first impression. The developer's aim has been to create as authentic a facsimile of the series on PS2 as is humanly possible, and it shows. The TV show's structure, look and sound have been replicated superbly. The character modelling - always tricky when based on real people - is as good as we've seen on the PS2. Moreover, the voice acting is delivered with day-job gravitas by Kiefer Sutherland and friends - even down to pitch-perfect moments of whiny overacting from Elisha Cuthbert, as Kim. The consistent quality of the performances is made all the more surprising by the sheer weight of dialogue in the game. Simply recording all the permutations of Jack's alternatively shouty and coaxing interrogations must have taken days, so kudos all round for that. The show's trademark split-screen effects, bleached LA lighting and handheld camera work have all made it into the game too. Great stuff.

Plot-wise, the game is also barely distinguishable from its TV cousin. Obviously, we're not going to spoil the story for you - but rest assured, the 24 writer responsible has woven the actin together with bluffs and double-bluffs, sudden changes in location and twin plot strands approaching one another from opposite directions - all classic 24.

Then there's the game's infamous ticking clock: not only does it bridge missions, but it also pops up regularly during the action. Rarely outside of the game's gadget-themed mini-games and episode climaxes are your actions actually timed, but the insistent clock keeps the tension stoked. In this respect too, the game apes the series' atmosphere perfectly.

But it's here that 24's fortunes take a sudden, dramatic turn for the worse. While the game does a bang-up job of evoking the TV series, it's hard to ignore that, graphically, 24 is more Chloe-plain than Kim-lush. Take the driving missions: cars look unfinished and appear to be floating over the Tarmac rather than gripping it. And while some of the shooting mission environments have admirable detail, others have that peculiarly videogame sparseness to them. Not a game breaker, but nevertheless, the game's appeal can't help but take a knock.

It gets worse too, as a flurry of gameplay niggles threaten to weaken 24 further. The main culprit is a target lock-on system that aims for flexibility but has a worrying tendency to shoot itself in the foot instead. The theory is that you move around in a third-person view, pressing and holding L1 to bring up the crosshairs and zoom in to a Resi Evil 4-style close perspective that's a bullet's width short of a first-person view. From here you can either finesse your aim with gentle movements of the right stick, or tap it to flit to other available targets. And pressing R1 fires. This is all fine in theory, and if you have time to plan your firefights it works a treat, enabling you to go for quick headshots, or conversely non-fatal takedowns - particularly useful when terrorists take hostages and you need to drop 'em quickly and accurately. Sadly, the terrorists aren't always considerate enough to let you get the drop on them, and in frenzied shootouts the targeting system can get flustered, locking onto objects rather than democracy-hating scum and forcing you to flee, reposition and take aim again. Which isn't like the real Jack at all.

Sadly, this patchiness also troubles the game's AI. Terrorists sometimes rumble your presence purely because you've entered their area, even if you're not in their line of sight yet. At other times, alerted guards appear to get fascinated by walls in your general vicinity rather than actively searching for you. Your allies aren't always much better. 24 has a handful of escort missions that enable you to issue 'follow me', 'wait here' and 'take cover' commands while you clear the area ahead - again, very Resi Evil 4. Sadly though, escortees occasionally decide to take cover in the room crawling with terrorists rather than in the corridor outside, as instructed. And no, it wasn't just Kim who did this. After a stellar start, 24's taken some serious hits and Bauer's success looks far from assured.

Is it the end for 24? Is the game doomed, Ryan Chapelle-style, to receive an untimely bullet to the brain? As if. True to form, 24 is nothing if not full of surprises, and right on cue it rediscovers its mojo.

In essence, it's a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts deal. While the driving sections look underdone, the vehicle handling is tuned for flattering melodrama - all camera-tilting powerslides and spectacular collisions. Very enjoyable. Then there's the sheer variety of things to do in the game, and the satisfying way in which they're fed to you. Driving sections will dovetail neatly into protracted shootouts, interspersed with memory or reaction-testing mini-games - bomb defusing, server hacking, satellite image processing and so on. You'll then switch playable characters from Jack to Tony, Chase, Michelle or even Kim, and play through a tense stealth mission, or an escort mission, or a sniping section, or an on-foot chase through LA's back streets, or, or...

You get the idea. The breathless structure of the game is such that you rapidly find yourself willingly adapting to absorb the game's idiosyncrasies in order to get further into the story - and in turn the whole game - rather than rejecting them. There are lots of nice touches, too. Like the way Michelle at CTU often calls Jack in the middle of tense shootouts with clipped snippets of intel that you have to absorb on the fly while still plugging away at the bad guys. Or the section when a major character (we're not saying who) is being blackmailed by a terrorist to infiltrate a high security building by posing as a member of a tour group. Throughout the stealthy insertion, the terrorists taunts our hero via an earpiece. Brilliant. Or how about the fact that CTU often takes a while to locate and upload blueprints for new locations to your PDA, meaning that you're forced to navigate half the mission without a map? Talking of CTU, it's a real buzz when you get to navigate those infamous, dimly lit server rooms. And where else could you find a room full of skittish chimpanzees forming a nail-biting stealth challenge? Anyone?

Patchy in places, occasionally illogical but dramatic, surprising, and breathlessly entertaining, 24: The Game ends this particular season on a high. Just like Bauer himself, it's flawed and has rough edges enough to test even his biggest fans. That said, while the journey may be bumpy in places, just like Jack, 24 ends up getting the desired results. Time's up. The score clock freezes like the LED readout on a bomb...

Graphics 70%
Great 24 'look', but some rough visuals.

Sound 90%
Voice acting and music are both spot on.

Gameplay 70%
Patchy in places, but gripping overall.

Lifespan 80%
Not quite 24 hours of game, but almost...

Overall 81%
No doubt about it. 24: The Game has flaws, but it's a quality recreation of the show and is lots of fun to play.