Law and Order: Legacies (Windows PC)

Telltale Games is a studio best known for its adventure games made from various licensed properties such as Back to the Future and CSI.  Their new game, Law and Order: Legacies, follows in the footsteps of their CSI counterpart in attempting to mimic the hit shows.  Legacies incorporates both Law and Order and Law and Order: SVU into one accurate portrayal of what would happen if both shows were absorbed into one.  The selling point of this game is having the ability to play and interact as your favorite Law and Order characters.  Along with that, you not only get to play the part of detective, but you also get to play the part of prosecutor inside the courtroom.

Gameplay

If you have ever played any of Telltale’s CSI games, the detective aspect of Legacies will feel somewhat familiar.  You spend most of your time interacting with Detectives Rey Curtis and Olivia Benson.  There are several cameos throughout the game of other characters but as far as detectives go, these two are the ones you spend the most time with.  You must search crime scenes, interview witnesses, and interrogate suspects during your time shadowing the detectives.  Since Telltale is trying to basically make a Law and Order show interactive, it seems like you are a puppet master deciding and deciphering what is going on at any given time in the game.  This is not a flaw by any means and Telltale does a great job giving that interactive vibe to the game. 

They also seem to utilize some of the innovations LA Noire gave us with facial expressions.  The facial expressions really hammer home whether a character is visibly frustrated, nervous, or calm.  While the investigation is not dependant on these reactions like LA Noire, they help with the look and feel of the game.  The main thing players need to do during the investigations is pay attention to what everyone is saying; not just witnesses and suspects.  This can get overwhelming to some people because you must remember a statement made ten minutes ago in order to get the right response.  If you miss a certain number of responses in a given interview, you fail that part of the mission.  Luckily, Legacies allows you to start over from that scene rather than having you replay the whole mission.

While investigating crime scenes, you must make a circle with your mouse around pieces of evidence that pertain to the case.  However, you only get a certain amount of guesses in order to advance the case.  It is pretty easy to pick out what needs to be retrieved and the game has an interface that helps identify what needs to be collected.  A word of advice:  you must pay attention during the investigation to get clues on where things could be hiding in the crime scenes.  I ended up using most of my guesses a few times on things hidden beneath various items.  It usually takes a couple tries to identify all of the clues from the scene but overall it works well within the game.