In the game, it is separated into 24 hours, each hour representing 1 to 3 missions. However, it doesn't take 24 hours to finish the game, rather about ten. The storyline of the game and the way it unfolds have really good production values and are faithful to the series. Fans of the series will be very familiar with cutscenes of the digital clock, dramatic multi-perspective windows and the narration heard at the start of every hour, "The following takes place between X and Y o'clock."

You start by playing Jack, who, with a team of CTU operatives, is investigating a ship that is loaded with ricin, a chemical toxin. And in the spirit of the series, this eventually leads to the attempted assasination of the US Vice President, the sabotage of CTU HQ, the kidnapping of both Jack's daughter and girlfriend, the use of well placed bombs to cause earthquakes that would destroy Los Angeles, and naturally, the takedown of the baddies responsible for all of the aforementioned. You, of course, play Jack, and also other well-known characters of CTU (including his daughter, Kim), to try to put things right and save the world. You occassionally get to play the baddies, too.

In the course of doing so, the characters have to go through a series of puzzles and third-person gun battles and car chases. The gun battles are rather straightforward, just point and shoot - or rather let the auto-targetting feature point for you. The auto-targetting feature lets you lock on to the closest baddie but does allow you to manually lock on to other visible targets. This feature, in addition to the lack of smarts in the AI, makes gun battles a tad too easy, except if you are playing Kim, who apparently has no weapons training. Thus even if locked on, her shots don't always connect. Fortunately, you can turn this feature off (but no luck on the AI).

For gun-loving gamers, you are in luck as there are a variety of 9mm pistols, shotguns, SMGs and assault rifles. The effects of different types of guns on baddies can be distinctive - for instance, baddies can take more hits from a 9mm SMG compared to the AK47. However, this can't be said of the gun sound effects, which aren't that distinctive, but fortunately, they aren't the worst.