As is the case with just about every episode of Law and Order, Double or Nothing starts out with a murder. It’s up to you, playing as the partner of Detective Lennie Briscoe, to find clues. Once you have the clues, you need to finger a suspect and obtain a warrant for his or her arrest. Sounds a lot like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, doesn’t it? Anyhow, to find clues, you’ll visit one of dozens of scenes while clicking on various objects. You’ll know you have a clue in front of you as your cursor changes to a magnifying glass the minute you hover over one! Doesn’t sound like much of a challenge, does it?

After you’ve picked a few clues, you can ship them off to the various police research teams for further examination. If you’ve spoken to the doorman, for example, you can drag his icon into the surveillance folder and assign a team to keep an eye on him, or call him in for a psychological exam. Multiple research teams can examine many of the clues. For example, if you find a wallet, you might send it off to the crime lab to be dusted for fingerprints and physical evidence, after which, you could ship it off to the research and records lab where they might take a look at the documents contained inside. This is an interesting way of handling evidence in a detective game, and while it prevents Double or Nothing from being completely linear, the rest of the gameplay is so overbearingly linear; you’ll quickly forget this unique twist.

After your evidence has been examined at the lab, you’ll need to head over there for an overview of the findings. Early on, it seems as though 99 percent of what you’ve collected is absolute rubbish and you’ve pretty much wasted your time. As a matter of fact, for about the first hour you can just expect a multitude of frustrating trips to the lab. Thank goodness more relevant clues appear and more useful interrogations occur, else you might quit this game after just an hour of play.

Whenever you encounter an interview subject, you can perform interrogations by picking from a predetermined list of questions. While the list of questions is fixed, the order that you ask them in is what determines whether you have a useful interrogation, or if the interviewee just clams up and leaves you with nothing to go on. The interrogation process offer a nice bit of interaction, but the fear of botching one is minimal, since you can always try again.

When you’ve collected all the evidence you feel you need to prosecute, the game will switch into court mode and you’ll present your findings to the court. The lawyers will question the witnesses, and it’s up to you, as the District Attorney, to be sure the defending attorney doesn’t get out of line with his questioning. As long as you’ve done some solid detective work, and you play the part of the aggressive DA right, you’ll convince the jury and come away the victor. Once you’ve successfully prosecuted your suspect, the game is over and you'll have no reason to play it again.

I have to give Legacy credit where credit is due, as the graphics are pretty good though not without a few problems. All the character models are quite similar to their television counterparts, though Lennie’s graphical depiction is a little too simian for me. To top off, his nose appears to be the size of an Army tent. Having watched the show, I know he doesn't look that bad, and so I’m forced to wonder why he got such poor treatment in the game when all the other character models are spot-on matches for their TV counterparts.

The environments, which use a sort of VR interface, are flat and over-simplified. Due to the lack of dynamic shadows and textures, the graphics lack any sense of realism, and thus kill any feeling of immersion.

Fans of the show will be glad to know that the voices and music come right from the TV series. The Law and Order acting cast was brought in to produce the voice work for Double or Nothing, which makes you feel like you’ve been pulled into a current episode, and even the ancillary characters are voiced well.

As a whole, Law and Order II: Double or Nothing is a bit too linear to make it appealing to those who aren’t fans of the show. While the game offers great voice work and plenty of locations to scan for evidence, the point-and-click will quickly wear down your interest level. This game could’ve taken place in a single building with a load of blank white rooms full of clues and it would have played out the same. It's really a shame that the gameplay is so limiting, because the storyline is well written and contains plenty of twists and turns. As I’ve said repeatedly, this is a game that only a Law and Order fan could love.