Everyone who has ever seen 24 wants to be Jack Bauer. Hecklerspray wants to be Jack Bauer, you want to be Jack Bauer, and your Mum definitely does.

He’s so cool with his guns and his fast cars and his annoying daughter and his dead wife and his crying and his drug problem and his need never to go for a slash.

Good for us, then, that Sony and Fox are going to turn the most implausible TV show in the world into the most implausible computer game. Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you 24: The Game, for Playstation 2.

The game, we’re told, will take place sometime between seasons 2 and 3 – if that doesn’t ring any bells, think between huge nuclear bomb and huge deadly virus – and you’ll be able to, um…

Actually, details on the plot are pretty sketchy now, so we’re crossing our fingers that it won’t be set on one of Jack’s days off. Although a game where you have to watch all the special features on your Rocky III DVD before nipping down the garage for a Ginsters pasty sounds excellent.

No, instead, you’ll most likely grimace your way through all kinds of ludicrous situations. Hopefully, they’ll be really ludicrous, because it’s being written by the show’s writers, and all the stars are lending their likenesses and voices to the game, too, so it should be a treat. There are over 100 missions, and..

Wait.

100 missions?

That’s a mission every 13 minutes and 40 seconds. No wonder Jack always looks so peeved. And that’s if we’re going by Sky One time, and not BBC2 time, where an hour only lasts for 45 minutes because of the unique way the BBC is funded.

Actually, while we’re at it, when are the producers going to wise up and make 168? Wouldn’t that be great?

In that show, Jack will have to face a problem of such magnitude that he has to stay up for a week. And by the end of the season, he’d be a stinking, gibbering shell of a man, plauged by constant sleep deprived hallucinations. He’d go around shooting grenades at nursing homes because he thought that they were chemical weapons plants. Tell us that’s not a brilliant idea.

Anyway, back to the game. We’re promised on-foot sections with shooting, stealth, puzzles and sniping;
- driving challenges varying from stealthy tailing to high-speed pursuits;
- interrogations where you have to coerce information out of suspects and
- gadget sections including decoding information and examining satellite images.

Did someone say Metal Gear Solid?

The game doesn’t come out until the autumn, so you’ve got lots of time to practice running around looking slightly annoyed and not peeing.