In NARC, a new super drug is unleashed on the streets of Rockland and it’s your job to track it to its source and stop its flow. As you play through the game you switch off between two characters, Jack Forzenski, a detective on the narcotics squad, who is just out of rehab and Marcus Hill, a DEA agent and former partner to Jack Forzenski.
The game’s graphics look a bit dated, but are far from bad. Though they are a little cartoony they look as well as the CGI movies. The camera can be a pain at times, especially during close melee combat and could be handled better. Also the collision detection is pretty average.
The game uses a lot of spoken dialog that is synced well and uses halfway decent actors and one good actor, Ron Pearlman. The script on the other hand is pretty standard but uses more swear words than needed. The random people on the streets could use more dialog and not repeat the same few lines over and over, and the background music is drug based songs that also get repeated often.
NARC uses a free roaming world, much like the Grand Theft Auto series, but not as big. The storyline progresses through missions, and allows you to have free reign of the city between them. As a cop you have a badge rating, you do bad things, i.e. beating on random passerbys, it goes down. By doing things by the book it goes back up. The whole Badge rating system is highly forgiving and can be easily kept at its max, by arresting criminals, etc. Now for power ups, they are drugs of all varieties, from plants to powders to pills. Each type can enhance speed, accuracy, strength, etc. Also if you use any of them too much you can get addicted to them and take damage as you try to break the addiction. The combat contains melee and gun based modes and each by themselves are rather easy to use, but when you need to switch between them during fights, it can get clunky at times.
The pros are rather few; decent enough voice actors, forgiving mission based game play, the original NARC game being an unlockable, and it being a budget title for $20.00. As for cons, the graphics are average looking and dated, the script is bland, the controls are sometimes clunky, and it comes off as a poor GTA clone.
Final Verdict
Well for $20 you could do worse, but you can certainly do better. NARC looks pretty average and the script relies on 4 and 5 letter words, with repetitive music. The controls could have been handled better and the difficulty is rather easy. As for the power up system, what was Midway thinking when they allowed it to be included in this game? The violence is one thing, but this could be said that this promotes drug use and could bring even more groups against the Video Game industry. All in all, NARC is rentable and the $20 could be better spent picking up a PSone greatest hits game.
Score
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