Starsky & Hutch

"Whoa! Sweet!"

I have never seen the Starsky and Hutch 1970s show. While I'm curious about it, after playing this game, I don't think it's for me. Yet this game comes out of nowhere and knocks my socks off. It's such a breath of arcadey racing fresh air after seeing so many games recently totally abuse the FPS Unreal Warfare engine. It's the reverse of normal licensed games: where the videogame is far superior to the poor license it uses.

I first read about the PS2 version, which only caught my atttention because the blurb claimed you'd be able to use both a driving wheel and the Guncon 2 pistol controllers simultaneously. It's an idea I thought of for an FPS (where you walk normally, and aim with an actual lightgun).

PRESENTATION - 6

GRAPHICS - 6
Your world is Bay City, essentially the halfway point between Grand Theft Auto 3's Liberty City and the original Crazy Taxi's San Francisco, both in poly count, cartoony-ness, and simple texturing. (As I've said before and will say again, very very very few games produce graphics that cannot STILL be seen on Dreamcast hardware. Sigh).
As such, it looks good and easy on the eyes, but hardly surprising in a world of Unreal Tournament 2003. Your red Ford Torino has a metallic lustre, but that's a rare graphical tweak.
There are also glowing powerups everywhere, animations are good, and nothing is ever visually confusing.
But what raises the score above a 4 is the numerous amount of destructible objects littering the streets, each of which is governed by a very good physics engine. You can shoot or run over these things, objects like crates, explosive barrels, glass, etc. Even telephone wires can be run over/shot, which brings them down while they're still connected by wire to the other poles in the area.
Also, everything has that 1970s cartoon vibe and I think it's a good translation of its source material (I wouldn't know). And it doesn't hurt that load times are really fast.

AUDIO - 6
There's a ton of great show-specific audio midgame that compliments or insults your performance, appropriately. The twangy music must be taken from the show (I'm guessing), and nothing seems out of place.

STORY - 6
I'm not quite sure how to score this category. Cutscenes are some classic-styled moving cartoon stills with voiceovers. This whole game has a great sense of 70s style. On the other hand, the story is extremely simple and really really really cheesy. But hey, it's based on what apparently was a really really really cheesy show.

CONTROL - 9
First off, you have to understand that the default control scheme is terrible. But once you make the changes I use (see below), everything is PERFECT:
W - accelerate
S - reverse
A - Turn Left
D - Turn Right
Q - look to the left
E - look to the right
Spacebar - Handbreak
Mouse (Yes, you HAVE to turn it on in the controls menu (?))-AIM
Left Mouse Button - shoot

FEEL - 9
Great! The aiming is super responsive and the driving is perfect. An optical mouse compensates very well for the lack of a lightgun, and the WASD driving keyboard buttons are in no way inferior to any other PC racing game.
Furthermore, the car physics are second only to Rockstar's GTA3-VC and Midnight Club 2 games. This helps tremendously in making the driving half of the game enjoyable.
It's kind of hard to look to the sides of the car while driving, but that's an issue with player skill, not control.
The HUD is good: you get a GTA3/Midnight Club 2 -styled tiny city map in the lower right hand corner with enemies/allies/you marked as narrow triangles. It's wide enough to let you take a by-way and cut off the guy you're chasing, occasionally.
One thing I found incomprehensible was the inclusion of an ammo gauge, since reloading is exactly instant and you have infinite ammo.

GAMEPLAY - 9

MECHANICS - 10
Basically, this is GTA3 mixed with a timer-based racing game. Sort of. Starsky drives while Hutch leans out the window and shoots. SIMULTANEOUSLY. This would be needlessly confusing except for the superb controls (see above).
At the top of the screen is a Viewer Rating score that works like a timer. You start with 200, and it counts down one per second, until you lose the level. You increase viewer rating by shooting or driving over any breakable object (and there are ALOT of them everywhere), ramming or shooting your target car, shooting Traffic lights (to turn them green), shooting VR icons floating in midair, driving through VR icons placed in ''dangerous'' things, driving near other cars, on two wheels, jump airtime, skidding time, against traffic, or anything else that would ordinarily earn you cash in Crazy Taxi or nitro in Burnout. You can even hit a ramp to take the car on 2 wheels, then guide it through a narrow opening in one scenario.
You lose VR by getting shot, hitting innocent citizens, or hitting traffic. Icons are floating in midair to help you (if you shoot them): a siren that lets you hit friendlies with impunity, speed up, double damage, better weapons, jam enemies' guns, etc. There are also ''Special Event'' icons that will change the camera and temporarily slo-mo (although you don't lose control at all) while an explosion or cool jump or something interesting goes on. I've seen things like jumping through a giant donut ad, through an office building with glass windows, etc.
What impresses me about S&H is how the developers actually took advantage of their engine. Rather than having every mission be search and destroy, you also have objectives like getting to a certain place on time, protecting allies, racing, etc. Each mission is different, and that's impressive.

LEVEL DESIGN - 8
The level is one world of streets and buildings, but each mission shows you a unique section of it, perfectly icon-ed and destructible-object-laced and multiple-routes constructed to make every mission fun. Each level is also tweaked very well, to provide a perfect challenge despite the fact that there's only one selectable difficulty level.

ENEMIES - 8
Enemy AI is reminiscent of the drivers from Midnight Club 2 or GTA:VC. You can ram them and knock them into things, but they will recover well and take alternate routes frequently to prevent you from being cheap.

VALUE - 10
Man, I had SO much fun with this game. Each level is an ''episode,'' of a season, 6 x 3 = 18 levels. Each level takes around 12-15 minutes to complete.
Plus, by finding 2 special icons during each episode (don't worry, they're placed hidden along the linear path you'll intersect with during that mission) and/or completing the unique secondary objective in each mission (like destroying any 20 explosive barrels), you unlock more stuff. Some of it is TV related, but there are also 4 special missions called ''TV Specials.'' The first (only one I've unlocked) of these was an extended race that was the equal fun-wise of any normal episode.
Replay? Well, the worst part of this game was that Episode 2 was too hard...it took me 15 tries, but honest-to-G-d, I throughly enjoyed the first 12 times, and wasn't just playing it ''to get to the next stage.''
All in all, Starsky and Hutch is excellent fan service (although...do those who remember the show like arcadey shooting?) and a great, simple game. You definitely get your money's worth.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/03, Updated 07/07/03