Starsky & Hutch

"As good as the show?"

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Introduction
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Starsky and Hutch is a fun driving game where you simultaneously drive a crazy car doing stunts and take pop-shots at the bad guys. It is based on the 79s based TV series starring Paul Michael Glaser (Det. Dave Starsky), David Soul (Det. Ken Hutchison) and Antonio Fargas (Huggy Bear).

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Gameplay
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Starsky and Hutch is relatively simple to play. You dive around and shoot when the aiming circles turn red. Missions consist of reaching checkpoints, destroying enemy vehicles and/or protecting a car. These quickly become boring, but the gameplay is livened up by completing various secondary objectives such as doing 10 jumps, and smashing through 5 shop displays. The game is over if you fail your objectives, run out of time or run out of viewer ratings. These are the number of people watching your channel on TV. If you do jumps, skids and collect VR tokens, these increase. But if you hit civilians, wreck your car or let the bad guys escape these quickly decrease.

7 out of 10

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Story
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Sadly, the story in Starsky and Hutch is mediocre and is extremely repetitive. It consists of 3 seasons, each with 6 episodes (levels). I can't really say much else about this as the story was obviously not a main idea during the design period.

5 out of 10

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Sound
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The sound in Starsky and Hutch is top notch. There's tons of funky 70s music accompanying every drive and corny comments form either of the groovy cop duo are generously littered about.

9 out of 10

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Graphics
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Starsky and Hutch has visually pleasing cell-shaded graphics which are used effectively. The animation, however, is poor; with the lips constantly firmly closed and comic scene cut scenes.

7 out of 10

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Replayability
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Starsky and Hutch will keep you coming back for more at first in order to unlock bonus stuff (photos, music, etc.) but is unlikely to persuade you to replay the game due to its repetitive objectives.

6 out of 10

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Overall
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In all, Starsky and Hutch is a pretty sound game with a high potential, but it fails to achieve higher thanks to it repetitivity. Take my word for it, I read a review (PC Gaming World) which said it was good apart from the repetitivity. I bought the game thinking that it wouldn't matter, but it did - don't let it spoil your gaming time.

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Buy / Rent / Trash
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I would buy this game at a trade-in store for no more than a maximum of £15. It's not worth any more of your money.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/24/03