NARC

"And This is Your Brain on Drugs"

The first game I ever beat was the classic NES game NARC. Later down the road Midway decides to recreate this game and in the process creates an entirely different game tuned to the appeal of the GTA fans with some of the weirdest game play you ever encountered and enough drug use to get this new version NARC banned in a couple of countries. NARC is a third person shooter with that Grand Theft Auto feel to it with free roaming of the dark streets of a city along with basic graphics and lousy game play. NARC tries to use the cliche bad cop concept to justify your character shooting and arresting innocent bystanders, taking drugs for special abilities, and frequently using many vulgarities in the process. It is easy to understand why certain countries would have banned this game, but my country would have done good to ban this game for being so lousy.

Story

NARC switches between two cops, Marcus Hill (DEA) and Jack Forzenski, the nephew of the police chief who plays the cop who bends the rules. The two were former partners and have to team up again to investigate a new drug on the streets called liquid soul. This stuff somehow brings the dead back to life and the two cops will split up to go track down who is making the stuff. The new story has nothing to do with the arcade game so after finding out this major disappointment I had no big interest in actually ever completing this game. A lot of the missions in the game diverge far away from the plot of the story and half the time you have to keep your reputation as a good cop in check. Let's just say I was not motivated at all by the story of this new version of NARC.

Game Play

For whatever reason, Midway decided to use the flawed engine that created State of Emergency and pack into NARC. Well, maybe it is the same engine, or maybe it isn't, but one thing is for sure, this game plays and looks weird. There are two things that make this game weird. First, you cannot venture inside any buildings. Second, no one else can go inside any buildings. So you are stuck out on the streets having to go from objective to objective to complete everything from turning in evidence at a drop box to taking out snipers and thugs while pedestrians mill about like it is Wall Street at noon. There are so many people walking around in this game it will make your head spin! Most of the time you are free to go blasting away at pedestrians with your pistol that has unlimited ammo, but mostly they are there for you to search for drugs and cash. There are very few cars that drive around and I can easily tell you that a car is going to be either a taxi, van, or squad car and you cannot drive around or enter any vehicles. You can take drugs you find for added abilities, but at a cost to your reputation as a cop. But hey, smoking marijuana is fun on this game. You can walk around in slow motion to the tune of some hippy drag music or take some ludes and be able to zoom. I doubt this is what these drugs actually do. The objectives go from insane to progressively far-fetched and after a while the game gets pretty difficult. Of course there are bonus items to collect so it is fairly quick to find the special place where you can unlock the classic NARC, which is why I bought this game in the first place.

Sound/Graphics

NARC would maybe have had better success as a game on the Playstation or N64. The graphics are about that bad. The characters are quite generic and totally out of place. There are about six types of bystanders and they flood the streets of whatever city you are in like it is Mardi Gras. I would almost contend that there are more bystanders milling about on this game than there are on Hitman: Bloodmoney in the Mardi Gras mission. Anyway, everything you run into is very generic, but the music and voiceovers are surprisingly good. I can't say I particularly liked the music, but it makes a game better to use real artists sometimes. Of course the new NARC is missing the old theme, which really rocked, but instead you get a lot of urban music along with classic drug tunes like “Smoke Two Joints” and whatever that other song is about the pusher. The bystanders are once again way out of place as women will scream from out of nowhere and for no reason.

Replay Value

NARC does get a 10/10 in this area from me simply because you can unlock the original arcade version of NARC. This is the only reason I got this game in the first place to remember the nostalgia, but the Xbox version of NARC is still a linear game so you would only replay this game to find some bonus items. NARC lasts a long time as the game gets progressively more difficult.

Final Recommendation 4/10

There are easier ways to get hold of the classic version of NARC and since this new version of NARC has little value to it, I do not recommend this game for anybody for any reason. NARC is a game that looks like it was planned, developed, and produced by a combination of adolescent urban youth and stoners.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/05/09

Game Release: NARC (US, 03/22/05)