NARC

"Could've Been So Much Better"

NARC was a pretty good arcade game back in the day. So naturally when Midway announced a remake coming out on the consoles I was pretty excited about it, especially when they announced it was going to be twenty dollars. Instead of the fun of the original NARC what do we get? A rip-off of the on-foot segments from Grand Theft Auto 3.

Story: (4/10)
Basically if you've ever seen any cop movie that involves drugs you've heard this story before. You play as an undercover narcotics officer named Jack. But Jack's past is filled with sorrow. Once when he was undercover he became addicted to drugs. His partner Marcus disillusioned by Jack's weakness left the police force to join the DEA. Fast forward a few years. Jack's back on the force, and is helping the DEA bust some drug kingpins. The story is filled with cliches and doesn't really do much in the way of originality.

Graphics: (4/10)
The graphics in NARC are not good. The drug effects in the game are sort of nice, but that's about it. The environments in the game look bad (really dark and muddy), and looks like it should have been put on the Dreamcast instead of the Xbox. The character models in the game are not good either. They look blocky and just plain ugly. I really haven't encountered character modeling this bad (and blocky) since Rockstar Games released State of Emergency.

Sound: (4/10)
This game has some pretty respectable aspects when it comes to sound in this game. The voice acting isn't half bad, it does pretty well by having people like Michael Madsen (Bob in Sin City), and Bill Belamy (Fastlane) do the voice overs for Marcus and Jack. Even the cops don't sound all that bad in this game. The soundtrack does have a lot of good songs on it. But it's not good because, whichever area your in it just plays one song over, and over, and over, and over. How many times do you need to hear the song "Pusherman"? Stay in one particular area for thirty or forty minutes, and you'll have the song memorized. Also the back of the box claims to support custom soundtracks, but when you go into options it doesn't let you switch songs. So your stuck listening to Pusherman (or some other drug oriented song) until you either stab your eardrums with a pencil, or go into options and turn the music volume down to zero.

Gameplay: (3/10)
Did the developers fall asleep while coding this game. It certainly seems like they did. The gameplay is just not fun. Basically all you do is you run around trying to bust drug dealers. Which is fun for the first two times, then it becomes boring. The missions in story mode are not innovative at all. Bust a few crooked cops, shoot drug dealers and drug makers, take some photos of gang leaders etc. etc. sounds easy right? Well in NARC it becomes an exercise in frustration. Because of the bad camera you'll barely be able to see anything. Most of the times it goes right behind you so it's stuck behind a wall. And the game requires you to do some roof jumping which is almost impossible. You'll be running to the ledge, and you'll hit the jump button, but because of a delay in the controls your character will fall off the roof and die. And on most of the photography missions the game is so stupid that when you take a picture of whoever you're supposed to photograph, and you have them in frame it says you didn't get the right picture. So you try jumping onto a different ledge to get a different angle but you fall of the roof and fail your mission. So you have to start over again. I ended up just sitting in that one space for TWENTY minutes before the damned thing said I completed the objective. Also the game has a "morality meter" which while it's an innovative idea, it just doesn't work. If you do something wrong, and get busted down to beat cop you can just arrest random civilians and get back on their good side. Also the enemies are just so stupid. You can snipe one of the criminals, and the guy standing two feet away from him will just keep standing there. Not worrying or anything, he just goes on standing around like an idiot.

If you're thinking about trying this game rent it. It's not worth the twenty dollar price tag, and renting it will save you the frustration of having wasted your hard earned money on this piece of crap. Or you could take that twenty dollars and buy Midway Arcade Treasures 2, instead and have a good version of NARC than this poor excuse of a game. Or you could just go and play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas instead.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/05