NARC
You’ve come a long way from your arcade days, NARC. Has the journey been kind?
Tags: NARC Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Apr 25th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| NARC (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| First Person Shooter | No | ||
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I remember NARC. The old version, the one that appeared in the early to mid-1980s in videogame arcades across the US. The game took the gun-game shooter and cast you in the role of busting a load of drug dealers after the president has been kidnapped. This was during the Reagan Administration and their War On Drugs; culture cop William H. Bennett was the nation’s drug czar and – here’s the ironic though – the game carried a presidential seal and Bennett’s words of approval for the game’s anti-drug message, which he hoped would encourage kids to “Just Say No.”
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Fine, well, good. But that was about 20 years ago. These days, Bennett is the editor of the Book of Virtues educational reader and it’s not likely he’d want to put his signature to what this title has become. You are cast in the role of a detective who is around when a bust of a drug pusher goes bad; a lot of cops die and you track down and kill the scum in an alley. Only trouble is, you’ll probably end up shooting some innocents and fellow cops in the process, all of which, in action movie style, doesn’t get you suspended and put up on manslaughter charges, but instead just gets you busted down to beat cop until you “learn your lesson.”
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Of course, that’s just a clever way of entering you into the game’s brief tutorial mode, which is solid and illustrates the open design of the game; is one of your police instructors annoying you? You can shoot him, or beat him to death. Of course, again, all that befalls your new “cop-killing cop” character is that – you get busted down to beat-cop and have to go through training again. The novelty of beating up your instructors soon disappears when you realize you’re caught in a loop you can’t get out of or move beyond until you stop doing that.
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Once the game gets rolling, you are presented with an open-ended game play experience, allowing you to make choices. Want to be a law-and-order cop? You can do that. Want to be a Dirty Harry type? That’s doable also. Want to play with fewer morals than the scum you’re out to bust? That works. In essence, NARC is a game with no moral conscience; exercising restraint is completely up to you. Of course, to be effective in the game, you need a solid badge rating and if you “go evil,” you won’t have much of one, relatively quickly. That means it’s better to grapple and arrest a suspect than it is to shoot him – but if you want to shoot every bad guy that moves… well, the game engine leaves it up to you.
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The challenges before the gamer escalate with each new chapter, and if violence were the game’s only sin, it might still have a shot at the approval of former drug czar Bennett. But the open-endedness doesn’t end with who you can beat up. As a narcotics officer, you’ll periodically get access to various street drugs. What you’re supposed to do with them is drop them in a drop-box outside police HQ. But if you want, you can sample the product – fortunately, with somewhat realistic consequences. Although displayed in melodramatic graphics, the harder the drug you take, the higher the risk of injury or death to your character.
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So let’s review. You can be a straight arrow. Or you can become a cop-killing, drug-abusing corrupt cop on the take. Nah, I doubt Bennett would approve of such M-rated fare. Not that most gamers today would care, but I harp on it to demonstrate how much videogames and the perception of them have changed in the past 20 years. Back then, such games were so cartoony, a moralist Republican drug czar put the presidential seal and his personally signature of approval on NARC; now, the very existence of the game might make the same guy lose sleep at night.
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But in terms of game play, the real problem with NARC is that it’s not that great; while it aspires to be a sharp-looking Grand Theft Auto clone, NARC mirrors GTA’s moral vacuity without any of the depth or creativity of missions that GTA enjoys. The result is more like a traditional action game than GTA. That’s fine, but despite the presence of two real actors doing some of the voice work, the result is a much shallower game that only has its “nasty or good as I wanna be” content to fall back on. That’s not a lot.
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The graphics are also a mess; some might call it a style, but largely the game just features large, blotchy textures; simplistic – almost generic – locations; yawn-inducing overall design. On the upside, Midway is reintroducing NARC at a bargain price, only $19.95. That considered, if you’re old enough to handle the content (17 or older, by ESRB standards) NARC is actually worth checking out. Just don’t expect it to be the best action game you’ve played in years. Or months. Or even weeks, considering how many great games have been released lately.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ The open-ended game play that allows you to play as a crooked cop or a straight cop will appeal to some gamers. + The combat and arrest system is pretty easy to master. |
5.3 |
| What Doesn't | |
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— I’m not wild about any game that “lets gamers make the choice” when it comes to a sensitive topic like drug use. — Violence factor is pretty ramped up. — Graphics could be considered either stylish or not that great. I opt for “not that great.” |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Playing like a cheap version of Grand Theft Auto with the drug-abusing element of Deus Ex tossed in, NARC has evolved quite a bit since its 1980s-era arcade origins when it bore William Bennett’s seal of approval; I’m pretty sure the game would disturb him now. Too bad the game’s not good enough to make that worthwhile. | |
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Tags: NARC
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Apr 25th, 2005 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
