18-Mar-2005 NARC is the grandson of an insignificant 1980s arcade game of the same name that pivots on a rhetorical moral dilemma: who do you want to play as - the rule-abiding good cop in his freshly-ironed regulation slacks, or his lady-shagging, drug- munching, fun-having bad guy counterpart? It's like being asked which you prefer: 'chicken or death?' Just to clarify, you play as the bad cop.
NARC's A-list voice actor Michael Madsen is heavily involved, as is Hellboy's Ron Perlman. Yet even the combined growl of this pair of Hollywood middleweights isn't enough to draw the spotlight away from NARC's real headline attraction: that you get to take drugs. Drugs being bad for you, of course. In your capacity as a member of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) sent to investigate new narcotic, 'Liquid Soul', you'll come upon all manner of other substances ('substances' being another way of saying drugs; drugs being bad for you...) that you can either hand in, or take yourself, even though it's bad to take drugs.
One possible side-effect of drug abuse (drug abuse being the very worst way of taking drugs; taking drugs being very bad for you) is that here, unlike in say, either the film or music industry, the more drugs you take, the less people respect you. So it is that those players who smoke until they self-soil themselves will be suspended from their role as DEA officers until such time as they've proved to their superiors that they're fit to return to work.
Fight through the greenish fug of ganja smoke and you'll stumble over a moral in there somewhere: that if you take loads of drugs you won't get permanently sacked, but you might get temporarily suspended for a brief period of time. Honestly, where would we all be without the moral compass of video games? Floating along the River Thames in multiple bin bags, probably.
There is slightly more to NARC than the whole drugs thing, though. We've been promised an innovative, golf-style control interface for busting crims, whereby you're required to stop a fast-moving gauge at precisely the right moment to get the cuffs on, along with a selection of multiple endings. Thankfully, it looks like it'll be more than just another Daily Mail-baiter.
PSW Staff
// Overview
Verdict
Coming out at a crack-habit-friendly price of 19.99, NARC won't usher in a new dawn of electronic entertainment, but it might liven up an evening or two.
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