By now you’ve probably heard abit of the so called “controversy” surrounding this game.
This game, where you can use drugs as “power ups”, has been doing the rounds amongst cable news personalities who all have criticized it’s drug aspects and spent hours talking about it… which is more time than the 0.00 hours these same cable news personalities spent PLAYING the game in question!
Somehow I can’t take anyone seriously who can’t sit down and play the thing they’re criticizing! It’s like they went online, read the reviews of critics who probably actually went through the legwork to play the game (unlike these jokers) and just added their own bias to the other reviewers hard worked reviews.

But I’m not a lazy cable news personality, I actually play the games I review (except for NRA Varmint Hunter & YourselfFitness but those reviews pretty much wrote themselves)… so you don’t have to.
And there isn’t a game I can tell you not to play more than NARC, the game where dropping pills or smoking reefers for power ups is only the beginning of the suckiness in this game.

The streets of your city are being flooded by a brand new drug, Liquid Soul, which seemingly has been developed by the Umbrella corporation since it tends to bring dead punks back from their grave… well, actually mind you the punk isn’t dead yet when he shoots up, so it’s more like a “wardrug” that kicks the dying body into overdrive so the punk has a last chance to extact bloody vengeance on it’s enemies before the body seems to burn out.

That’s where you come in. Playing as two characters (a black DEA officer and a white guy who is a detective that just got out of probation) you’ll comb the streets looking for clues on the drug, only to find that cops in your own precient are in on this scheme involving Liquid Soul and other drugs.
Ah, yes, the drugs in this game. If you only base your opinion on what you heard from the news medias then you’d think that your characters are evil and they only sell/take drugs all the time… wrong!
Fact of the matter is you can walk a fine line between the Light Side and the Dark Side of drugs!
You can choose NOT to take drugs, you can choose not to sell drugs, you can dump all your drugs off at the police station drop box and be done with them… and really, in this game you don’t need to do/sell drugs!
The perps are not that much of a problem to deal with, so why bother popping a pill when a little solid shooting work can do wonders on knocking out the enemies. Sure, sometimes it gets a little hectic and it looks like you’ll need the crutch of a drug hit, but considering you’ve blazed through far harder shooters in your life without a crutch like drug power ups you won’t be needing them here.
Did you need drugs to get through Halo 2? Half Life 2? Resident Evil 4? Doom 3... Oh, wait, maybe your character does take drugs since it explains why he’s not capable of duct taping a simple flashlight to a rifle!
As for selling? You’ll get more money if you keep a perfect cop rating (not hard really if you think about it) and arrest drug dealer after drug dealer. Once you make an arrest the dealer drops money and drugs, same as other criminals you arrest even to the point of the useless criminals which means you can make a lot of money by just wandering the streets and busting crime. And sometimes you don’t even need to be doing the busting! Other cops will also make arrests as you wander the streets, leaving their perps and the “rewards” of the bust lying around for you to reap.

But what do you need money for? What are you saving up for? Nothing special so why go through the trouble of earning money (legally or illegally) since there isn’t much to buy other than using the money to meet a financial requirement in a level mission. Still there are a few things you can put that money of yours towards, though none of them involve a

college education or a trip to the Bahamas.
You can stock up on weapons from your friendly neighborhood arms merchant who sells from the back of a truck that moves randomly about town, but don’t worry about finding it since it’s the only large truck in this game you’ll find parked in odd places (if I remember right I think he‘s using a Postal vechile… since Postal Employees have been known to be rather well armed for their need to go… well… “postal“).
Then there’s health boosts that brings your health up to full (from the local pharmacy) and that’s about it.
You can’t solicit prostitutes (though you‘ll eventually run into a rather confused suicidal prostitute who wants no more “dick“… say what? What “dick“? Uh… more on that later…), you can’t buy food or drink, you can’t even buy “safehouses”! Nothing! So what’s the point of getting all weird selling drugs around town if you can’t do much with the money you make from selling said drugs!

Speaking of the town if you’ve seen the footage on this game you know it’s nothing special.
If the people at Midway was thinking Grand Theft Auto when they designed this town they got it wrong, especially since it looks more like you’re wandering the streets of a city similar to that in Predator : Concrete Jungle in this game… only Predator is a lot more satisfying than this game.
Speaking of which I have a pointless question to ponder… wonder what it’s like to be one of these people in games like this. Wandering the streets endlessly, walking in long circles seeing the same sights over and over again… like your walking an circular maze with absolutely no way out… strange. Do they know they’re wandering aimlessly for no good reason? Do they know their existences are meaningless? Do they?

And as for the “meaningless little” people who wander these streets trapped in a world they have no control over? Again you’ll find better in Grand Theft Auto (San Andreas) no questions asked. There are a few types and they seem to have the worse habits (probably stemming from the fact you seem to be living in a city full of clones). They wander aimlessly going nowhere fast. One female type is constantly having her purse stolen, while a certain male type is always falling over in the street drunk and/or stoned. And… oh, yeah… lest I forget it seems that everyone in this town needs a chiropractor in the worse way since they’re constantly making self adjustments to their spines by twisting their heads in odd ways over and over and over again which makes the most noticable cracking sound as they… stop it! Stop it you weird generic characters! Stop it!

Now about arresting people. Let’s say you decide to stick to the light side, and you need someone to arrest since you’re playing perfect cop here. What do you do? Where do you find perps to apprehend?
Arresting people is no problem since you seemingly are stumbling over guilty people left and right, so there’s lots of ways to earn a buck the honest law abiding way here.
Drug dealers are plentiful, so finding lots to bust and take money from is no problem. And don’t worry if you bust a lot of them, the game will make more… even to the point of having drug dealers standing a scant few inches from where you already have someone cuffed up as if they can’t even notice what happened to the guy in front of him. Sheesh! Pay attention, people!
You can also arrest drunks, protestors, rampaging citizens with guns, purse snatchers and prostitutes… ah, forget them though. Really. These women all stand in alleyways waiting for guys to come, and then they get paid for kissing -- deep full on passionate kissing. Sure, he gropes her butt while he’s giving her tongue but that’s about it, and last I checked it’s not a crime to kiss someone so why do you arrest them? I don’t know.
And thus we come back to the topic of the suicidial prostitute that had enough with “dick”s… uh, just how can you have too much “dick” in your life when you don’t have it in the first place? Nobody’s wandering

off for sex here, folks! It’s all kissing and cuddling so where does she come off like that? I don’t know!!
Another pointless question for a pointless game, one that both has no answer and requires no answer.

As for the arresting? Well once you arrest them (at a perfect 100% cop rating you’ll have most criminals surrendering quickly without a fight) they seem to hang around abit. Hang around abit? Yeah, you can pass the same perp you handcuffed over and over again for several minutes until somebody FINALLY picks them up -- which takes forever. What’s with the pick-up rates of criminals here anyway!

Besides the large amount of drugs (you could open up your own illegal pharmacy with the drugs you find) you can also locate hidden “Stashes” of drugs… yeah, another attempt to be GTA and failing.
If you find all 25 stashes in the USA level you can unlock the classic NARC Aracde game, but why bother other than to justify wasting $20 on this game! If you really, really, really want to play the classic NARC arcade game then go buy the classic Midway collection of games featuring NARC! It’s a better spend of your $20 and you’ll get games you’ll actually play!

Worlds? There are two levels, USA & Hong Kong, to explore in this game (’cause everyone knows you can‘t have a drug dealing game without Hong Kong -- unless you‘re the people who made Project : Snowblind then your use for Hong Kong has absolutely nothing to do with mind altering happy pills, rolled up reefers or mind warping white powder in tiny bags)… and that’s it. Even the levels in the game lack any real bang to them! Sheesh! How boring!

What else can I say about this game that I haven‘t said yet? Oh, right, the “music”. The last nail in the death coffin of suck this game is being buried in. There are only a few tracks of music, each worse than the last… which may mean the next point is actually merciful if you ask me. Each music plays for abit and then… what is that sound? Why it’s the sound of silence! Apparently half of the time the music just cuts out or quickly jumps from track of music to another track of music as you wander from area to area in your “town”, sometimes leaving you in silence until the next godawful track of generic bad@&& music kicks in (or suddenly dumping another worthless song on you as you play without warning).
That, by the way, is so screwed in my opinion. One more nail in the suck coffin.
Let’s face it! You could trip over better games than this! You’d be better off spending your hard earned money on something that‘s actually fun and worth owning, not this bad excuse for a game. And if people would stop listening to the media outlets of the world and be compelled to buy this tripe because they said it’s bad, you’d realize that (for once) they’re right and this truly is BAD (but not for the reasons they have laid out since finding this much suck in a game requires patience, of which they have little of).
That’s that. Let’s just break this down already before I rant on further.

NARC the Breakdown
What’s Hot?
What do you mean “What’s Hot”? There is absolutely nothing “hot” about this disaster of a game!
Nothing! Yes, despite the whining and nagging of the news media there is no need to even experiment with this game since it sucks so! In fact I blame the news media for making this game more “hot” than it should be, since they said “no“ to this game without a good reason! Once they went on the air and told people how bad this game is they probably rushed out and began buying it, which just blows in my opinion.
Sure, sure, sometimes the news media gets it wrong and they badmouth a good game (GTA : San Andreas being at the top of my memory list of games they’ve undully bad mouthed) so the attention it gets post their badmouthing is actually justified, but sometimes they get it right on the money only they don’t tell you the whole story, which is

wrong in my opinion since this game is worth avoiding, only they didn‘t get about to telling you that (yes) this games sucks, and why it sucks.

They must have told you about the drugs, but what they neglected to tell everyone is how bad the game is in every other sense other than the silly drug thing, which is nothing more than an attempt to shield the player from the fact that the entire game is one long suck fest that isn’t worth the time or effort to play.
So take it from me. I played this game and it’s dull. Go buy Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas.
Buy Prince of Persia : Sands of Time, Midway’s 2nd Classic Collection featuring NARC the Arcade game, Ratchet & Clank (original) + Ratchet & Clank : Going Commando + Rachet & Clank : Up Your Arsenal, or Medal of Honor : European Assault… something other than NARC!

What’s Not?
This game. It’s no good, but I think I drove that point home to you in this review.
What, is Midway now the “home” of disgruntled 13 year olds who churn out games moreso to irk parental groups and politicians than for solid gameplay? Do I really want to buy a game that’s more immature and “controversal” than solid gameplay? No way. Midway? For the love of gaming give me a good game, not one that makes parent groups piss themselves and makes news media like FOX News & CNN throw hissy fits. Hell, if it’s going to make a ruckus at least be a GOOD game, like Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas which is good and should be played even if certain groups complain about it.
And no, I don’t want you pointing at an alien busting shooter like Area 51 starring David Duchovny in an attempt to sell me on it… just thinking of that man’s voice acting makes me sleepy… zzzz….

Then again what did you expect (of NARC, not David Duchovny)! Look at the maker of this game! Point of View, the same people who churned out that god awful “Scorpion King” video game starring “The Rock”! The god awful game based on the god awful movie whose god awful music received an unnecessary second life as soundtrack music in, of all games, Prince of Persia : Warrior Within! I don’t know what POV was thinking when they made this, but whatever they were thinking it wasn’t a good thought! This game is no San Andreas, hell it isn’t even a GTAIII or a Vice City! It’s lousy, it’s boring, you’ll get bored of this before you even get 25% through the game, you’ll regret spending your hard earned money buying OR renting it! It’s just no good! So don’t go buying this game! Go get a better game since this isn’t worth neither your time nor your money in checking it out, let alone purchasing it!

Moments to Remember?
Now the game would have to be good for it to be memorable, wouldn’t it! So… hmm… I know!
I’ll always remember those fashionably dressed women of the night who deep kiss their “johns” for money.
So why are we arresting them again? Is kissing a crime? No it isn’t so stop doing that!
And how does that one prostitute get exposed to “dick” from all that kissing? Explain that to me!
Maybe she has a hatred of Richard something… who knows.

What to Ignore?
This game. Go find something better.

Overall?
All the controversy in the world won’t make this game any better.
If you’re buying this because it’s so called “controversies” and the ability to use drugs as power ups, or sell drugs? Then you are selling yourself short. Even those few things aren’t enough to make an unplayable piece of junk like NARC worth renting, let alone owning! And even at $20 per game you are paying way too much for this piece of trash that shouldn’t even be sitting on your desk as a rental!

Go get something better! There are a ton of games out there that surpass NARC AND worth $20 which deserves your attention more than this inferior piece of gaming waste. Play those instead, NARC is something you let other people rent so you can focus your attention on the good games. Nuff said.