If there’s one thing I love more than gaming, it’s watching a cheesy 80’s action film. So you can imagine the glee I felt while approaching Narco Terror, a game that appeared to take everything I loved about 80’s action movie, and throw them together in the form of a twin-stick shooter. Filled with cheesy one-liners, explosions and crazy drug dealers, Narco Terror is a game that solely focuses on supplying a constant stream of fun. How long does the game’s appeal last, though? Not long enough, unfortunately.
Sticking to the conventions of 80’s action flick, the plot only seems to exist in order to give you an excuse to embark on a killing spree across South America. You play as an agent sent in to stop a shipment of drugs, and that about sums up the game’s narrative, as it doesn’t get any deeper than that. There’s some cliché dialogue thrown in that can be quite humorous (largely thanks to the cheesy voice-acting), but the game could have really benefited from a deeper story, with more engaging characterisation and development.
On the other hand, while you’re ploughing through hordes of angry drug dealers with your weapon of choice, you don’t really care that the story is lacking. That’s because you’re having too much fun to even notice. There’s not a great choice of weaponry on offer; you’re limited to a pistol to begin with, with more guns added to your inventory as you progress, until you finally unlock the mini-gun. As you progress, you’re able to spend the money you’ve earned to upgrade your weapons to fire faster and over a greater spread. This comes in handy, as the game becomes a lot more difficult during the last few levels, at which point you’ll have hopefully amassed enough money to upgrade your arsenal.
To earn the cash needed to increase your firepower, you’ll have to track down the collectibles dotted about each level, as well as blow up everything you can see on screen, which starts to feel repetitive a few levels in. As it is, you’ll be unlikely to fully upgrade any of your weapons in a single playthrough of the game’s campaign, as the upgrades become ridiculously expensive as you progress through the upgrade trees.
Quite often you’ll find yourself surrounded by enemies. In these situations, it’s best to use explosions to thin the ranks a little. Throughout the game, there are countless opportunities to lure enemies into the range of an exploding vehicles or a handily placed flammable barresl. Although explosions are the best way to thin out a large crowd of foes, all of your standard weaponry come supplied with an infinite supply of ammo, which is helpful against the tides of enemies that throw themselves at you. There are weapons, however, which only have a limited supply of ammo, such as the laser rifle and the flamethrower. These are the most useful at dispatching enemies, but seem to be expended as soon as you pick them up. This is particularly annoying in the case of the laser rifle, which proved to be an incredibly fun and effective method of crowd control. Unfortunately, combat is let down by the twin-stick controls; you’ll sometimes find yourself in the middle of a gunfight, shooting slightly to the left or right of your enemy as you frantically waggle the sticks to cause some damage. This can cause some frustration, as it may lead to you becoming overwhelmed, and lead to your character’s death.
Between some missions, you’re taken out of combat on the ground and forced to fight by air or sea. Despite not happening often and being quite brief, these sections offer a change in pace that helps bridge together missions, whilst also offering you a relief from the intense ground battles. That’s not to say the aerial and nautical missions aren’t furiously frantic; often you’ll find yourself struggling through a haze of rockets and gunfire, dodging from left to right. Without breaking stride, you’re provided with a nice change of pace from the main campaign, and allowed you to catch your breath, whilst still managing to keep the game’s frantic nature.
On a whole, the game isn’t too challenging; you can breeze through the campaign in a single afternoon. The only challenge comes toward the end of the game, where the last few levels offer an unforgiving spike in difficulty, as the areas become more cramped and filled with more enemies. The constant explosions and sudden appearance of enemies can be quite disorientating, as you’ll quickly become swarmed and find yourself dying repeatedly on the same section. This raises another problem; the checkpoint system. Quite often I found myself surrounded by a swarm of enemies, at which point the game would decide to set a checkpoint. I’d die soon after, and the checkpoint would respawn me in the midst of a gunfight with very little health, leading me to die over and over again. If it wasn’t such a mess, the difficulty on such sections might be endearing. As it is, it’s incredibly frustrating, almost to the point of being game-breaking. Up to this point, Narco Terror is an incredibly fast-paced game, and it’s just a shame the pace is broken by constant deaths and spikes in difficulty.
Narco Terror is definitely a game that should be played with a friend. Alone, it becomes a chore as you slog through enemy after enemy, dying again and again. During co-op, you can be revived at the press of a button, easing the difficulty and providing you with a less repetitive experience. However, the camera tends to follow the main player, and can lead to the other player being boxed into a corner. Despite this unfortunate problem, multiplayer is definitely the way to go, assuming you have a friend who also owns the game, as finding a game online isn’t particularly easy.
Graphically, the game looks surprisingly good. The environments and locations look great, and the character models look just varied enough to get away with it. There are some moments, however, when an enemy would slide through a piece of foliage, or would completely disappear through a seemingly solid wall. Screen-tearing and problems with the frame-rate often interfere with gameplay, and it’s bugs like this that break the immersion, and take away from an otherwise good-looking game.
On the whole, Narco Terror is an enjoyable game that will get your adrenaline flowing, but is ultimately let down by numerous technical and difficulty issues, with an unfortunately short playtime and little replay value. Done differently, this could have been a great game counted amongst the greatest downloadable games available. Unless you have a friend that also has the game, it’s not really worth playing, and will steadily chip away at your sanity.