Narco Terror

Remember what Liam Neeson did to the bad guys when they kidnapped his daughter in Taken? Deep Silver takes the delight to put you in a similar situation, only this time you aren’t much of a tactical assassin, rather gunning down everything coming your way. Top-down shooters can be horribly dull if they don’t have a good balance between the surroundings and controls, but Narco Terror does just enough to cross that line. Though when it comes to other elements such as the single-player campaign, or the difficultly modes, there is much to criticize. Luckily, Narco Terror is more of a co-op twin-stick shooter and does enough justice to the genre.

You take control of ex-special-ops agent Rick Quinn, who’s tracking down his daughter after she’s kidnapped by a dangerous drug cartel. It gets worse when he findshis ex-partner Jay is behind this whole thing. Since he is more a man of arms than hands, he decides to annihilate and bring chaos to thecartel. There are many similar sights that old-school players will come across in Narco Terror. Exploding barrels and helicopters, gunning down wave after wave of bad guys, passing through rainforests only bring memories back from the 80s.

The game is fairly simple: move and shoot! Players will repeat these actions throughout the entire game during both single-player and co-op modes. To break the monotony, changes in action such as switching up weapons and ammunition, and camera angles take place in several occasions. The campaign contains 12 stages and only lasts for a few hours, while the co-op provides non-stop fun for a day. Both the single-player and co-op gameplay take place in a single screen, only difference between the characters is their appearance in different colors when playing cooperatively. This gets a little confusing at the beginning with two Rick Quinn shooting and you don’t know which one is yours, although it doesn’t last too long. If not a player wants to unlock an achievement, it’s highly unlikely for someone to go back and play the single player campaign, while dropping in/out in co-op with friends can be fun for unlimited times.

While the characters and the story still remain as the most vital features, numerous weapons to unlock add more to it. At the beginning players are only limited to use pistol, but eventually unlock a range of shotguns and machineguns. Throughout the stages these weapons can be upgraded by spending money. There are stages where both short and long ranged weapons can come handy. There are bosses to encounter at end of each stage, and if these weapons aren’t upgraded, it’s harder to deal with them. While moving ahead through a linear path players will come across to wave of enemies aimlessly popping up from buildings and warehouses. These enemies such as the drug dealers, ninjas, tanks are pretty easy to take down if continued shooting without pause, though at times players will have to dodge a few bullet waves from getting killed. Gameplay at the beginning is exciting but the repeated sights of enemy waves shortly make it dull. Though having a friend for playing together is a complete different scenario.

Presentation wise, Narco Terror reaches a respectable status. All the characters both good and bad are illustrated in a realistic manner while they are easily distinguishable even in a crowded scenario. Pile of barrels, cars lying on the roads, buildings and warehouses are all portrayed in a sensible manner that seems fitting with the story. If weren’t for some graphical glitches, it could’ve been a flawless presentation. On the other hand voice acting and the sound effect felt average. These features, however, don’t sway the game much whist players hardly get time to pay attention to what’s playing at the background.

Besides the nonstop co-op fun, the game has its setbacks as well. There are sudden glitches during the gameplay that make players get stuck within more than a few scenarios. Also, lack of direction pointing towards the end of each level causes confusion. Especially in the single-player campaign, it’s easy to get lost in a map and tricky to figure which way to move forward. Though none of these take place in the co-op mode making my assumption more sensible for Deep Silver’s intention of delivering this as a multiplayer title. Difficulty level, however, makes me concerned. All the levels are pretty easy to beat including the bosses. And there’s no way to raise the difficulty level to a higher ground to make the play more challenging. If it isn’t for the leaderboard and achievements, players would have to reason harder to play it multiple times.

In the end, it’s safe to say that Narco Terror is still a fun game to play, even though it doesn’t add anything extraordinary to its genre. There’s nothing inspiring about it, but at the same time no reason for the fans of twin stick shooter to avoid when the price tag is very reasonable. You may not remember playing this game forever, but without doubt you will enjoy while playing it.

Sarwar Ron, NoobFeed @SarwarRon