Game: "Narc"

Console: PlayStation 2; also available for Xbox

Developer/publisher: Point of View/ Midway

Genre: Action adventure

Number of players: 1

ESRB: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, strong language, drug abuse)

Premise: "Narc" focuses on two narcotics officers: Marcus Hill, a squeaky-clean officer dedicated to law enforcement, and his partner Jack Forzenski, who's trying to get his badge back after overdosing in a drug den. Together they puts tons of criminals behind bars ... as long as the temptation of drugs is kept at bay.

Game play: After the game's opening objective with Marcus is in the middle of a police shoot-out, you acquire missions at a police-station checkpoint. You will go through a short tutorial of the game, then get sent out on the streets. Your main target is to trace the source of a new drug on the market called Liquid Soul and find secret stashes of drugs spread around the city streets.

Your reputation on the force is indicated by the badge rating, which fluctuates according to your behavior. Arrests and turning in contraband raise it; illegal activity and attacking innocent pedestrians lower it. However, you can also take this game in a different direction by turning to the dark side and becoming a criminal by using/selling drugs and winning some quick cash in an illegal game of three-card monty. Choosing this direction will add an omnipresent objective for your character: running from the cops.

Good/bad: It is always night in this unnamed city, diminishing the story's realism. And a cluttered inventory system makes it unnecessarily difficult to quickly find and change items. The background music is also a bad thing. While the songs are good, there are only five or six, playing nonstop.

Tips: Collect all 25 secret drug stashes and you will unlock the 1988 arcade game "Narc," an ultra-violent, side-scroller game that features a cop using guerrilla tactics to blow away druggies and prostitute-killing clowns.

My take: "Narc" has " 'Grand Theft Auto' clone" written all over it: a map in the upper-right hand corner, the "secret stashes," third-person shooting and lots of other things. But that doesn't make the game any less fun to play. Video game purists will chomp at the bit to rip this game apart, but for the casual gamer "Narc" is a fun game to quickly run through — and at $20, it's a bargain.

Jeremy Castillo is a student at Windward Community College and editor of the college's newspaper, Ka 'Ohana.