A television license isn't enough to save its insidious one-note game-play.
(-) you're just driving and shooting other cars the entire game; archaic visuals; frame rates chugs frequently; long loading times get in the way
The video game Stasky & Hutch is a contribution to the 1970's cop chase television show that made waves with its hippie action-packed attitude, where Hutch goes behind the wheel in their Ford Gran Torino and Starsky uses their .357 Magnum to take the evil crooks down to justice. This is telling, in fact during the entire game, you interactively carry out 18 actual episodes in three seasons, which to say the least stays true to the legacy of the series.
I'm sure you've heard that famous mantra, you can't judge a book by its cover. Most games out today can't be summarized so easily by looking at the cover, because there are always a ton more scenarios and opportunities that simply over run what just a cover art provides. It may seem like a difficult beat to chord with game developers, but in reality its their duty to us as consumers to offer more than we initially see in the game by simply repeating its name or looking at the cover. But I'm afraid Starsky & Hutch is one of those rare games that can be saw and understood in such a way. In brief, you'll be driving and shooting.
Your basic game-play will be moving on to different scenarios in a sequence unknown to anyone who hasn't heard much about the licensed television show, which giving this console generation will be close to all of us. So as you're mystified by what happens, it's worth pointing out to this game's credit that the story provided is actually decent if you actually pay attention. There are numerous crooks, some robbing gas stations in the Bay City Streets and others participating in other illegal acts, and its Starsky & Hutch's job as two cops to pursuit the cops and bring them down. The story unfolds in the form of basic but stylish cut scenes looking like a comic book insert, with no animation from the characters but plenty of transition on screen to show the action.
However, the game itself doesn't hold up so well. Remember that buzz in you ear about driving and shooting? Well, that's all you're getting here. You drive the car to a certain spot in the city marked on the mini-map, you find a criminal, then you begin a chase where you must shoot them with your gun until their life points are gone. With some missions having secondary objectives such as destroying some other car or wrecking something in the environment, this principle stays put through every mission. The fact that you're doing this over and over again is a problem all its own, but also your gun seems severely underpowered so it takes overly long, around ten minutes, just to destroy one car, which is a true shame since many missions have more than one enemy driver that you're supposed to take down. It's repetitive, it's aggravating, and most of all, just isn't any fun.
Even though the core gameplay doesn't suffice, at least the core driving component is decently fleshed out. The controls are responsive, accelerating with the X button and turning with the analog stick, and for the most part they're not at fault, that is until your right pointer finger starts to cramp for being locked at the shoulder button to repeatedly shoot enemy cars. The city you drive through is also appropriate large, with some ramps for crazy stunts, traffic to dodge, and destructible shops and buildings. However the target system does seem a bit off, because it can frequently change from car to car without input from you. This doesn't seem to be a big problem, because there are already some icons you shoot to boost stats like defense, speed, and offence, but in missions where you need to protect someone, its needlessly difficult to keep from shooting at them.
Starsky & Hutch isn't a criminally ugly game, but it does suffer from an overall lack of visual effort. Even though the cut-scenes look reasonably good, the game itself doesn't carry on the same art style, which would have greatly benefited it as an experience to the player. Instead, the cars are very simplistic colors with little to no detail, the environments are complex yet so lazy looking in terms of geometry, and the models of Starsky & Hutch themselves look very bland and bored, the same way you'll feel as you play. There's also no sense of speed, which is practically essential in most mission-based driving games, which is another spit in the face at anyone who plays. And even worse, the frame rate has frequent and severe problems that interfere with the game-play. For example, when you accidentally crash your car, there's a slow down. And when there's on screen text about a particular mission, the entire game takes a dip as if it was running in some kind of edited stunt cam. This can detract from your focus and at extremes disorientate you when you're about to make a quick decision, resulting in you crashing into something or losing a speeding criminal. And as low resolution as the visuals are, there is no excuse for frame rate suffers as bad as this.
Playstation 2 owners may be familiar with having the longest loading times to wait through, but judging from how light in content and production values that Starsky & Hutch is, it's both baffling and disappointing how long you'll be waiting. Even though forty seconds doesn't initially sound like a long time, it adds over time, and it is enough to hamper at your pace of the game.
And regarding a lack of content, Starsky & Hutch only offers two modes. There's your story mode, and also the somehow mislabeled free-roam mode. You would think that you could travel around and about Bay City Streets at your leisure, right? Not so much. You have access to the city, but you must find 5 or more hidden police badges hidden throughout the level in a time limit. Not only is this unnecessarily difficult, it also kills the feeling of ease that could come out of casually driving around to familiarize yourself with the surroundings. And just knowing that the game developers provided this feature while naming it something completely different, speaks volumes about the effort that was put into this game.
There's also the option to play co-op, where one player drives and the other shoots, but if you take this feature into account it sounds completely useless. Because two players can't always agree each split second when one needs to shoot, and that in turn leads to an overall slip in the game-play ability. More than anything it will cause arguments between you and your friend, so its better to just leave it un-used if you want to maintain your friendship. Just adding a standard two player feature where Starsky & Hutch drive separate cars and complete in races, shooting challenges, or busting crooks would have made more sense, but instead we're left with the co-op novelty. But sadly, it isn't much of a surprise considering the lack of effort in nearly every other principle in the game.
Overall, the only things Starsky & Hutch has going for it is its own television license and the game is technically playable. Pretty much everything else falls short. While fans of the 70's show will likely sink their teeth into this interactive alternative to their favorite show, even they will probably yearn for something else to do instead of shooting the same red car for fifteen minutes. There's no fun to be had playing Starsky & Hutch.