Starsky & Hutch

Frankly, the light gun and cooperative play turn an otherwise mediocre game into a pretty darn good one.

While the game suffers from minor technical flaws and repetitive gameplay, it does something legitimately new with its TV show concept.

It’s not a "Grand Theft Auto" or "Driver" killer, with very little depth outside of some unlockables, but the two player cooperative mode is an entertaining way to kill an afternoon or three.

If I were going to suggest something it would be to add a bit more gameplay depth. Just driving around and constantly shooting your gun really doesn't cut it these days.

Average/below average across the board, with no real elements to keep gamers interested after a few levels.

There are loading times that I wouldn’t have thought exist in this day and age, and the graphics are nothing exceptional. Dialogue is bad, the sound is bad 70’s pastiche but the guy who did the cut-scenes deserves a big fat raise.

Though the single-player mode is a drag, Starsky & Hutch features a great two-player mode that fuses aspects of Driver with Time Crisis by having one player ("You be Starsky!") drive using a steering wheel peripheral and the other player ("I'll be Hutch!") shoot with a light-gun. It makes for great co-op gameplay.

It isn't a great game, and it quickly becomes redundant, but it's a guilty pleasure you can get for cheap.

Two dorks driving around in an incredibly ugly and generic city chasing bad guys with laughable AI doesn't qualify as good entertainment. [Oct 2003, p.136]

An average driving-shooting game at best. It's got a little hook, the TV ratings concept, which works well and gives the game some lift. But after two or three missions, you'll find the range of missions is incredibly small, the gameplay is overly simplistic, and the style of graphics and dialog to be more of an annoyance than a cult bonus.

What really brings this game down is the sub-par graphics, terrible framerate and fairly poor voice acting that eliminates any interest in the plot.