To understand what's going on in Drug Wars you must delve deeper into the convoluted plot which broken down equates to something like this: NYC floods, rich people need blue collar workers to build giants towers, clones - which are dubbed Neanderthals in the game - are developed to take on these back-breaking tasks, buildings are completed, clones are no longer required and then the Mafia gets their hands on said clones and trains them to battle in a high-stakes deathmatch arena (because bum fighting is so passe) for sport.
Talk to the hand.
But enough about the back story, the game sees players take on the role of Matteo, a cloned being who has been bio-mechanically tweaked by an enslaved scientist working for New York's criminal element - aka the Merchants of Brooklyn, or MOB for short - to be a superior adversary to his cloned peers. Much like Rose McGowen's machine gun leg upgrade in the film Planet Terror, Matteo comes equipped with some tricked-out hardware in the form of a mechanical hand which can be upgraded to transform into a variety of destructive weaponry. Essentially the aim of the game is to escape from the battlegrounds of the deathmatch arenas and escape into the city to let Matteo go to town on anyone that stands in his way.
As Matteo progresses through the game, he'll be able to gain access to a host of new weaponry which will give you quite a collection of short-range and long-range (which often contain scopes) weapons. One of the first things that players will notice is that most of these weapons are quite visceral in what they can accomplish. Players will find themselves shooting hypodermic needles out of one gun while then being able to switch to another which fires long metal shafts into victims. If it's gory, then the creators of this title have probably put it in here. One of the nice twists that the game offers is that it gives the player many options to choose from in regards to combat. If your destructive right arm arsenal doesn't take your fancy, players can use objects in the environment to lay the smack down on their enemies. This includes regular objects such as rocks or chairs, as well as more unusual choices such as allowing you to beat up an adversary with the bludgeoned, decapitated skull of one of his peers.
Please don't make us play anymore!
Drug Wars setting falls somewhere between dark comic book city and The Fifth Element in that it promotes a strong futuristic feel. As you wander through the game environments you'll be fairly convinced that these sections of the game look the part, though if you get too close to an item you'll see all of it's imperfections in full glory. Where the game's crude texturing becomes quite jaggedly obvious. Though we must give credit where it is due, as Paleo has constructed a quite appealing mix of indoor and outdoor environments. What is particularly great about them is that you never find yourself wandering in circles, trying to work out how to move along in the game.
The biggest detractor from the title is that is is absolutely riddled with clipping, frame rate and an odd assortment of other graphical gremlins which severely detract from the game. The best way to combat some of these issues is to play the game in windowed mode, but how many gamers like to use windowed mode in this day and age?
Somebody shoot me.
If the short single-player campaign (you'll clock it in around four - five hours) doesn't do anything for you, it's highly likely that you won't get much out of the multiplayer side of things - particularly since its a challenge in itself to actually find a server running. But if you do manage to get a game off the ground, you'll be treated to the usual gamut of multiplayer deathmatch variants, though as the game's name suggests, these will be skewed towards a drug motif.
Overall, there isn't much on offer to sway gamers other than over-the-top graphic violence in Drug Wars. Unfortunately, the good aspects of the game are far outweighed by the bad, bad, crashing bugs. Those looking a cheap piece of gory entertainment to wile away a few hours are probably better off picking up a slasher flick from the local video store - at least you can take it back when you don't want it anymore.
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