Not being much of an arcade addict the first I heard of Time Crisis was through a playstation magazine. Wow! A game with a gun. Cool! After reading the review, handing over lots of hard earned cash I decided to invest in the afore mentioned title. I have always wanted to find a game with a decent light gun ever since the one that came with my binatone games console which I had when I was about four years old broke. You know the console where you can play tennis, squash, football and "shoot the dot" but they all looked the same:- An arena with to white lines representing players and a white dot representing the ball and it went bleep bleep. Anyway back to Time Crisis. On arriving home I hooked up the gun, popped the disc in, powered up, aligned my weapon and got into "gun-toting hero" mode.
The plot isn't particularly innovative. Rachel, the daughter of the president has been kidnapped and you are Richard Miller an agent hired to get her back safe from the clutches of the evil Sherudo Garo. Gun loaded you're off on your mission and straight into the thick of the action. The game moves along nicely as our hero shields himself behind anything available and pops up to unload a round into the advancing enemy. Once the immediate area is clear he will advance to the next safe spot where he will duck again and pop up to pump the next lot full of lead. The name "Time Crisis" is given because each stage is up against the clock so you can't hang around lining up each shot for ten minutes because once the clock runs down you have failed your mission and Rachel gets it (so to speak).
The graphics are apparently very close to it's arcade counterpart, and the sound is typical adrenalin pumping action music combined with obligatory gunfire noises and shouts and screams. Where Time Crisis comes into its' own is through the light gun. It is awsomely accurate and really makes the game something special. I really felt like Arnie as I came out from behind the chair, rolled across the living room floor and er... was told to stop being stupid and come and get my dinner. Seriously though the way that the bad guys legs buckle if you kneecap them or as they tumble out of far away windows as you shoot them between the eyes is very good and makes the game real fun. Although the game is fairly easy to complete there is a bonus for being a Playstation owner. There is a full new episode which takes place within a hotel used as a smokescreen to conceal dodgy dealings. Once again you are assigned to get to the bottom of it. This episode also has multiple directions to go in depending on the time taken and the accuracy of your aiming which decides which was the story pans out. Very neat.
A very smart looking game visually with alot of detail spent on the way your enemies die depending on where you shoot them. If you've played the arcade then the graphics are supposed to be not quite as good but this apparent lack is to let the game flow at the same sort of speed as it's arcade counterpart.
As you check the clock and it is ticking down the dramatic soundtrack sort of spurs you on and makes you go that little bit quicker and apart from the mayhem of gunfire, shouting and explosions there isn't much to the spot effects.
Had this game have been released without or with a poor quality light gun it wouldn't have been worth writing home about, but the accuracy of the Namco GunCon is unerring and really makes the game. It's just a shame that you are stuck with the same weapon all through the game when your deceased enemies are leaving behind AK47 assault rifles and bazookas which you can't pick up. Also, a two player game a la Operation Thunderbolt would have made the game truly amazing but who knows...there's always Time Crisis 2.
