Time Crisis 3

"Nothing special, but a lot of fun."

The Time Crisis series has always been looked upon as the series that puts you in the heart of the action with nothing but your soldier wits and your guns, and this has obviously been an effective strategy, otherwise Namco wouldn't have made two sequels.

Story - 7/10

The light gun game has never been big on story, and the same applies for time crisis. The Zagorias army has taken over the island of Astigos in an attempt to become a single nation. A task force was sent in but they were captured, and the Zagorias army has now deployed tactical missiles! They have to be stopped, so two of the V.S.S.E.'s best agents were sent in to remove the threat: You play one or both of them, depending on whether you choose the one player or two player option. Riveting indeed.

Graphics - 8/10

The graphics are actually quite nice: The shadows and lighting are well done, the fire and explosion effects are polished. The faces are well mapped in the cut-scenes and you can really make out expressions. However, the classic downside is the in-game faces: During play, take a look at your partners face, or a bosses face. Very PS1, the graphics are somewhat flawed there. But in fairness, you aren't going to see faces often. It's a rarity, but it does drag the score down.

Sound - 8/10

The voice acting is typically melodramatic but not in a bad way: you can enjoy the comic book style heroes and villain's voices, and it will be quite fun. The music is well composed, but sometimes it is out of place: but I found that while playing it, the mood of the music greatly influences how you shoots: With relaxing music, you will shoot slowly, with quicker music, you will find yourself shooting a lot quicker. The music is generally nice though.

The gun shooting effects are ever so slightly lacking. They are good, but there is a distant, tinny sound about them that I can't quite put my finger on: The sound of bullet on metal, for example, or the sound of a grenade exploding. It is just... wrong, somehow. But The music and the voice acting still earns it an 8.

Game play - 8/10

Simplistic and slightly repetitive, but if the formula is fun to begin with then you are in for a bit of fun. Basically, you start behind a rock or whatever and then you will have to come out from behind cover to shoot the various enemies: some of them have throwing knives, grenades, some have got guns, some have got flamethrowers, and some are ninjas. So there is quite a variety of enemies.

Basically, you shoot everyone and then move to the next action point, where you shoot everyone again. This is fun, and playing it with a friend is even better, but there is some repetitiveness. To make it a little more exciting, it throws in "end of stage bosses". These bosses are suitably hard to beat, and you get a huge sense of satisfaction having beaten them. It follows the same formula as the rest of the game though: you have 40 seconds to take off a little of a bosses health bar and a little more to take off some more etc.

You have one life, and your life is four hits. Once you accumulate four hits, you're dead. But you will have a certain amount of continues to work with or "credits" as they are called: presumably something missed out during the adaption from the arcade.

The longevity of the main time crisis story is typically short: 3 stages, and 3 areas in each: all of these are relatively short: Only to be expected really as the games priority position is in the arcade. However, the longevity is increased by playing the game. If you get further than you have before, you unlock more credit. The more credit you unlock, the easier the game is to complete, so you will have to play the game over: It is virtually impossible to win the game with only the 4 credits that you start with.

Another thing that increases the longevity is the "rescue missions" and "crisis missions" These are unlocked after completing the game. In the rescue missions, you play as the games heroine, Alicia, and follow a parallel storyline as her. In this mode, an "upgrade weapon" is unlocked. Fire one of your four special weapons and hit people repeatedly and you will upgrade your weapon: speed of fire and accuracy will be affected: this works well as an encouragement to use the special weapons. Just a pity it isn't used in the main story.

The two player co-op version is basically the same game, but now the screen is two "pictures in pictures", rather than a normal horizontal/vertical split screen like most co-op games, making the game ridiculously hard to see. It is much better if you have an I-link, but having two light guns, two Play Station 2s, two screens and two copies of time crisis will be relatively hard, but if you can get it then the results are great.

Buy or rent?

BUY, definitely. It is a great experience and a light gun game is good for all the family. If you rent it, chances are you won't finish it, not the crisis and rescue missions anyway.

Overall

All in all, the light gun genre should be proud of this game: it is in my opinion the best time crisis yet and one of the best light gun games of all time.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/05