Time Crisis 4 Review

Released in Japan and America at the tail end of 2007, it has taken a few months for Time Crisis 4 and its GunCon 3 to reach European shores. That aside, it has taken even longer for the game to jump out of the arcades and onto home consoles, as the original arcade version was released way back in June 2006.

Of course, the arcade market is near extinct here in the UK. The only place you're likely to find arcade units these days are in seedy "casinos" filled with fruit machines, or motorway service stations with one ailing OutRun II module hiding in the corner. Gone are the days when every shopping centre had an arcade emporium where the resident pro, AKO, was victorious over any 11 year-old child who dared to spend 50p on "his" Daytona unit. It's no surprise at all, then, that the vast majority of people reading this review won't have played the arcade version of Time Crisis 4.

The game has been tweaked for the PlayStation 3 considerably. FPS sections have been spliced into the original on-rails levels of the 2006 arcade build in order to bolster the game's length. You can still play the arcade levels by themselves in a separate mode with all the traditional Time Crisis gameplay, but the main campaign features both the parallel arcade and FPS story-arcs. In order to make this FPS gameplay possible with the GunCon 3, Namco has placed an elaborate array of controls on the light gun.

A Stalwart PlayStation CONtroller

The first thing to consider with this console port is the GunCon 3 peripheral itself. Firstly, the Namco marketing team that landed on the name GunCon back in 1997 can't have been too bright. These days, with gun peripherals going the way of the dodo, this self parody of a name really does come into its own. The GunCon 3 feels tacky right out of the box and hardly inspires the same sense of gun-toting megalomania that its two predecessors managed to.

The main differences between the latest GunCon and the previous two versions on PS1 and PS2, are two analogue pads (one on a handle by the end of the gun's barrel and another at the trigger). These are occasionally used in the levels from the original arcade, but are much more significant in the additional FPS levels featuring Captain Rush. Additional shoulder style buttons underneath these analogue pads are responsible for secondary in-game commands such as reloading and weapon selection in the FPS levels, or glancing out of cover in the arcade sections.

It's the analogue sticks, though, that are particularly sub-par. They feel more plasticky than a romantic evening in with Joan Rivers, which puts them so far away from the Xbox 360 controller's textbook example of a thumbstick that they may as well send Microsoft a postcard. You might argue that such high quality analogue pads on the GunCon would be too difficult to manufacture, but the fact is that they make it impossible to perform smoothly aimed transitions between enemies, resulting in gameplay that frustrates beyond belief.

They do have one useful feature in the arcade levels' barricade sections though. In these sections you'll have to hold-off hordes of bad guys from a barricade, switching between various sides of the barricade to shoot at enemies from each angle. The game's tutorial advises you to point the gun off either side of the screen to switch from one side to the other, although doing this proves unsuccessful more often than not. Luckily, you can also flit through these views using one of the analogue sticks, which means you can actually complete these sections without having health unfairly taken from you. A benefit that shouldn't really be needed and isn't even a primary function of the analogue pad itself, but a benefit nonetheless.

Tired And Too CONventional

While there has been a GunCon controller for each of the previous two PlayStation consoles, and now the PS3 as well, one thing that gamers won't put up with on this particular next-gen of consoles is lacklustre content in their shooters. Previous ports from arcade shooters have been well known for their short lifespans (the main appeal being the 'arcade-like' graphics that gamers swooned over), but any shooter that is only 30 minutes to an hour in length simply won't cut the mustard these days. While this may have been permissible on the PS1, or during the early days of the PS2, it simply isn't now. This is another reason why arcade to console ports are becoming even more rare.

In order to combat this, Namco has tacked on some FPS levels to the arcade sections of the original version in order to pad out the game's content. These feature the burly looking Captain Rush, who is guided through levels over radio by the Cortana-esque Beth. She basically constitutes the all important love interest in the game as she swoons at the brave actions of the Captain [barf].

Anyway, as we've mentioned, the analogue sticks control both movement and camera controls, while the light gun obviously directs the targeting reticule. Not only are the analogue sticks poor at providing smooth 'look' controls, the FPS gameplay is also particularly jarring as well. Put it this way: if there was no light gun peripheral involved whatsoever, then this would be a particularly bad FPS game filled with dull set-pieces, bog standard AI, and unchallenging problem solving sections.

In fact, if these FPS levels had been released in a game five years ago, they still would've been sub-par, featuring a health system of med packs, a basic gun inventory (allowing Captain Rush to super-humanly carry five weapons at a time), and enemy NPCs that have a strange aversion to cover. Problem solving sections reach their most taxing when you're asked to find a key which opens a door, or jump on a series of well placed crates to reach a higher platform, while objectives include blowing up gun turrets [yawn] and taking down a helicopter by shooting at it with a machine gun. The GunCon 3 does manage to lift this wholly uninspiring FPS gameplay, at least providing some enjoyable gunplay at times, but it's simply not enough to make it feel vaguely enjoyable.

Government CONspiracy

Across the game's story you'll be attempting to take down a paramilitary organisation which has somehow got its hands on a top secret government weapon called Terror Bites (see what they did there?). These are hordes of insects that can be electronically controlled in some way or other, and you're faced with swarms of them at various scripted points. These sections are mainly in the arcade levels that have been ported from the original version back in 2006. In these levels, which run alongside Captain Rush's FPS story, you'd expect that the least you'd find is some solid, on-rails gameplay, but the developers have failed to even provide this.

You play these sections in a secret agent two-piece from the Europe Union's VSSE (ever heard of the organisation? Neither have we) who look like they're fresh off a hedonistic weekend along the French Riviera. Their antics constitute the traditional on-rails gameplay of the Time Crisis series, with its revolutionary cover system (at least, it was revolutionary back in 1995). Using the buttons on the GunCon 3 to pop in and out of cover, you can also switch between a range of weapons (pistol; shotgun; machine gun; grenade launcher) by shooting off the screen. Reloading occurs automatically whenever you're in cover and, from there onwards, players can expect the usual jack in the box style enemies of an arcade shooter.

The fundamental flaw in all of this is that most of the shots that enemies fire at you won't even take off any health. Their shockingly bad accuracy insures that, in some sections, you can remain out of cover, holster your gun, and watch as tens of bullets pass by you without making contact. The only time when you can have one of your life icons deducted is if you get in the way of the scripted attacks that occasionally happen. These might include rocket fire, a knife that's been thrown at you, or the occasional aggressive looking red bullet. Either way, all these events happen at the exact same point on any additional playthrough. While they're hard to avoid the first time, you'll soon get used to when and where these attacks happen. In other words, it's basically the same experience as playing the first Time Crisis only with better graphics and sound.

Speaking of which, the graphics are certainly more towards the previous generation of consoles than they are the next-gens. This is not particularly surprising given that the technology at the heart of the 2006 arcade game isn't anywhere near the impressive hardware array of a PS3 or Xbox 360. The textures and environments are slightly cleaner cut than your average PS2 game. Nevertheless, the finer touches of a next-gen game are simply absent from Time Crisis 4. For example, the water effects in the new FPS sections are limited to a uniform, lifeless texture that has more in common with a large blue conveyor belt than it does water. In other words, don't expect dense smoke effects or explosions that have been lovingly smeared with bright, HDR lighting effects.

The sound does capture the cheesiness that's inherent in an arcade game. With laughable voice-acting and soundtracks that appear to have been lifted from a dodgy infomercial, Time Crisis 4 certainly sounds like the mid 90s arcade games that it is attempting to emulate. However, given that the rest of the game is so poor, this sound only adds to your irritations more than it helps to provide an enjoyable trip down memory lane.

One final point: don't expect much more additional content other than the previously mentioned arcade and FPS sections (which are offered as a standalone arcade campaign, or as the whole saga including the FPS levels). There are a few mini-games and a 2 player offline co-operative mode for the arcade sections, but that's pretty much your lot. Oh, and one more thing: you'll also have trouble getting hold of a GunCon 3 that's sold separately (outside of the game bundle), which means that the 2 player co-operative offerings can only really be played with an additional SIXAXIS, and playing an on-rails shooter by controlling your crosshair with directional buttons is not fun.