Time Crisis 4 Review.

[Gabriel]

Time Crisis 4 is the latest installment of the Time Crisis series, a series which, in my opinion, sets the highest standard for light gun games. Sadly, that standard was not met this installment. While improvements from Time Crisis 3 such as multiple weapon types, and Project Titan such as shifting your shooting viewpoint, have been integrated into this fourth installment, the flavor of the game has been changed. To use an analogy, the older Time Crisis games are Classic Coke, and Time Crisis 4 is New Coke, which tastes like Pepsi. Of course, anyone who wants to drink Pepsi will drink Pepsi, and still won't care for New Coke. They want Classic Coke. I want my old Time Crisis back.

 

(As a side note, I liked New Coke, but let's just ignore that inconvenient fact as I proceed through the rest of the review.)

 

Historically, Time Crisis has been a light gun game which empahsizes methodical play. It's fast paced, but is based on split second decision making and relies on pinpoint shooting by the player. Virtua Cop used this same formula, and so did Silent Scope. But lesser light gun games like the overrated House of the Dead series or things like Carnival or Crypt Killer, simply adopt a philosophy of keeping the player shooting at the screen randomly and rapidly. Sadly, Time Crisis 4 has decided to go with this lesser formula. The entire Arcade mode of play can be summed up by a line from one of the characters therein, "Just hold the trigger down and keep firing." With this, Time Crisis 4 betrays its very nature and becomes the New Coke of videogames. Pepsi, please.

 

Luckily, there's the new FPS mode, which seems to be the meat of the game. Or is it? In this mode you control your movement and facing with the two analog sticks on the Guncon 3, but you aim and shoot at your targets with the traditional lightgun interface. In this mode, there is much more of the feel of classic Time Crisis. The bad news is that the levels are long and dull. There's also the distinct Namco-sub-game feeling. This could be much better with a higher degree of polish and better level design, but, as it stands, it just comes off as a rough side diversion.

 

In my quest for other opinions, I asked one of my gaming buddies to try the game too. He quickly noted the lack of interaction with the backgrounds, which he considered a hallmark of the Time Crisis games. He loved watching objects fly in the earlier games, but found Time Crisis 4's degree of interaction with scenery objects to be so reduced as to be non-existent. I agreed with his view. This was probably the most damning aspect of half-assedness in the game.

 

There are some other little target shooting subgames. But these show a lack of inspiration unparalled in the series. They all consist of blank play areas and simple round targets in various modes of movement. They're lame any way you look at them.

 

Finally, there's the Guncon 3. I had fears about how accurate the device would be. Thankfully, they were mostly unfounded. While not anywhere near as accurate as the Guncon or Guncon 2, it's at least up to the acceptable standards of the Saturn Stunner. The new handgrip makes it more comfortable to hold, and all the buttons except for two on the side of the gun are easily accessible. Namco misses the bus though by failing to make the gun wireless, and once again failing to include a recoil feature. The gun also lacks standard controller features like the PS button, so unless you have autostart on your PS3 enabled, you'll have to start the game with a powered up sixaxis. There's also the inconvenience that the Guncon 3 takes up two of the front USB ports: one for the gun itself and one for the LED sensor. And every time you power up your PS3, it will provide a message that it doesn't recognize the USB components you have hooked up. But the final problem is that the controller feels a bit cheap. The final verdict on the controller is that it's good, but it does have a lot of little flaws.

 

Back to the game, the graphics are decent and the sound is decent. There's nothing worth writing about here other than run of the will worksmanship. Storywise, the game maintains the Time Crisis tradition of pretending to be a big budget grade Z action movie like Die Hard or something. Due to the art design of the characters, especially the VSSE agents, I had a hard time taking them seriously. There are costumes that work in anime which just don't work in CG. The two VSSE agent characters prove that as truth. They look like idiots. Even SNK characters aren't as fashion challenged. Alba and Soiree Miera have nothing on these guys.

 

(Those two are from the KOF: Maximum Impact games. The openings, showing them walking along all tough and "bad ass" provides some of the greatest unintentional humor ever in a videogame.)

 

Is Time Crisis 4 fun? Not if you have Time Crisis 3 or Time Crisis: Crisis Zone around, which both do what Time Crisis 4 is trying to do in arcade mode, but do it better and without compromising the expectations of the series. By betraying it's defining nature, this installment has set a new low, not a new high. It's new randomly-hose-the-screen mechanic might have worked if there was more interaction with the scenery, but, as it stands, Time Crisis 4 has merely lowered itself to the blandness of the competition. I daresay Time Crisis 4 has finally managed to fully emulate one of those grade Z summer blockbusters: entertaining for the short term, but big, stupid, and utterly forgettable.

 

As much as it pains me. I think I have to say this one is just bad. Not horrible, but just blandly bad. It would almost be reassuring if the badness could be chalked up to something like the control, ala Link's Crossbow Training, but it can't. The game is just uninspired and a bore. You've played the arcade mode a thousand different times under different names. The FPS mode just isn't developed enough to be worth center stage. And the mini games are a total waste of time.

 

Now I'm going to go sulk, because I so wanted this game to be awesome.

[bdog_147]

Thanks for the review. I think I might wait untill it drops in price before picking it up.

[+SpiceWare]

I don't think I'll be able to play this one - I'd picked up the box while I was at Best Buy and the back of it had something to the effect that it supported up to a 50(maybe 55?)" display. I was disappointed as my HDTV is 65".

[+remowilliams]

My initial impressions are that the Guncon has an umistakable cheapness about its build quality, but it is pretty accurate. As for the game I've played the arcade mode but not all the way through, and found it as entertaining as I expected it to be. The characters are ridiculously styled. The usage of two USB ports is a bit annoying.

 

As far as the king of lightgun games, I'm a dyed in the wool Virtua Cop series fan but I've found TC4 entertaining enough so far. I haven't spent a lot of time with it though.

Edited December 23, 2007 by remowilliams

[Mendon]

Another excellent review, Gabriel!!

 

 

Mendon

[Gabriel]

As far as the king of lightgun games, I'm a died in the wool Virtua Cop series fan but I've found TC4 entertaining enough so far. I haven't spent a lot of time with it though.

 

I think the Virtua Cop games are the only ones which can match Time Crisis. However, I guess we should feel lucky that Sega has simply buried Virtua Cop, instead of "reimagining" it as has been done with Shining Force, Phantasy Star, and Sonic.

 

I will say that most of my review is predicated on one feeling I had. The more I played Time Crisis 4, the more I wondered why I was bothering.

 

I think the sign of a good sequel is when it reignites your passion for the series and you forget about the prior installments. The biggest sign of a bad sequel is when you just want to go back to one of the previous games or just play something else. In Arcade mode, Time Crisis 4 just made me want to play Time Crisis 3 and Crisis Zone. In FPS mode, I just found myself wanting to play Halo instead. The mini-games gave me new respect for Link's Crossbow Training.