Time Crisis: Crisis Zone Hands-On

With no console Virtua Cop in sight, it's time for Namco to continue its domination of the home light gun game.

For years the gun shooting genre has been dominated by Sega's Virtua Cop series and Namco's Time Crisis series. Unfortunately, with the former remaining absent from this console generation, Namco's Time Crisis has had free reign on the PS2 and continues to do so with a port of the System 12 arcade gun shooter, Time Crisis: Crisis Zone.

When I initially spotted the game at Namco's E3 booth I was a little confused as to why their reps were discouraging two-player coop play and insisted on single player action. But once grabbing a hold of the GunCon2s, it became immediately evident that they were trying to promote the game's John Woo styled double-gun shooting gameplay by equipping each player with both guns.

In Time Crisis: Crisis Zone, a terrorist group known as the U.R.D.A. led by Derrick Lynch has taken over a newly opened complex located on the outskirts of London. Your mission is simple, seek out the members of this terrorist group and kill them all in order to free the complex.

As with previous Time Crisis games, the action in Crisis Zone is fast and furious with enemies popping out from all over the Garland Square complex, ready to put a bullet in your skull if you're not fast enough on the draw. The level of interaction experienced throughout the game was quite high, allowing players to blast books and CDs off of shelves, shatter glass windows, shoot through doors, ceilings, metal bars, racks of clothing, and even blast items off of tables among other things while using a variety of different guns that can be obtained throughout the missions as well as new ones unlocked after completing the Crisis Missions.

In keeping with Namco's tradition of arcade conversions, the developers haven't stopped at just a simple port. While players can select to play through the arcade levels, Crisis Zone is chockfull of extra features that provide it with much greater replay value. The game features a score ranking system along with an original story mode and a new Crisis Mission mode that can lead to many unlockable goodies including extra play modes and even new enemies after completing the game. While the idea of playing with two guns may seem a little more challenging to some players, Crisis Zone provides players with the option of playing with a single gun or wielding two GunCon2s John Woo style in the double-gun mode.

While the coin-op version of Time Crisis: Crisis Zone was never really an impressive game in the graphics department due to inferior technology, Namco has seen fit to change that by enhancing the PS2 version with slightly better lighting effects, sharp looking backgrounds, and solid enemy designs. Of course as with previous versions of Time Crisis - and other gun shooting games for that matter - the sound effects are pretty good but the voice acting remains laughable at best.

Overall, Crisis Zone is shaping up to be the best gun shooting game available on any of the current generation consoles so far and will likely remain the case unless Sega finally decides to give gamers what they want and bring Virtua Cop 3 to Xbox.

In the meantime, arcade gun shooting fanatics certainly have something to look forward to when Time Crisis: Crisis Zone ships this September. Expect more coverage of this great game soon.

Joseph Jackson
Staff Writer, Kikizo Games