Namco's Time Crisis series of arcade games have been hugely successful in the arcades as well as the PlayStation 1 & 2 consoles. I can remember my brother having the original Time Crisis game on the original PSOne alongside the controller it came with for his birthday and he and I having a good old time. I also remember begging for the PlayStation 2 alongside Time Crisis 2 and the G-Con 2 which arguably is one of the best light gun games on the PS2 console and best Light Gun Game. Time Crisis 3 was also really good as well but later on the Nintendo Wii would soon come up which with it's IR functionality and the amount of gunshell attachments the Wii would get populate the Light Gun Genre on Nintendo's Motion Control console. Bandai Namco released Time Crisis 4 in the Arcade and whilst not as good as the previous games it still managed to do decently well and it eventually be ported onto the PlayStation 3 with the new G-Con 3 Light Gun Controller which competed with the Nintendo Wii and the Wii Zapper peripheral. Time Crisis 4 has a good amount of new things added to the formula and plenty of Time Crisis' mechanics are enjoyable but the design of the G-Con 3 controller and trying to make it work the added First Person Shooter gameplay made the jump to the new PS3 console lose most of the player's time. It's one of those things that has been of my personal curiosity for a while and it has been one of the reasons that I wanted to get a PlayStation 3. Seeing as the people are trying to revive the Light Gun Genre with the Sinden Light Gun project and also the MARS Light Gun I thought I go back to one of my favourite Light Gun franchises and finally do a full review of Time Crisis 4 and the G-Con 3 controller. So let's start the timer and get straight into it.
First to bring to attention is the G-Con 3, when you buy Time Crisis 4 for the PS3 you can either buy just the game itself or buy the game & gun box set which includes the gun and the Time Crisis 4 game. Buying the gun and game together will cost more then buying the game itself as on average it now costs £40 to £60 online which might be too much for an average consumer as supposed to paying about less then £5 for the game itself. Inside the big box you get the game and the gun that has sensors and they connect to the PS3's USB ports. To setup the gun you need to plug in the sensor into one of the USB slots and then set the sensor around your TV, if using a HDTV or flat screen the weights on the sensors are supportive enough to keep the sensors in place where as if you use a huge big TV then you might want to tape the sensors to stop it from falling off, afterwards you then plug the G-Con 3 itself into the other USB slot and then you are ready to use it. The Light Gun itself has got quite an odd design to it, it has an A stick on the left and B stick on the right plus it has two B buttons located at the A stick and also two C buttons located on the sides and lastly the A buttons which are on the handle where the A stick is. Can I just say that the left handle on the gun is a rather awkward choice to have extra buttons on the gun, it's like if you take half of the Dual Shock 3 controller and then tape it to the G-Con 2. The design of the gun is just terrible for most of the button placement and the way the gun is designed is only for right handed players, if you are left handed then you are not going to like the gun cause of the left side handle. If they were going to compete with the Wii Zapper then shouldn't they tried to not make the gun have so many buttons and made the device at least simple to utilize the buttons. Compared to the original G-Con 45 (Guncon in US & ***) where all it needed was a single A and B button alongside the trigger and the G-Con 2 (Guncon 2 in US & ***) which has an A, B and C buttons and also a Start & Select buttons. At least the G-Con 3's gun handle is comfortable to hold and the trigger is snappy and well responsive plus accessing the B buttons with the other hand feels most natural for me. When you start the game you have to calibrate the gun and ensure that the gun's accuracy is right where the gun is pointing, you can use either the two way calibration or the atrocious five way calibration which in my honest opinion is unnecessary and gives you worse accuracy results. I used the two way calibration to calibrate the gun but a simple one way calibration like with the PSOne light gun games would have been a much better.
Now let's finally talk about Time Crisis 4 itself, the plot is that the US Military worked on a Top Secret Weapon that was supposed to be kept hidden which are biological weapons dubbed Terror Bite which are insects that can swarm over their victims in large packs. Somehow a terrorist group called W.O.L.F. and also rouge soldiers from the US Miltary called the Harlim Battalion manage to get their hands on the weapons and plan to use them to sell for huge money and also use them destroy the country alongside the UCAV Missles. Giorgio and Evan of the VSSE are sent in to stop the terrorists with the aid of Captain William Rush from the Joint Intelligence Division plus like every Time Crisis game Wild Dog returns once again to fight against the VSSE. The is a little confusing at times and becomes hard to follow but some of the cutscenes are pretty decent and the voice acting while it has some laughable dialogue in one or two spots but it ain't really anything bad and it is somewhat serviceable.
Time Crisis' main gameplay is always about the standard light gun gameplay in the Arcade Mode. Time Crisis 4's gameplay has you shooting at enemies that appear on the screen with the gun controller and you use the duck and cover mechanic with the reload button to not only reload your gun but to also take cover and avoid getting shot by the enemy. Returning from Time Crisis 3 is the weapons switch where you can use machine guns, shotguns and grenades which are handy in certain situations against bigger and tough enemies that come up. The game has plenty of bosses that you need to care of which have multiple life bars to deplete before they go down and these aren't really challenging if you watch their bullets so that you duck and then counter attack. The main arcade mode is rather short and it can be beaten in under 30 minutes but there are at least some pretty cool moments, there are new multi-screen battles where you have to hold out against multiple screens of enemies and you move the B stick or the gun controller left or right to find other waves of enemies plus also sequences where you get to use a gun turret on an attack chopper and whilst these are scripted but are actually awesome and do break up the tedium of just shooting down the same four or five bad guys over and over till the level is over. Speaking of enemies you have the standard enemies who hardly ever hit you there are grenade and rocket guys, yellow guys that can give extra ammo for your other weapons and also the dreaded red enemies which will always hit you with perfect accuracy and these guys are always going to ruin your day. Lastly Time Crisis 4 has fights you must fend off the Terror Bites, they appear in large groups and do appear plenty of times throughout the game. They do have multiple variants forms that you need to deal with and can slowly drain your life if you let them get close but if you have enough special weapon ammo then you won't find much of these a problem. The gameplay is still very fast paced and it is rather enjoyable to unload your bullets against waves of enemies and also build up a ton of hits given you a ton of points whilst reacting to gun shots and taking cover so that the enemy doesn't get a shot at you. Getting a high score is something to be proud off but however this game doesn't any online leaderboards so that you would have shared your score with others around the world. Regardless it remains enjoyable but however I wish that the game didn't have to hold your hand so much and tell you what to do every so often. This is where video games try to appeal to casuals or ones that are worse then casuals where games think that you are an idiot and tell you to do this or that making them more like interactive movies. A game can tell you what to do during tutorials but not during the actual gameplay and that what I think Time Crisis 4 should have done, just let me play and figure out what to do instead of telling me when I already know. You can play the game solo by yourself or with another friend with a standard controller or if he/she has another G-Con 3 Light Gun also but when playing two player the screen is in split screen and there is no way this time to get do system link this time and there is no online feature to play cooperatively, still the game is at least enjoyable with another friend. You do have to keep an eye on the credits you have when you first play the game but the more you play you'll get more credits so that you can beat the game.
Time Crisis 4 does have a couple of other modes to lengthen the experience. You can play through the 3 main stages of the arcade game in a Trial Mode where you pick one of three stages and see if you get a high score. You also have a set of 18 short shooting games in the Minigames Mode where all of which are a series of short speed and accuracy tests where you have to shoot down a number of targets in the fastest time and without shooting the wrong targets. These remind me of the target stages in the Point Blank games and these would be entertaining with another friend but this mode is kind of enjoyable for about 5 minutes before you find it rather boring. Completing the game also unlocks the Crisis Misssion where you have various objectives where you have to take on a number of enemies without getting hit or to get a highscore and also reveal a hidden enemy with a single bullet and lastly use a sniper rifle to carefully kill off enemies on the roof. These are challenging to get through but are fun enough and do add more content to the game.
Now for the biggest feature to the game and that is the Complete Mission Mode where it only combines the levels from the Arcade Mode but also has levels where the game drops the traditional Light Gun Shooter gameplay and turns into a full fledged First Person Shooter using the G-Con 3 Controller. This is where the developers wanted to try and cash in on the Nintendo Wii's success and unlike the Nintendo Wii shooters like Red Steel where they feel clunky but you'll get used to it after a while Time Crisis 4's FPS mode using the G-Con 3 is far worse then playing any of the Wii's shooters with the Wii Remote and Numchuck. Movement is handled with the A stick with the camera on the B stick and you have buttons for Jumping, Crouching, Reloading and Zooming, Shooting and changing weapons as well as a button for turning on the crosshair. All of the controls can be customized to your liking but the controls are very hard to get used too, having to move the character, turn the camera and having to aim the gun all at the same time can be very irritating especially against multiple enemies and boss battles even with the crosshair turned on. It has that health regeneration system from other modern FPS games but however normally your health regenerates when you stay out of fire for a few seconds, in this game however you have to stand still and not move for a few seconds before the health regenerates which is a little annoying but the FPS stages has plenty of recovery items which give you back one of your lives and also instantly fill your health back up. There are about five FPS stages in the complete mission mode and all of these involve making your way through each area taking out enemies, dealing with Terror Bite which are more harder in this mode as supposed to the Arcade Mode by the way and having to do things like find keys to locked areas, shoot down explosives to avoid getting blown up, planting charges and activating switches. On the surface the FPS mode doesn't all that bad on the gameplay side of things but the AI enemies often stand out in the open making them a easy target. You can discard the G-Con 3 for the FPS stages and play using the standard Dual Shock 3 Controller instead and it does make playing the FPS stages a lot easier and thankfully you don't have to use any Six Axis Controls either which is a good thing. I did play this game with the BigBen Wireless Interactive Controller with this game it works perfectly without issues especially during the FPS and I found playing the mode with it much easier and comfortable to play. The only issue I do have with playing with the controller though is that you still have to move the crosshair with the D-Pad like when you are aiming the Light Gun at the screen which is stupid and the only time you should ever have to do this is if the Terror Bite gets close to you and you have to move the crosshair around and shoot them to get them off you. Just try and avoid those guys by staying far away from them and use machine guns, shotguns, grenades and UPDs if you ever find these in the levels but UPDs are rare to find. The FPS stages aren't really all that bad to play as the levels are quite big and worth exploring not that you'll find much that is worth exploring, it is just the G-Con 3 Light Gun Controller is too clunky to get used too and it's way better to play with the standard controller instead. Even with using the controller I do notice that I only see the weapon animations for when switching weapons, reloading or when using the Knife and Hand Grenades no matter what controller I use and it does seem rather odd even when I'm playing with a standard controller. But on the positive side I do like that you do start with the plenty of weapons instead of just the handgun making that you can just run and gun your way through the stages and you can switch in the menu between weapons you want on the fifth slot.
The Complete Mission Mode does have the aforementioned Arcade Mode Stages but you have to complete it with the set amount of lives otherwise you restart the stage which I think it's a good thing as it makes the game more challenging then doing the stages in the Arcade Mode. The storyline in the Complete Mission Mode allows for more backstory and information about the Terror Bites and the terrorist actions and whilst it explains everything but again it does get a little confusing to follow at times but at least some of the writing in the mode is decently written. Overall it will take about nearly about two to three hours to beat through the Complete Mission Mode where as the Arcade Mode will take about 30 minutes to complete.
Graphically Time Crisis 4 isn't a bad looking game, the character models and the quality of the environments don't look too bad for released in Arcades in 2006 and on the PS3 it doesn't look anywhere near as good as Time Crisis 2 & 3 on the PS2 but it is made up for some of the large scale environments and some of the effects like partial and explosions which actually look really good. The soundtrack is actually fantastic and it's one of my personal favourite soundtracks in the series with one or two tunes having plenty of epic chanting and also plenty of upbeat tracks which fit the mood and action pretty well.
Time Crisis 4 does a couple of things right but it does one thing majorly wrong, I enjoy playing through the Arcade Modes and Crisis Missions, the soundtrack is my favourite in the series and the storyline while confusing it isn't really anything all that bad to complain about. My biggest issue with the game is the G-Con 3 Controller and it's attempt to jump on the Halo, Call of Duty and Wii Shooters bandwagon by creating the FPS Mode, I don't mind the idea of Time Crisis having a full fledged First Person Shooter but the G-Con 3 while accurate and can hit targets well but it makes the mode far too clunky and difficult to play compared to shooters on the Wii. It is not cheap to pick up along with the gun so unless you think it is worth more then £40 for a copy plus the gun then I would suggest giving it a miss. Time Crisis 4 would later be re-released on the PS3 as part of the Time Crisis Razing Storm compilation which also works with the PlayStation Move Controller but removes the FPS mode and the compilation is the only other game besides this one which works with the G-Con 3. Yeah the G-Con 3 didn't get any support from developers compared to the G-Con 45 and the G-Con 2 which got a fair amount of support and also plenty of games that they would work with but the G-Con 3 only got two games that it was compatible with, both of which were Time Crisis games and also Deadstorm Pirates (if that also counts as a third game compatible) which is also featured in the Time Crisis Razing Storm compilation. I plan to also check out the Razing Storm compilation in the near future and if you thought that the Time Crisis 4's FPS stages were bad, the FPS gameplay in Time Crisis Razing Storm is arguably even worse.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game Score: 7.5/10
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game Title: Time Crisis 4
Platform: PlayStation 3
Developer: Bandai Namco Games
Genre: Light Gun Shooter/First Person Shooter
Age Rating: PEGI: 16+
Release Date: 18th April 2008 (Europe)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Good Points:
---------------------
The G-Con 3 is accurate and is good for the arcade and minigame modes
Arcade Mode is fast paced and is quite enjoyable
It attempts a full fledged First Person Shooter
Excellent soundtrack
The Bad Points:
---------------------
The G-Con 3 gun design is uncomfortable and the FPS controls for it are atrocious.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------