As far as I can tell light-gun shooters have always been a bit niche. As far as home consoles go they were rarely pushed as the AAA quality system sellers. Sure there was Duck Hunt, but no one would have bought it if it wasn’t already included with the NES. They mostly lived in the arcades, and it’s not tough to see why. Arcade machines could feature two guns and costed just a few quarters to play. To engage in these titles at home you’d have to buy the gun peripherals that could only be used with a few games. You really had to make sure they were worth it. Time Crisis is one of these games that’s absolutely worth it. Let’s dive right in and give it a shot (get it?)
Time Crisis has a pretty weird story. You play as a special agent Richard Miller (he’s classified as a one man army hilariously enough) who is tasked with rescuing the President’s daughter. The game takes place in a fictional world with non-existent countries. The entirety of Time Crisis’ story takes place on a small island in a castle-like structure, but the setting is pretty ordinary by genre standards. It’s not like that matters much anyway to be honest.
Let’s forget about the story. It doesn’t matter anyway. Time Crisis is a light-gun shooter with some pretty neat hooks. You view the action from a first person perspective and are moved through environments on-rails. Whenever the camera comes to a stand-still you have to defeat all enemies on-screen before you can proceed at which point you automatically move into the next scene. Time Crisis is more realistic than the likes of House of the Dead, but falls short of Virtua Cop in this regard. What I mean is that while your foes are all humans you’ll encounter the occasional ninja.
Enemies keep things interesting with their movement patterns. They don’t just stand still, rather, these gun hired hands frequently take cover. This makes the environments very significant to how each set piece plays out. Enemies duck and hide, or sometimes even strafe off-screen to dodge your gunfire. They’re fast and many have unique patterns to their movement, but they don’t change. Once you figure out where they’re going to be, and when they fire back at you it’s pretty easy to avoid. This requires some trial and error but that’s half of the fun in a game like this. The rest is reflexes and hand-eye coordination. Time Crisis will test these extensively.
Staying true to it’s name Time Crisis does give you a little number of seconds to complete each section. When you shoot down all foes you’ll get a time extension, but you need to keep the pace up if you’re going to be successful. This makes Time Crisis a little more frantic and fast paced than your typical every day light gun shooter. The timer serves another function as well. This is to keep you moving forward, because of the game’s cover system. By default your character will duck behind an obstacle in the environment or side step against a wall to avoid the enemies in each set piece. You have to hold down a button to rear up where you can see and shoot your foes.
Ducking under cover is also the only way to reload your gun. That actually makes a lot of sense, and it’s something that becomes second nature very quickly. What’s really interesting about the cover system is the fact that each time you come out of hiding you can never quite be sure if the enemies will be out as well. You’ll find yourself rapidly ducking back and forth, and it makes the experience feel more fun and frenetic. Other times there will be environmental hazards that you can only avoid by ducking back. These encounters make gameplay feel more dynamic. It certainly sets Time Crisis apart from the pack.
The thing that holds Time Crisis back is that it lacks multiplayer. Few things are more entertaining than a light-gun shooter with a friend, and this just doesn’t offer that experience. This is likely because Namco couldn’t come up with any alternative to the nuances brought on by the cover system. Time Crisis does however have a few different modes to soften the blow. There’s a time attack mode wherein you can play through any stage just trying to get the best time. You have infinite lives here. There’s even a special arranged version of the main game featuring new and alternate paths which unlock depending on how you play. It’s pretty neat and makes this home port well worth checking out even if you’ve played Time Crisis to death in the arcades.
Time Crisis is a really good looking game by PS1 standards. It was released just a year earlier in arcades and it thankfully did not have to be noticeably scaled back. Characters do look a little blocky, and feature few frames of animation, but they move smoothly. The simulation of movement through the environments is also really impressive. There’s also a lot going on in every scene. The scenery is highly detailed and the animated elements generally look really nice. Except for the fire, but that effect never was a strong point of the hardware. The soundtrack is pretty fast paced and catchy but there’s only a few songs in the game. The main theme just loops throughout your stay in Time Crisis. More diversity in this aspect would have gone a long ways.
