Time Crisis 2
Review of Time Crisis 2
This is a shooter in its most purest and simplistic sense. For those who have never heard of ‘Time Crisis’ its basically an enhancement of the old fairground water-gun ‘hillbilly’ game that required you to hit moving targets that popped up into windows, through opening doors or moving from side to side.
On the PS2 this transposes into a frantic game of duck-and-shoot, where various enemies jump out from above, below, right, left, near and far. Some hide behind bits of scenery and some throw objects.
As you defeat each of the bad guys on screen the game automatically moves your character forward to a more advanced position in the level. Controls are as simple as they could be; holding the ‘action’ button moves you out from a hiding position, allowing enemies to be killed by rapidly moving the crosshair of the gun over them and hitting the ‘fire’ button. All this time you can be shot at, so the trick is to shoot a few rounds and then release the ‘action’ button to retreat and re-load the gun.
Its really been designed for use with either the old PSone Gun-con lightgun or the newer USB version for the PS2, but to be fair NAMCO have made sure that it can be played just as well using only the joypad.
It would be fair to say that Time Crisis 2 looks and sounds as good as the mid-90’s arcade game, but the problem is that things have moved on so far SINCE the original was made; that this isnt necessarily a recommendation.
Graphically there are nice touches all over the place. Its possible to shatter glass, blow up vehicles and destroy boxes and crates. Shooting one of the bad guys in the foot will see him limp, hitting the rope they hang from will see him fall. Each of the locations is very different in style and takes the player though buildings, woods, village streets, trains, rivers and a deep-sea platform. Easily my favourite section was the boat chase scene that involved you tackling knife wielding scuba divers who tried to climb on your craft while other boats attacked from the front and rear while rapidly dodging from side to side.
The game takes place over 3 different locations; each of which is split into 3 sub-areas. The route through each level is also slightly different depending on which member of the two cops on each mission you become. All of this makes it sound as though there is lots to do, but to be honest the whole game can be completed in under half-an hour from start to finish. To try and keep you from crying yourself to sleep after discovering this, the developers have added a few extra game modes that allow you to practice your aim on various moving targets… unfortunately these too are so shallow in terms of gameplay that its unlikely you will want to play them more than twice. A notable exception to this is the two versions of a skeet shoot game presented in retro and next-gen styles.
What should have saved this from being more than just average was the 2 player mode, but again this has been rendered almost useless by the fact that the main version uses only about 1/6th of the TV screen for each player… making if feel like you are shooting ants on a postage stamp. To get around this problem there is also a double gun version that gives each player a gun in either hand of ONE character and allows you to play in full screen mode. For those of you with an I-LINK cable and 2 copies of the disk, 2 consoles and 2 Televisions its possible to play the 2 player version properly.
OUR PLEDGE: We promise that we have fully played 'Time Crisis 2' before writing this review. The scores given above are our honest opinion and were not influenced in any way by the manufacturer or distributor of the game.
This review was written by Stevie Vincent © Absolute PlayStation
Click here to view our 8 Time Crisis 2 in-game screenshot slideshow
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