down
while energy bars tick away. I could see why some people would be attracted to
this subgenre, though: with the heavily weighted and powerfully recoiling arcade
lightmachineguns, blowing things up tends to feel like blowing things up.
That sensation proves difficult to port, however.
On the PS2,
the stiff and light GunCon2 that comes bundled with Crisis Zone doesn't
offer quite the same feeling of empowerment. It's shaped like a pistol to begin
with, and it's also light and static, with no recoil. There's no pedal with the
console version, so easily accessible buttons located on various parts of the
gun are used in its stead. The gun isn't necessarily a bad peripheral - once properly
calibrated, it's far more accurate and reliable than most third-party lightguns
I've tried - it's just very limited in its design. Worse, with the rapid fire
rate of the machinegun, the normal screenflash common in all home shooters is
exacerbated and the result it something like a cloud of epilepsy-inducing fog.
It's distracting, though I don't think it alone is annoying enough to spoil the
game.
That isn't to say that Crisis Zone is an otherwise decent
game, however. It's comprised of only a couple short, forgettable scenarios, each
of which contains a few equally bland substages. As the stages are all loosely
connected by scenario, they all take place in roughly the same kind of area and
offer little in the way of thematic variation. Nothing in the levels struck me
as particularly memorable save for the occasional ninja terrorist or oddly-placed
sound cue here and there.
As a bonus, each substage is topped off with
its own uninspired boss encounter, usually some sort of supervehicle or terrorist
madman. One that sees players toppling the classic duo of "fat guy who can get
shot a lot" and "skinny guy who jumps all over the place" is actually downright
insipid. The two characters have long life bars and draining them only resets
the time limit and forces whichever one of the two bosses players are hammering
away at to flee to another part of the room. Sometimes, if "fat guy who can get
shot a lot" is in the middle of a particularly gripping scripted animation, like
tossing boxes at people, shooting him will have no effect on his life bar whatsoever.
This is because successfully draining his energy would mean that he'd have to
move on to the next attack segment and, because he's in the middle of an animation,
he's simply not ready to do that yet. The logic astounds.
Like the bosses,
even the basic enemies come with life bars. This has the unintended effect of
diminishing any sense of empowerment one might get from shooting several rounds
per second. The enemies themselves are mostly machinegun-touting terrorists that
come in different colors of body armor to signify how good or bad their aim is
and how much damage they can withstand. Save for the occasionally satisfying clump
of highly expendable blue guys, most enemies take a few shots to put down. The
actual character design of the grunts, like their commanders, is also largely
forgettable. They worked fine as fodder in previous Crisis games, but now
that they take longer to kill their lack of personality becomes more of an issue.
Most of those enemies attack constantly, but until red circles (called
"crisis indicators" in this series) appear around their guns and a chime sounds,
all their shots are perfectly harmless. To the game's credit, because all the
enemies give fair warning, no death feels cheap and players don't have to memorize
sections of the game to beat it. Since a lot of shooters rely on rote learning,
I can appreciate the basic idea behind the crisis sight. Still, because of the
way things are set up, the challenge is essentially reduced to the very artificial
task of looking for red circles or listening for chimes and then raising the shields
to deflect. The occasional grenade-throwing or knife-wielding terrorist can attack
without obvious warning signs, but even their movements are pretty easy to predict
so long as the screen isn't being illuminated with lightgun fire. Some enemy vehicles
will also fire rockets and that sort of thing, but shooting them down isn't necessary
as releasing the "ack-shun!" button to shield will successfully deflect or dodge
any attack in the game. Some challenge comes when attempting to clear each small
subsection within the given time limit, but even that's usually easy on the default
difficulty. The only tricky part in the game came later in the second scenario,
which is unlocked after all the substages of the first have been cleared out.
There, after relying so long on my shield, I was challenged to lower it in order
to make progress. I thought that was sort of interesting, in concept, but it wasn't
implemented that well and by that point I didn't really care anyway.
That second scenario is actually a little better than the first, and some of the
other unlockable aspects of the game are (sort of) interesting as well. After
a few rounds of play I unlocked special mini-game style missions with different
guns and objectives, one of which had me destroying as much of the environment
as possible. I also unlocked a special version of the story mode, but I didn't
really stick around to see what was so special about it - the game is ultimately
just too tedious for me.
Overall:
3.5/10
As an arcade game, Time Crisis:
Crisis Zone may have been average to fair, but as a five year-old port without
its original interface, it doesn't offer much to console gamers. I can almost
recommend it absolute lightgun nuts looking for an excuse to pick up another GunCon2,
but it's just too much of a step down from other games of its kind.
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