Reviewing Every Time Crisis Game

[Music] action [Music] action [Music] [Music] enemies coming from the front [Applause] [Music] time crisis when most people think of namco they probably think of bandai namco and their involvement in games like dark souls tekken and the dragon ball games but to me these guys are responsible for some of the best light gun arcade shooters ever made growing up i was a huge fan of the point blank series and there was just something about the cartoonish art style and that high skill ceiling that i just found really appealing but it was the time crisis series that really got me hooked onto the genre and i also think that's what's partly responsible for my interest in first-person shooters as well well after some heavy analysis with the team of experts i came to two conclusions firstly that visual novels aren't games and secondly that time crisis is the best light gun series of all time after gal gun of course at a time when remasters and remakes are all the rage it kind of seems odd to me that they haven't given this series the same treatment considering how awesome a lot of these games are and how they're still a pretty hardcore fan base so i thought i'd go back and take a look at the entire franchise from start to end and let me tell you this has been a process that's taken me the better part of five months to get through and before i get started i do want to give a big shout out to one youtuber in particular who's been pretty instrumental in helping me get this video made and that's jared over at avalanche reviews this guy makes some of the best resident evil videos on youtube and he's also just so much of a chat that i'd happily let him date my sister so yeah check out the guy's videos and tell him gman saying also quickly before i get started i do want to give a shout out to my sponsor steelseries these guys make some of the best gaming peripherals i've ever used sadly though they don't make light guns but they do have awesome keyboards mouses mouse pads and headsets so if you're ever thinking it's time for an upgrade and want to get 12 percent off your next order well then head over to their store and use the code gman at checkout right so what is it about this series that just tickles my balls so much well i think a big thing that made time crisis so much fun to me was that it just felt different to other light gun shooters at the time i mean the main comparisons are pretty much the virtue cop games and lethal enforcers and that came out a couple years prior virtual cup elite edition but they were games with largely static and slow moving backgrounds that's not to say that virtua cop was bad i mean those games definitely had their place but they also kind of felt like games that were designed to make the player lose and lose quickly they'd use cheap tricks like putting enemies on the edges of the screen to prey on arcade cabinets that didn't have their guns calibrated properly not to mention you also had to watch out for civilians in both those games which would run out into the line of fire constantly time crisis though was completely different i mean for starters it was a lot more fast paced yeah the clue's in the name time crisis you're constantly battling against the clock here having to kill everyone before that time runs out once everyone on the screen is dead you get a bit more time added to the clock and then move on to the next area action it really felt like you were taking part in this huge blockbuster action movie in fact the game would literally shout action when you could start shooting action but more importantly than that was the cover based mechanic you see unlike in virtua cop where you were just a sitting duck most of the time the big new addition was that in time crisis you could pop in and out of cover now this served as a means to reload your weapon but it also protects you from being hit in the arcades the cabinets had this very easy to use pedal system you hold down the pedal to pop out and let it go to hide back in cover it was seamless and it was easy to use and it's a system that every game in the series has adopted now machine gun and on top of all of that stuff the gun controllers had actual recoil whenever you fired a shot the gun would jolt and the slide would move back simulating firing a real pistol what's cool too is how you can track all of these mechanics and features they'd implement across the entire series for starters pretty much every game has the same basic enemy types enemies were largely recognizable by the colour of their clothes which made it instantly clear to the player as to what kind of threat they posed right i mean just in the first game alone you had either blue brown or red enemies the guys in the red were the worst ones they'd pretty much always hit you but then it also had guys that through grenades there's guys with machine guns there's guys with bazookas and i think it's a bit of a testament to the simplicity of their design that you knew as soon as you saw them what you're up against and could adapt accordingly you know what i think to do the series justice you've really got to break the whole thing down one by one be my guest and let me entertain you which is exactly what i'm gonna do starting with the first game that kicked the whole thing off time crisis now i first played time crisis back in the arcades around the same time that i actually started high school but it was when it finally got ported to the playstation that i really got to know it better than my family members what spending so much time with that gun con controller that it got more of a workout than my right palm yeah the g-con 45 sun truly an elegant weapon for a more civilized age and as far as gaming peripherals go this is definitely one of the best anyway in time crisis one you're playing as richard big dick miller working for the anti-terrorism organization vssc heading to the fictional country of cersei to save the president's daughter named rachel don't come you see a former dictator by the name of sherudo guerrero has kidnapped rachel and is going to execute her if he's not restored back to power as cersei's ruler what happened oh yeah plus it also introduced wild dog the series longest running villain and a guy with a fondness for blowing himself up don't you ever give bob fiesta c are obviously pretty confident with miller's skill set because they send him in alone with nothing but the coolest looking leather jacket of all time and a pistol that never runs out of ammo now the playstation port is the faithful adaptation of the arcade version only it just looks considerably worse which is kind of due to the limitations of the console never mind obviously it also lacks a pedal but what you could do is plug in a second controller and then use that as a makeshift pedal by pressing your toes down on any one of the four main buttons you get the kind of explosive opening that you'd expect from an old action film from the 90s i mean miller doesn't even try to sneak onto the island with any kind of subterfuge he just starts shooting people and running around without a carrying weld i mean the set of balls on this guy just must be huge the opening level starts off in a submarine bay whereabouts the only thing you want to look out for is this creative explosive that takes out all the nearby enemies at once then you're on the surface for a bit shooting guys jumping out of choppers followed by another explosive crate which is like this game's version of red barrels after a bit of a psych out where you think you've found rachel you're now up against the first boss it's a trap a dude named moz armed with metal claws who hops around the room backed up by a few of his boys he's not that hard to beat though and he only takes three bullets before going down faster than jello shots at a 21st birthday party he's ever nice enough to tell you that rachel's been taken to the top of the clock tower and richard signs off the conversation by just punching the dude right in the face i mean a simple thank you would have probably sufficed richard the second level starts off with some pretty cool point-blank range gunfires then you're outside again taking on a few more moz clones before ending up in a museum destroying countless works of art in the pursuit to find someone else to punch in the face the final part of this level has you moving across a bridge as guys start swinging in on ropes then you climb this large staircase followed by a pretty cool scripted moment with a working mirror [Music] yeah from the good old days in video games when mirrors actually reflected things you know instead of just looking like a smeared butthole the boss for the second level is shiruto who jumps all over the place with his stupid looking cravat throwing knives as he pops out of cover he's pretty easy to beat though and after a few shots you gunned down this mama's boy like the he is at this point wild dog shows up and yeah get used to seeing this guy because he's going to be around for the whole series and although his boss is now deader than a door now for some reason he decides to kidnap rachel anyway i mean you've got to unline this guy's determination of being a villain like an absolute chad miller than pursues jumping off the side of the building from such a height that i mean realistically his knee should turn into liquid but there's no time to analyze that because we're in the final level surprisingly though this last level is actually not too bad you have to watch out for a few artillery guns and a chopper and then you're inside the factory from the first terminator film where there's also pieces of machinery that can hit you if you're not careful for the final part of this stage you get to move through seth brundle's lab from the fly and seriously did those machines not look familiar to anyone else before you're on the top of the castle for the final showdown against wild dog and both you and this stinking castle can burn for all he cares both you and this stinking castle can burn for all i can he even then shoots rachel as she tries to run away like a total which just pisses miller right off this final fight is also pretty dope starts off with the tour you're going head to head but then in typical villain fashion he runs off and lets some of his henchmen do the heavy lifting while he hides in cover like a and throws grenades at you and i always thought it was a nice touch here how during this boss fight richard looks back to make sure that rachel is okay once this final platoon of mindless bad guys is gone it's just the two of you head to head again at which point he turns into the nothing personal meme and starts teleporting all over the place too bad his weakness is being shot though because eventually he goes down for good falling off the side of the castle and exploding [Music] and then that's it miller picks up rachel and the two of them fly off the island and into the sunset as the crumbling remains of the garrow dynasty burns off in the distance [Music] nice the whole thing doesn't last all that long in fact it's probably only about 20 to 30 minutes to beat but like a session with a high priced escort it's time and money well spent however that's not quite the end of things because the playstation version also comes with a unique mission called the cantara still what yeah cantarus is some bimbo who's responsible for dealing all the weapons to shiruto's army or something welcome to cantorus base and the front for her operation is some kind of swanky hotel that miller has to infiltrate and yeah by infiltrate i just mean walking through the front door and start shooting people yeah and i love to where they've given all the employees colored outfits based off their accuracy with guns i mean you've got bellhops running around in blue and red uniforms with the red ones again being the most deadly and i don't know i guess these guys in brown are like the concierges or something no idea this is actually a pretty cool mission though because it can play out in a whole bunch of different ways depending on how fast or slow you go in certain situations and i think all up there's close to half a dozen different possible routes which does give this thing a high amount of replayability to actually see all the different routes though you almost have to play battle purpose because slower times send you to different areas and all up it's pretty involved the only problem is that i literally can't beat certain sections of this mission because for some reason my tv won't let me shoot enemies when they're at the bottom of the screen this is a bit of a curse that a lot of these light gun games kinda suffer from especially on the playstation so overall i think this thing is a lot of fun but like a lot of these older games the accessibility is its biggest shortcoming and again just another reason why namco need to remaster all of these what also gonna make this one important is that the events in this mission directly lead into the spin-off project titan time crisis project titan this is a playstation exclusive sequel that continues on from the bad ending which is assuming that cantarus managed to actually escape the hotel don't play dumb with me little girl project titan came out in 2001 when the playstation was kind of at the end of its tether mill is back in frame for the murder of a president and he's only got 48 hours to clear his name time is running out for the one-man army the game starts off as you parachute onto cantarus yacht to rescue an undercover agent who's apparently at information on the assassination and just as you'd expect all of the crewmen on the boat are decked out in different coloured uniforms to indicate what kind of threat they pose in the second level when you're at an airfield there's even guys wearing red and blue hawaiian shirts no seriously the first level is at least pretty decent though there's even a boss fight against a french chef in the kitchen who throws knives at you and then for the actual boss fight it introduces a pretty cool mechanic where you can rotate around the area to different viewpoints to change the angle you've got on the enemies which kind of is what they'd eventually do in time crosses four and five in this one there's four levels instead of only three but that's almost one too many just kind of dragging the whole thing out more so because you can't choose a level to begin from either you get a bunch of credits for when you lose all your lives but you're still expected to play this entire thing from start to finish in a single session and i mean look that's fine i mean all the other games do this but the issue here is that project titan really isn't very good the biggest problem i think this game has is that the difficulty just doesn't scale very well with the challenge on the first level being pretty much non-existent but then from that point on it's like enemies turn into marksmen and hit you all the time the reason for that which is something that thankfully fixed from time crosses to and onward was that you don't get damage indicators when someone's firing a bullet that's actually gonna hit you in every game that came after this you get a red indicator around someone's gun when it's gonna be a damaging blow which is something the series calls a crisis flash here though that's not the case and i've lost many times i popped out a cover right into a bullet that i literally could not have seen coming i mean look at that man that's just it's also staggering to think that this game came out in 2001 considering how it looks and look i mean you can't knock it for being a playstation 1 game but at this point the playstation 2 was already out we'd had titles like metal gear solid 2 devil may cry and silent hill 2 which were all gorgeous looking games on the console not to mention time crisis 2 even came out on the playstation 2 that same year and it just makes this thing seem even more dated in comparison thankfully though i do think this is the lowest point in the series and from this point on it's all upwards to infinity and beyond time crisis two now to be fair the playstation 2 did actually have some half decent light gun games he had titles like vampire knight and ninja assault not to mention a pretty good port of virtua cop called the elite edition virtual cup elite edition which i'd argue is probably one of the best ways to play both of those games but even still man time crisis 2 just runs rings around all of them this one right here might be my favorite game in the entire series and there was a point where i played this thing so much at my local arcade that i could finish it without taking a single hit when it also got ported to the playstation 2 in 2001 it was another game that spent more time in my dish tray than my balls did in your mom's mouth time crisis 2 looks better it plays faster and it's just an all-round improved shooter instead of a gun with 6 bullets you've now got 9 and you can also pop back in and out of cover a lot quicker to reload it also has what i think is one of the best soundtracks in the entire series so not only did this bring back everything that made the first one so good but it also added in two very important mechanics both of which would become staples of the series from this point on firstly it included those red crisis flash indicators when someone was about to hit you which elevated the game from just being about shooting enemies as quickly as possible and made it now about actual skill and reflexes but secondly and i think more importantly it introduced co-op play yeah this thing was outright designed with two players in mind in the arcades it was basically just two cabinets side by side with each player having their own pedal and separate screen to look at the only problem now is that when playing this on the playstation 2 unless you've got a huge arc crt tv the screens for both players during the co-op mode is going to be about the size of a matchbox but in the arcades where it was intended this whole thing worked perfectly and i always thought that the intro movie that plays on luke was trying to goad people to put money into the machine they'll be here soon on top of that at key points each player would go off on their own separate routes throughout the levels you'd often see your buddy off in the distance shooting people and sometimes you'd both have to fire over each other's heads just something as simple as seeing the other player moving around it just felt much more engaging and the competitive aspect of trying to get a better score than your mate at the end of a level also encouraged you to try harder i mean there's a reason why almost every time crisis game after this has followed suit if time crisis 1 was commando well time crisis 2 is lethal weapon the ultimate buddy cop shooter bringing the kind of over-the-top action that only namco can deliver yeah son they definitely dialed things up for this sequel you got speed boat chases there's a shootout on a train where you even leap across the tracks to an adjacent carriage and you'll be taken on a missile and laser arms satellite for the final fight it's awesome this time big dick miller's taking a sabbatical and you're playing as either keith martin or robert baxter both these guys work for vssc and they're going up against neodymium industries led by a guy named ernesto diaz who's apparently launching a media satellite into space this is a monumental achievement but it turns out it's actually a nuclear satellite he plans to sell off to the highest bidder what a dick and on top of that wild dog is back and somehow alive having survived that explosion at the end of the first game looking very much unexploded when you see him things kick off in what's basically venice where you're trying to rescue a fellow agent named chrissy from a former kgb operative named jakov wait a minute jackoff and another good indicator of the style of video game writing at the time the opening scene where jakov punches chrissy in the stomach nice to see the feast keith and robert then burst into the room like a couple of chads and get right into committing generic looking bad guy genocide you burst out of this apartment and into the blue skied and sunny streets of this fictional european town to gun down all of these bad guys as jackoff runs off along with causing a fair bit of vandalism as you blow up nearby trucks and shoot out the windows of all these random storefronts truck bursts through a nearby wall and then dudes with rocket launchers hop out then you're moving up this ramp slowly as barrels get thrown into one of the coolest things i think they added into the second game was also being able to pick up machine guns and you see that first hand when you pick up one of these things early on to shoot down an apc the final area has you in this high speed boat chase where you finally finish jack off off [Music] the next level you're in a forest shooting bad guys as they run in between the trees and if you felt bad for missing out on the machine gun in the first level well don't worry because this time both players get one this time another apc needs to be put out of commission along with avoiding a falling treaty the second area of this level i think is one of the best in the game it's a good old-fashioned train chase you're both all last to hop onto the back of this train trying to catch up to this level's boss a big ass dude named buff bryant no that is literally his name this whole segment though is just awesome man you've got to dodge all these poles as you stick your head out of the carriage hopping across to the other side to help out your bro or whilst you've got guys shooting you from both trains this was the point right here i think in the arcade when most people would have run out of their original lives and be staring at that game over screen you've got the fight against buff bryan himself which up until this point in the series is about the most over-the-top fight they'd ever had it's time for you to say goodbye starts off with him just shooting at the players with a chain gun with only one person that would hit him at a time but then he eventually cracks the he hops out of the turret and picks up a missile to use it as a goddamn battering ram yeah no he just outright picks this thing up like it's nothing and starts swinging it around like an absolute madman after that he hops onto a chopper and flies at you from a distance with a chain gun before you finally finish this guy off and he clumsily blows up the chopper he's in like a complete dumb ass for the final level you're at the launch site for the satellite and an old mate in the form of wild dog shows up to get in the way again it's like poetry so if they rhyme this fight is pretty much the same as last time for the first half anyway until a point where not only have you got to deal with wild dog but also diaz who pops out from cover to shoot at you with a goddamn rocket launcher when wild dog's beaten you get this really cool pov shot as he sees both richard and keith standing over him but if you think that's the last we're gonna see this guy well then you're kidding yourself now it's time for the final fight against diaz who in typical cowardly villain form takes christy hostage and uses her as a human shield yeah and i love the way he just casually tries to toss her to her death like she's a piece of garbage between getting punched in the gut and almost thrown off the side of a goddamn launch platform man this chick chrissy's had a pretty rough day the final final battle here culminates with diaz perched on top of the satellite as this thing spins around firing out lasers and rockets it's pretty intense stuff but it does end with a really sweet shot of diaz falling to his death as the rocket launchers reminding me of palpatine falling to his death at the end of return for jedi [Music] [Applause] then once he's dead keith robert and christy head off into the sunrise as that namco logo flashes on the screen the market quality all up time crisis to make some pretty minor changes to the mechanics of the first game but they're changes that end up having a huge impact on how the whole thing plays and that's probably the reason i think why this one is still my favorite i think it's also a rare instance of a console port being better than the arcade not only does this version have higher resolution textures and better looking models but it also had things like better looking water effects and explosions like this bit here too when you're shooting the barrels now these things are full of fruit [Music] the ps2 versions also got some pretty cool extra content as well like being able to unlock a machine gun to use when playing through the arcade mode along with more powerful infinite ammo and even a goddamn white shot which is basically a shotgun all up it's a great game and a great port and playing this thing for a single playthrough is about as soul quenching as spending time in an isolation tank is or taking a power nap in a pile of sock pillows it set the foundations and the core mechanics that the rest of the series would implement and build upon and it's still one of the best buddy arcade experiences you'll ever have so if by some miracle you see a cabinet for this thing at an arcade somewhere well do yourself a favor and spend some time with it your project is going down in flames next up we've got the third game in the series time crisis three and this thing was first in the arcades in 2002 before making it to the playstation 2 in 2003 time crisis free this is the first game in the series to not be developed by namco this time it's a developer called next tech and that difference should be obvious right away considering just the difference in tone this one has oh over there this takes place somewhere in the mediterranean where a dictator has taken over this island and then vssc agents alan wesley have been sent in to stop him oh my god [Music] aided by a girl named alicia who kind of looks like a poor man's riku from final fantasy you're out of your mind still though where it matters this is good old-fashioned arcade shooting at its finest follows the same level structure as the previous games you've got three levels broken down into three areas with the third area always culminating in a boss fight it's pretty similar to time crisis too aside from two big changes firstly now you've got actual weapons to choose from aside from just the pistol when you're in cover you can swap between a machine gun shotgun and grenade launcher though you probably want to save that last one for the bosses there's moments about the levels where different weapons definitely work better than others and there's even yellow enemies mixed in with the normal ones which when killed drop extra ammo it's a pretty simple concept but it actually works really well during gameplay and going ham with the machine gun or the shotgun is pretty damn satisfying machine gun as is far enough that perfectly timed and aimed grenade the other difference between this and time crisis too is that this one is way harder yeah man they definitely dialed the difficulty up a few notches for this one and it's a game that really doesn't mess around it's got a lot of what i like to call these gotcha moments gotcha moments are like cheap damage traps you can't really avoid unless you've memorized when they're gonna happen or you've just got really quick reflexes [Music] it's also a lot longer than the second game which i think also adds to it time crisis 2 maybe takes anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes to beat but time crosses three years upwards of 40. what the first level is not too bad but from about the second level on is where they just really ramp things up and they just start throwing some serious at the player i also think a big reason for the difficulty is that compared to the previous game time crosses 3 seems very visually noisy with the other games it was pretty simple to see what kind of threats you're up against because there was a clear juxtaposition between the enemies and the environment but i kind of feel that with this one everything all just kind of blends in together i mean look at that the crisis flash was pretty much covered up by that fire effect like that's not fair there's also a few new enemy types you've got to contend with as well you've got the standard soldiers you've got the more dangerous red ones there's guys with bazookas there's guys throwing axes and grenades there's even armored guys now with machine guns and on top of all of that you've got those new yellow enemies which always distract and take away your main focus and i mean why wouldn't they they're the only source of getting ammo for the special weapons as someone who's red green colorblind too a lot of the more standard enemies just kind of all look the same to me and i can't really see much of a difference between the standard ones and the red ones if nothing else though there are some awesome spectacles and more over-the-top sequences not to mention just another really kick-ass soundtrack the first level alone you're storming the beaches then avoiding a lighthouse that falls off a cliff you move through some trenches before barely escaping a sinking tanker like sheep to the slaughter and then the final boss for this level has you chasing after his gunship with enemy soldiers in pursuit the second level you're in a hectic shootout against dozens of bad guys in a small village before a sequence that almost kind of mirrors the second game with a section on a train and again kind of a similar boss to moz in time crisis yes we came to the right place this time it's like a ghetto version of vega from street fighter the third level is just insane man you're taking on tanks there's heaps of enemy soldiers and then old mate wild dog makes a return this time with this new buddy named wallfang surprise surprise wild dog don't you ever die yeah wild dog and wild fang yeah you've really got to give it to the japanese for their creative character names in fact i'm surprised he wasn't called like wild cat or something my name is wild fang and it's a pleasure to meet you this fight is just mental these guys have got flamethrowers and rockets they're kicking crates around along with soaking up enough ammunition to wipe out a third world country but strike my nuts down with a hammer though if this ain't the best version of wild dog stain [Music] and this isn't even the final boss of the game the final boss is that evil dictator giorgio zott who seems to have some kind of innate ability to fly all over the place and this guy holds nothing back that is once you actually get to him because you've still got to fight your way through a final gauntlet of enemy soldiers before you can even take him down one on one but even then it's not even really one-on-one because there's still stragglers about making your job even harder along with three tanks at one point that all fire out lightning bolts remember what i said earlier how this is the hardest game in the series well yeah i meant it anyway once you finally take him down it all comes to an end and you've once again saved the day alicia gets reunited with her kidnapped brother and then alan and wesley just head off on a speedboat into the sunset as that namco logo again pops up on the screen overall it's a decent enough entry in the series but it is one hard-assed game and it doesn't give two shits about the player like time crisis 2 this also comes with its own console exclusives this time with the mode playing as alicia detailing what she got up to before the events in the main game and this mode is called rescue mission to be honest though this whole thing is pretty terrible the boss fights are awful and it just rehashes a lot of the environments from the main game the first area is just the same opening beach level but at night time and you still have to fight that same boss on the gunship only just these patterns are now a bit different the second level is again set in that same village but this time you've now got to contend with civilians running around and just like in virtua cop if you shoot one of them you also lose a health point continue tries to include these new sections where you've got to use a sniper rifle to take out enemies from a distance but these are just dumb in concept because unless you've got a giant crt tv good luck trying to spot these guys when they're off in the distance hiding behind trees and rocks about the only redeeming feature this mode has is watching alicia somehow put more clothes on by taking clothes off yeah figure that one out now i am kind of cheating a bit with this one firstly because it actually came out before time crisis 3 did at least in the arcades but also because it's not actually a main game in the series instead it's more of a spin-off still though it counts as a time crisis game as far as i'm concerned and i'd even argue it's one of the best crisis zone it's got all of the hallmarks you take cover to avoid taking damage and you shoot lots of bad guys only this time you've got an actual machine gun the entire time and instead of hiding behind static cover you're now hiding behind the right shield doesn't sound like a massive change and truthfully it wasn't but what really impressed me when i saw this thing in the arcades and kind of even still does to this day is the sheer amount of destruction you can cause [Music] chrysosone takes place in a shopping complex in london called garland square that's been attacked by terrorists yeah big surprise so you've got to go through these three separate zones and take them all out and along the way you're gonna cause some pretty serious property damage yeah in case you haven't already noticed you'll be shooting the absolute out of all of these environments the first level is dry creek plaza which is a shopping mall where you just kind of move from store to store clearing house and you'll notice pretty quickly just how amazing the chaos in this thing can look i mean even stuff like glass dynamically breaking depending on which point you shoot it was really advanced for the time you've got magazine stands there's tvs cans and bottles and it all just breaks apart under gunfire remember that scene in the blues brothers when jake and l would drive through that shopping mall yeah well it's kind of like that but with a machine gun this place has got everything this first level definitely i think shows it off the best you move to an art gallery and can shoot up all of these statues smash vases and not paintings off the walls in the second level there's pillars that enemies are going to hide behind and you can just outright shoot these pillars to bits the third level's in an office complex and you don't need to play many video games to know that automatic weapons and officers go hand in hand with awesome gunplay about the only thing in the series that comes close to beating this i think is time crisis raising storm which in a lot of ways feels like a bit of a spiritual successor to crisis zone but we'll get to that one later on we're not there yet instead of having to play the levels in order from one to three you can now instead choose to play them in any order you want kind of like the virtual cop games virtual cup elite edition and then when all three levels are finished you go to the final stage to fight the end boss i also reckon this has some of the better boss fights in the entire series the first one's against a giant tank and you've got to shoot this thing apart bit by bit from its missile launchers it's cannon right through to some chain guns the second one's against a bunch of attack choppers which kind of reminds me of the hein d fighting milk is solid and again it's pretty fun and requires some quick reflexes and precise aiming then the third fights against two guys at once it's like ornstein and smau all over again nobody can defeat us one of them's a big fat then the others are more nimble smaller agile time almost every other enemy type in the game's also got a health bar which requires sustained gunfire to put them down otherwise it might have been a bit easy if you could just spray wildly and kill everyone in a single hit overall i think it's a much more balanced and enjoyable game than time crisis 3 if only because it doesn't constantly feel like it's throwing some goddamn at you about the only thing i don't like with this game are those melee guys and the reason for that is because the gameplay loop in this is all about shooting things as much as possible and then ducking behind your shield whenever you hear that damage notification sound the thing is though the melee guys don't make that sound they just kind of pop out of nowhere and then take a chunk out of you and it's almost like they've tricked your brain into thinking one way but then punish you for it by throwing these guys at you unexpectedly i just feel like this is the kind of thing that you'd only know about the more you replay the game and i think it's why i almost always seem to take a hit from these guys the playstation 2 version again gets its own unique mode with its own campaign called grass market district with the main bad guy this time being someone who kind of looks like a villain out of metal he's solid who's kidnapped heather mason from silent hill 3 and is keeping her hostage at like a hotel pool somewhere hey mister you'd better get ready you start off moving through the city streets shooting up a fruit store and then a butcher before the first fight against a tank that's equipped with some kind of stealth camo the second level again shows off some pretty awesome particle effects as you're moving through a hotel and even a casino at one point to save this hostage the fight against the next boss though is kind of lame i mean he spends the entire time flying around on a jet pack with a bunch of guys who kind of look like django fett and this is honestly probably one of the worst boss fights in the entire series and the way these guys just zoom all over the place kind of gives me motion sickness then when you beat him he's got the brilliant idea of trying to escape by driving a boat in a straight line out into the middle of the ocean yeah good one so overall like the rescue mission in time crisis 3 it's really just a bunch of half-assed extra levels and nothing to really write home about didn't i tell you i told you you'd lose but beating this mode is kind of important because it unlocks the option to play through the base game and select alternate weapons like in time crisis 3. yeah you can unlock a pistol and a shotgun to play with and the shotgun lets you cause even more physics havoc than before it's awesome [Music] you can even get access to more unique weapons like a grenade launcher and even a goddamn gatling gun the only real detriment to the playstation 2 version is that it has this weird fog effect when you're firing weapons which apparently has something to do with the controller tracking where you're aiming it does also look a lot different in style to the arcade game the arcade version looked a lot more cartoonish whereas this one again like time crisis 3 is trying to look a bit more detailed and realistic and i gotta say that i do think i prefer the way it looked on the arcade i mean i'd have been happy if they just kept that art style and carried it across onto the console apart from that though this is a pretty damn solid console port and also a pretty damn solid game and i'd say it's my second favorite in the whole series after time crisis too obviously continue at this point we're pretty much in the home stretch with time crisis 4 which was originally released in the arcades in 2006 and then ported to the playstation 3 in 2007 enough already much like the other games it's best played with the light gun but the only controller that works with this original version is the guncon 3. and yeah therein lies the problem because getting one of these things nowadays is expensive is i've seen a few of these for upwards of 100 bucks on ebay but even then you still need to make sure they come with the sensors or else it won't work on your tv and i think you'd have a better chance at finding the mothman sasquatch or photos of your mum with their clothes on enough already i also think this is really one of the ugliest peripherals ever made and i just don't know what the hell namco was smoking when they designed this luckily someone at namco probably realized it wasn't a good idea especially when you consider that time crisis 4 is the only game that supports this thing so in 2010 it got re-released alongside time crisis raising storm which thankfully supports the much more accessible playstation move controller i can't believe it then just pop that move controller into one of those gun attachments and you're good to go the only problem is that this version doesn't include the game's original opening which sets up the entire premise time crisis four anyway the plot for time crisis four takes place in california where vssc agents giorgio and evan who kind of look like former members of some kind of 80s rock band are investigating a terrorist organization that's using a biological weapon called terabytes thanks for rolling out the red carpet guys instead of being aided by alicia this time you're helped by a dude named william rush i'll explain later and then on the radio giving completely useless information is elizabeth conway who you've only seen the intro cinematic for all of three seconds and then she shows up at the end of the game for a similar time period gameplay wise the whole thing's pretty similar to time crisis 3 you're still pop in and out of cover swapping back and forth between the different weapons the pistol machine gun shotgun and grenade launcher let's take care of them before the reserves get here this time though there's enemies that you'll need to use these weapons specifically against at key points you get attacked by crawling swarms of terabytes like these little beetles that go down easier with the machine gun here use this then there's flying swarms that are more suited to the shotgun they even latch onto the screen if you take too long to kill them because yeah that's fun okay keep it up the only real new mechanic here is that you've also got these short events where you need to hold out in some kind of barricade aiming left and right across two or three different viewpoints as enemies try to rush you and the only problem is that these kind of feel like they've been designed for two players so when you're going solo it is kind of hard to keep up at times i'm almost ready hang in there still though time crisis 4 is a pretty dope game and aside from some questionable fashion crimes from our two protagonists it's another solid arcade shooter the first level takes place in an airport and i don't think there's ever been an airport level in a video game that i haven't enjoyed after that you're in an office complex shooting up terabytes with the machine gun before a section where you've then got to hunker down in a barricade next you're airborne with your finger on the trigger of a mounted machine gun as you're flying through the city streets at the speed of light shooting back at enemy choppers and tanks on the ground that's impossible the boss for this level again kind of feels like something out of a metal gear solid game where it's a standoff in a cordoned off city street against a hooded guy armed with a giant rifle you've got to shoot tram cars and dodge vehicles this guy starts throwing at you using his grappling hook mission complete the second level starts off with a critical section inside a cave where your gun also doubles as a flashlight illuminating the darkness so you can see where all of these enemies are hiding there's a bit of a weird sequence where you've got to pull yourself out of some quick sand followed by a pretty lengthy shootout in the forest at one point you've even got to avoid shooting rush as he dangles and swings from a tree the boss fight for this level is like a scene from a cheesy action film it's against a huge asteroid muncher named jack mathers along with a bunch of praying mantis terabytes that come after you as well where's your patriotism first half of this fight is pretty standard but about halfway through it your buddy rush starts getting into an outright wrestling match against this guy complete with live commentary from elizabeth even down to listing all of the moves he's pulling off when you finally put enough bullets into the sky of which it's gonna take dozens he gets given a mortal kombat style uppercut and laid the out you're finished [Applause] yeah stay there and then for the final level as you'd expect they hold nothing back and this is just non-stop action from the get-go as soon as the mission begins you're in a chopper again this time though instead of a machine gun it's an automatic cannon and the only thing that annoys me about this section is that because of that colour palette i found it really hard to spot those crisis flashes when i was getting shot at [Music] old mate wild dog shows up yet again pretty much out of nowhere then tries to lasso your chopper into a nearby tower he then runs into some kind of warehouse and then from this point on your finger's gonna get a hell of a workout a bunch of annoying little flies because aside from having to take down wild dog you've also got to deal with the couple dozen soldiers that are back in mum there's guys with rocket launchers there's guys throwing axes along with wild dog off in the distance who pretty much never misses a shot for the end of this it's like he's gotten a gravity gun from half-life 2 or something and starts throwing around all of this crap like a complete and even then after he finally goes down he's not even the final boss yeah there's still one more fight to go against the guy who started this whole mess general barrows what are you going to do and the best way that i could describe this guy is if olga from metal gear solid 2 was a bloke that was into steroid abuse look i'm sure there's some kind of fetish behind this character's design but honestly at this point i'm too distracted from trying to not be killed to notice for this final fight you're going to be swapping weapons constantly to deal with all of these different terabytes and i gotta say that the terabytes i hate the most here are these stupid flying ones because they just kind of feel like something out of an entirely different game not to mention there's just something about being killed by an insect in a time crisis game that just kind of offends me on a molecular level back on your feet don't give up still though this final boss is oddly enough i think one of the easiest ones in the game and for the final phase of this fight you literally climb a pile of corpses to reach him and finish him off i mean that's pretty hardcore but then when he dies he just kind of falls over backwards which is anticlimactic but that's it you've beaten one of the most oddly erotic time crisis games yet outside of all these weird flamboyant designs for some of the characters i still think time crisis 4 is a pretty good game i think the only real main complaints i have here are those stupid terabyte enemies which are just annoying to deal with and again also how that realistic aesthetic they're going for kind of makes it hard to spot the crisis flash times then again i'm a hopelessly colorblind so that might not be the case for everyone still though like i said it's a good entry in this series and i would have said it's the most over the top only the thing is that raising storm and time crisis 5 exists time crisis raising storm raising storm is kind of like what had happened if metal gear solid 4 far cry blood dragon and call of duty all got combined written by kids on xbox live only they weren't allowed to use profanity i mean consider this in the opening cinematic alone someone took the time to add in boob physics no big deal which is even funnier when you consider that that's the only time we see female npcs i think in the entire game i mean it's not grounds for a nobel peace prize but whichever king spent the time adding that feature in deserves a commendation at the very least raising storm is again like crisis zone a spin-off as opposed to an actual main entry not to mention it's also basically just crisis zone on steroids much like crisis zone instead of taking cover behind walls you've got a shield that you pull up to protect yourself along with a machine gun instead of a pistol there's no selectable weapons like in time crisis 4 but you do get a cluster cannon and a rocket launcher at key points in the game lastly instead of 3 levels there's now 4. in this one you're playing as alpha 1 or alpha 2 if you're the second player in south america during a revolution and your job is to track down the leader of a rebel group that's attacked the united states you'll forget about that story pretty quickly sunny jim when you're shooting dudes through solid walls of concrete and yeah the amount of carnage you can cause in this game might be the most i think i've ever seen in any single video game you can shoot through almost any surface you can shoot cars you can shoot exploding barrels you can shoot the signs of the side of buildings it is absolutely ludicrous and it's awesome in the first level you're in some kind of shopping mall again kind of similar to crisis zone probably just ruining this country's economy as you destroy half of the building then after that you're at the local markets putting countless small businesses into bankruptcy as you shred these market stores with gunfire and vaporize their products i know kind of serves them right though for leaving bananas pineapples and watermelons out in the middle of a war zone and then there's the body count in the first area of the first level i think you're responsible for the genocide of a couple of hundred rebels alone and then how do you finish up a game like this well how about with a boss that looks like something out of independence day yeah i'm serious it looks like this thing should be hovering over washington dc about to blow up the white house raising storm also just has such a tongue-in-cheek tone which is what makes it so much fun to play it's that kind of dude bro writing that was prevalent in military themed shooters at the time but it's the best kind that doesn't take itself seriously let's go over this again listen up hey you listening a newbie the only issue here i think is the recycling of enemies in a couple of the bosses they reuse some of the armored enemy types of fair few times and the boss from the first level is outright just used again for the second level but i still think it has some pretty cool ideas i mean like in time crisis 3 there's a bit in the third level where you've got to use a sniper rifle to take out enemies on the other side of a building the end of this level also has you firing a laser cannon down from orbit on a giant mechanical spider that's climbing up the side of a skyscraper yes that's something that happens in this game it's the dumbest schlockiest kind of action and it's fantastic the only problem is that again it does feel designed around two people playing the one specifically taking two people's money at once so again you can expect a fair bit of along the way it shouldn't be that hard like crysis zone if you're fast enough you can interrupt an enemy before they can hit you but there just seems to be so much going on sometimes with all of this destruction that it can be hard to spot that tiny damage indicator in a sea of things blowing up in walls collapsing but as the last game playable on home consoles this thing's a hell of a swansong man it's like ending a music performance with the fireworks display you know almost literally well finally we come to the last game in the series with time crisis 5. the only one yet to actually get any kind of console port despite being out in the arcade since 2015. however thanks to some very smart people on the internet you can actually play through the entire thing on the pc with a mouse and keyboard don't mess this up chief and here we are again with namco kicking things up yet another notch and it seems they've saved the absolute most outlandish and over-the-top stuff for last because this game is somehow even more out of control than raising storm what a save in this one you're playing as either luke or mark both who look like custom characters in saints row 3 trying to get a briefcase back for vssc that are some kind of top secret information on it vssa thinks there's a traitor in their ranks and they suspect it's keith martin yeah another returning champion from time crosses too but before they can find out the briefcase is stolen by old mate wild dog who yet again is unsurprisingly alive and a lot more talkative this time than he has been in the past wearing the kind of shirt that makes my eyes bleed just by looking at it thankfully though luke and mark are helped by the one and only robert baxter returning from time crisis too and sporting a pretty gnarly looking snakeskin shirt along with some stylish sunglasses along with their air support catherine ricci yeah richie i don't know they then all head off to chase down wild dog hop on quick we may have underestimated this guy for the first time in the series though you've actually got two pedals to work with now instead of one and pressing either the left or right pedal you can swap back and forth between two angles to catch enemies off guard it's actually a really cool mechanic and honestly a bit overpowered because you can easily spam back and forth between angles constantly which seems to leave enemies a bit flabbergasted their flabber is gasted yeah yeah special weapons return though this time there seems to be less of a focus on them and about all you'll be using is the machine gun to take out these flying drone things now i said before that this is probably the craziest game in the series and i really mean that and it barely even feels like a time crisis game at this point it's kind of like this game's the boiling point for all of the wacky and insane ideas they've had in the other games and now they've all been finally thrown into this giant crock pot for this final outing the first level starts off pretty tame though there's some cool scripted moments which require precise button prompts but nothing too outlandish but from level two onwards we got a one-way ticket aboard the bat crazy train for the first part of the second level you're in a chop by shooting a train to pieces then when they get bored with that mark and luke just ride these two motorbikes out of the back of this gun ship like it's something out of the fast and furious movies there's some high-speed bike chasers dodging metal barricades before a showdown against wild dog who pulls off some more of that kinetic and starts throwing props around like they're made out of foam and yes once again this guy blows himself up when you finally beat him and hopefully the fifth time's the charm here and he stays down for good you'll never catch me the next level's got some pretty cool sequences too there's a bit where you use your crosshair as a torch to spot enemies in the jungle kinda like in time crosses four and another bit where you can snipe dudes on a rooftop like that similar section in time crisis 3 and racing storm let's wrap things up but the main centerpiece for the level is this confrontation between robert and keith what no way the epic clash of the titans between two of the most badass characters in the entire franchise it's kind of like watching the final showdown in an old action film like demolition man you know what i mean watching two buff guys just throw each other against every nearby object and cause copious amounts of blunt force trauma and internal bleeding yeah in other words it's amazing then after all of this it actually turns out that robert's the traitor and not keith yeah i know what a shock robert you were the traitor no way so for the last couple of levels now instead you're working alongside keith and trying to stop robert from launching some kind of missile that's got a virus in it that's going to turn the entire world into zombies yes you heard that right in fact the level after this you're literally shooting zombies that can only be killed by headshots and speaking of zombies the boss for this level is wildfang from time crisis three who's also had the same fashion treatment as wild dog who's there wearing the kind of outfit that looks like something elton john would turn down and for some reason he also has the power to control these zombies you know what i don't even know at this point what a shame the final fight has you against robert as he controls a giant suit of mech armor that ends with a surprisingly sad little epilogue where you listen to him plead his side of the story but you learn the truth soon enough that again reminds me of a metal gear solid game this time it's kind of similar to snake and ocelot punching away their differences at the end of metal gear solid 4. yeah but it doesn't matter because you send him over the edge anyway by shooting him and letting him fall to his death excellent the whole thing's really ham-fisted and schlocky but again in the best way possible and i gotta say that it starts to make sense why they haven't made a single game since this one because i can't imagine where else they'd possibly go at this point but the main thing i didn't like with this one is that they killed off my boy robert seems they really only used him as a bad guy because he was one of the most established characters and at least it would make it some kind of shock during that great reveal overall though this thing is damn good fun and again another good reason why namco need to get up off their asses and remaster and port all of these games i mean seriously namco what the yeah yeah but that's it sunny jim we've made it through the entire series all the main games in this spin-offs i thought we'd never get there before i sign off i do want to talk about how you can actually play these games and if i've accomplished nothing else i hope i've at least encouraged someone to go back and check the series out i got stuck in an absolute rabbit hole of line doubling and scalars different capture cards and component cables but most people probably don't care about any of that the main thing you're wondering is how do you play these games in the first place well if you've got the original consoles you can in theory just plug them into whatever tv you've got and play them with a controller but that really is the worst possible way to do it and ideally the best way to play these games is with the gun controllers so this means if you want to play time crisis 1 2 and 3 as namco intended well then you're gonna have to pick up an old crt tv which isn't too expensive but those things can be an absolute weapon then aside from that you're still going to need the controllers the g-con 45 and the guncon 2. and these can run anywhere from 40 or 50 dollars to upwards of a hundred and then even after all of that you're really just buying these things and hoping for the best what i mean i had to replace one of my gun contours for instance because the one that i first bought seemed to have aiming issues i think there's still interest in these old-school whale shooters i know sega's working on a house of the dead remake and hopefully that succeeds enough for them to also work on the other games in the series to protect the life cycle whether or not you've heard of time crisis is irrelevant it's a long-running much-loved franchise that survived for the better part of almost two decades and it deserves to be appreciated of all the would-be rail shooters that came and went over the years this thing this time crisis was the only one that measured up in an insane world a remaster is the sanest choice and nothing would give me greater satisfaction than watching wild dog blow himself up again but this time in 4k resolution at 120 frames per second thanks for watching you'll never catch me [Music] you

Channel: GmanLives

Views: 774,998

Keywords: time crisis, time crisis series review, time crisis review, rail shooter, light gun, time crisis 1, wild dog, virtua cop, time crisis series, time crisis 2, time crisis 3, time crisis 4, time crisis 5, time crisis ost, time crisis 2 arcade, time crisis razing storm, time crisis ps1, time crisis 2 ost, virtua cop 2 arcade, time crisis 4 ps3, time crisis 4 ost, time crisis 4 wild dog theme, light gun games ps4, rail shooter game, gggmanlives, gmanlives, namco

Id: zp0ZBlJVZJo

Length: 56min 53sec (3413 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021