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Crisis Zone Review - PS2

If you've been to an arcade in recent years, chances are you've seen the expensive and aesthetically appealing machine that is the latest game in the popular light gun game series Time Crisis. Named Crisis Zone, it leaves the old pistol behind and adopts the more powerful - and, of course, more fun - machine gun. Namco have recently brought this coin eater to the PlayStation 2, allowing those of us with light guns to enjoy the game from the comfort of our own homes.

Like its predecessors, Crisis Zone features a fairly straightforward and typical storyline: a group of terrorists have taken over a revolutionary shopping complex in the heart of London. Playing a counter-terrorist officer, your job is to take them down and restore the English city's peace.

For those of you who haven't played any of the Time Crisis games - or any other light gun game for that matter - I'll set up the unique style of gameplay that Crisis Zone and most other light gun games adopt. After a brief cut scene displaying the turmoil taking place, you're thrown into the action in a first-person view, you character moving automatically to certain areas before stopping and allowing you to take down all of the enemies in that particular area. While your character is in movement you can't fire, indicated by the bold lettering of the word "WAIT" set in the centre of the screen. As soon as the word "ACTION" appears, you can fire with your light gun or the controller's buttons, leaning from your cover until your ammo is depleted - only leaning back in will reload your weapon. The firing and dodging of deadly bullets by retreating to your cover is interrupted at various points with short and to the point action-packed cut scenes. Many light gun games are over in a matter of minutes, often utilising difficulty to hinder your progress; this is also the case in Crisis Zone. However, Namco has included an additional Crisis Missions mode to extend the game's lifespan albeit not for long. This mode provides a number of difficult challenges set in different parts of the game with an objective along the lines of gaining as many hits on enemies as possible within a time limit without losing any health.

In previous Time Crisis games, your cover came in the form of walls, ledges, trees and the like. But now that you're a more advanced counter-terrorist rather than an agent, you're equipped with a riot shield. From the safe view behind your riot shield you can partially see the action taking place in front of you, and leaning up sees your view emerge above the shield's rim, allowing you to fire using your machine gun. Unfortunately, unlike in last year's Time Crisis 3, you can't switch between an arsenal of weapons or use grenades. The game, in its bundled form, doesn't come with any type of machine gun variant of the current pistol-like G ... (continued next page)