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PepsimanVsJoe talks about random games.

Arcade Appreciation April #12 - Time Crisis 4

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Time Crisis is one of the longest standing gun-game franchises around. Aside from the four main releases there have been a handful of spin-offs like Project Titan, Crisis Zone, and Razing Storm. The basic idea is the same amongst them all. Stop the terrorists, Jump in an out of cover to reload & dodge attacks, you're being timed. Not much else to it really, you get higher scores through accuracy, time, and doing a lot of combos(shooting many people multiple times in a short period).

This entry carries over the multiple selectable weapons from part 3 and adds a new type of adversary known as the "terror-bites". The other day I realized just how horrible a pun that name is and nearly drove my car off a bridge. Anyway these mecha bugs exist because I guess Namco was annoyed that not enough people used the other weapons in TC3. For example the flying bugs are best dealt with using the shotgun while the ones that crawl fear the machinegun. For the most part these folks are a nuisance and only serve to break up the pacing.

Speaking of pacing issues I think this game runs a little too long. This may be in part due to a number of special missions that occur over the course of the game. In these the player will be surrounded by enemies coming from multiple directions and they have to turn to take them all out. These are here because I guess Namco thought they'd be interesting. All they really do however is take away from the rest of the game. Of course if they were removed there would be less things to help differentiate TC4 from its prequel. Problem is it seems like everything this game tries to do differently doesn't work out. That's pretty damning for a sequel.

One thing I've always found interesting about the series is that for the most part what kills you is predetermined. Unlike most gun games not everyone that jumps on-screen and starts shooting at you is a threat. Over multiple playthroughs you'll figure out where you go wrong and will start developing muscle memory to the point where you're instinctively avoiding death. Even on my second playthrough I managed to drop the amount of times I took damage by half. Of course before I took on my third playthrough I played several other games and ended up doing worse. It probably doesn't help that I'm not the type who puts a lot of effort in. With practice it's probable that I could 1CC this game, but I've also preferred to go into games relatively fresh and rely on my reflexes to get me through(this rarely turns out well).

As part of the Razing Storm compilation this game isn't too bad. It's one of the weaker titles in the series however. Still worth the time if you're fan of the genre at least.

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  1. dog$'s Avatar
    Yeah I personally felt that Raizing Storm was more suited for home console play than TC4 was, though I did appreciate TC4 trying some things which I haven't seen before like the ability to change your position in a full circle around you (not sure if that was done before).

    I'm rather surprised that Namco hasn't taken the opportunity to port the rest of their light gun games to PSN, at least the ones that had the PS1 ports like TC1 and Point Blank.

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