In arcade mode, it's a lot more like good old
Time Crises of ages past. You're back on the dolly, being wheeled around as you cause mayhem with your rapid fire. Both story and arcade mode use a button for reload, rather than the once familiar shoot off-screen method. But once you are used to it, it's better, because it enables you to reload without losing your targeting.
Whether
TC as an FPS wins the support of the gaming public remains to be seen. Bundling it with a more traditional
Time Crisis version of
Razing Storm is a good safety net if they do not. Me, I'm not a big FPS fan anyway, and this one is no different. I can see that it's no
Halo or
Call of Duty - but it IS good fun, and it's likely the way that FPSes will go where they decide to integrate Move control. Packaged with three on rails gun games, you can't go wrong.
The big point to note here is, I was really not enjoying these games at first. I could see that they should be fun, good gun games all. But I could not break through this invisible barrier that was keeping me uninvolved.
The reason, it transpired, was that I was using the standard Move controller. Because of its shape, and the trigger style button beneath the controller, you can be seduced into thinking it makes quite a good gun controller. It doesn't - aiming is imprecise because you are basically looking over the top of a ball, and quite quickly it becomes slightly uncomfortable. Then shortly after that it becomes
quite uncomfortable.
I splashed out on a Move Gun Attachment, and it transformed
TC: RS for me. Until that point, this game was fun but nothing special. With the gun attachment, it's back to being one of the best examples of one of my favourite genres.
Conclusion
Time Crisis games always suffer slightly as console games because their arcade roots show through just a little too much. Razing Storm attempts to overcome this with a very credible FPS with Time Crisis elements, and the result is good, but not class leading. But three cracking gun games and an intriguing FPS make this a package worth picking up for any Move owner or flatscreen or projector owning gun game aficionado.
SPOnG Score 86%
