Rating: Good If you're looking for fast-paced shooting action and nothing more, Time Crisis 2 won't disappoint. As the latest light-gun shooter from Namco, Time Crisis 2 has quite a reputation to live up to. The original Time Crisis revolutionized light-gun shooters with its innovative foot pedal. Pushing down and releasing the pedal made you duck for cover or jump out to fire at the enemy. This added a whole new element of strategy to light-gun shooters, which normally don't require much thought to play. So what does Time Crisis 2 do differently than its predacessor? The major new gameplay feature is the two-player mode in which two players can team up to try to beat the game. You can actually see the other player on the screen and may even shoot him if you don't aim carefully. You can't get shot when you're ducking for cover, so technically you could stay down there as long as you want if it weren't for the 40-second timer which runs out if you don't kill anything. However, at the end of a level, it's very clear who's been doing the dirty work when one player has a score of 50,000 and the other player has a score of 10,000 (being the coward that I am, I'm usually the player with 10,000). The addition of a partner to play the game with also adds many strategic elements. For example, the bosses can only fire at one of you at a time, so the best time to shoot the bosses is when their attention is on your partner. Since the Time Crisis 2 arcade machine is actually one giant screen split in half, two players can also play individually at the same time in their own single-player game. And even in the single-player mode, you have a partner (even if it is a computer-controlled one), although he doesn't seem to do much except divide the enemy's attention so you can get some free shots in. It's been a while since Time Crisis and its foot pedal originally debuted in arcades, but the foot pedal is still a nice feature that adds a lot to the game. If five enemies pop up at once in another shooting game, you usually have no choice but to take them out one a time, all the while being wide open to enemy fire and having to manually re-load by shooting the light-gun off-screen. But through the use of Time Crisis 2's foot pedal, you can shoot an enemy, duck down behind cover, re-load, and pop back up when the time is right. You have the freedom to play with as fast or slow a pace as you wish, but only to a point. Going too fast will kill you in no time, and going too slow will cause the timer to expire. Elsewhere, the graphics are solid with no jagged edges in sight. The story line is typical fare for light-gun shooters, with a cheesy dialogue and some poorly done English voice-overs. Also, like most shooters, the game gets old after a while. After the quick rush of lots and lots of action being thrown at you at once in a short amount of time, there is little motivation to play through the game again after you've already beaten it more than one or two times. But hey, it's a light-shooter. What did you expect? It's not going to keep you playing for months, but as far as light-gun shooters go, Time Crisis 2 is about as good as it gets.
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com