Time Crisis 5

Holy crap this series is STILL going?!  I thought the genre of light gun based rail shooters had gone almost completely out of fashion with the exception of a few sit down cabinet games but guess I was fucking wrong.  Granted this appeared in my local arcade quite a while ago but I only just got around to playing it .

Just in case there is anyone stumbling on this blog who has never played or heard of this game, let me give you a quick primer.

Time Crisis is a long running series of rail shooters that has been going since 1995.  Most games in this genre usually just put you on a straight rail and had you fend of a bunch of enemies and not taking damage was based on knowing where they are coming from and picking and choosing the right targets.

Time Crisis was a little different in this regard because the machine (and the later console releases) used a pedal to duck in and out of cover.  That's right motherfuckers, before we had all this 3rd person Gears of War cover based shooting crap, it was done in the arcade with a pedal and a light gun.  However, in order to stop people cheesing out the game by just hiding behind cover and waiting for the opportune moment, each screen had a time limit (of 40 seconds if I remember correctly), meaning that you had to take a few risks if you wanted a chance to survive the timer.

It was an interesting title and the sequels only went on to build on the concept.

Time Crisis 2 and up were essentially the same game but what made them interesting was the multiplayer component.  Usually in these games 2 players would work together on one screen but in Time Crisis each player had their own screen.  This meant that each player was seeing each screen from a different angle and that they could help each other pick off enemies from the other screen.

So that's old school Time Crisis, so how's the new one?  Well it's OK and while it introduces some cool stuff it's kind of short and a little bullshit.

The big new thing with TC5 is a dual pedal system.  Up to now, every Time Crisis has had 1 pedal but this one has an L and R pedal.  All this means is that each character has 2 vantage points per screen from which they can shoot from but using the pedals effectively is paramount to winning some battles and boss fights.  There's also a couple of QTE's and a number of slow motion "shoot the targets" sequences that are used to award bonus points or to take a life off if you fuck up.  It also utilities the Aime/Banana Passport stat cards to track high scores and achievements if you're into that kind of thing.

The game pisses me off a little because it's too short and it cops out at the end with "ANOTHER CHAPTER COMING SOON!".  This wouldn't piss me off it was normal priced but the cost for entry into this thing is fucking 200 yen with 100 more to continue if you die!  Almost every game ever in a game centre is 100 yen per play but this huge fucking thing wants 200!?  There is less content here than most 100 yen rail shooters too so I don't know why the fuck the price is double what it should be.

Still, as much as that pisses me off it's nice to see that the old school stand up rail shooter games are clinging on for dear life in the modern age.  If you get the chance to try it then you absolutely should, but I can't imagine it seeing the light of day in the west because the cabinet is HUGE and the western coin-op scene sucks.

Please let me know if anyone finds one though, especially in the UK!

Dark Escape 3D Pre-Release impressions

If you remember my post a while back about game centres in Japan, you probably know that I love me some coin-op games.  One thing back from my childhood that I used to play a lot of was light gun games such as Virtua Cop 2, Time Crisis and House of the Dead.  Unfortunately, these games have become a bit of a rarity even in Japan, and maybe I have the case of the old nostalgia goggles but the newer light gun games just don't seem to be as fun anymore.

The last light gun game I had a good amount of fun with was Time Crisis: Razing Storm

A fun little arcade game in the Time Crisis franchise that drops the pistols and lets you go nuts with machine guns killing huge robots and whatnot, it was a solid game and was worth every Yen in I dropped into it.

So while browsing some gaming websites today, I came across Dark Escape 3D, a new lightgun horror game due to hit game centres some time soon I think. Take a gander at the trailer below

My Kanji dictionary is dead so I'm unable to give a full translation of it (given the fact my ability to do Kanji is awful) but you can get the general idea with the visuals anyway.

Just to give you all a little bit more detail, the game is one of those sit-down shooters like Deadstorm Pirates and the machine comes kitted out with vibrating seats, surround sound, 3D Specs and things that shoot air at your face, neck and legs in order to really try and immerse you in the game.  Sure, it doesn't look that scary, but trying to combine the light gun shooter and horror genre together is a cool idea and if done right I can imagine the arcades rendering the old haunted house idea obsolete.

The big gimmick with this game though, is the heart sensor in the gun that makes an attempt to gauge just how scared you are while playing.  Sure, we all laughed at the heart sensor that popped up at E3 a few years back, but I guess now they've finally found a way to put it in a proper game.  Sure it may sound like a crap gimmick, but if you play this game multiplayer, then not only can you test your shooting skill, but also who's got the biggest balls.

When this game comes out and I eventually find it, I'll try and get some footage for it, so watch this space.