Games of the Abstract: Razing Storm (2008)

 

Developer: Namco

Publisher: Namco Bandai Games

One or Two Players

Arcade / Sony Playstation 3

 

Tying into the Time Crisis franchise, never was there a game which showed its time stamp. That can be a good thing – I have gushed over nineties games, even dated full motion video games with faults, but also gems from this era – but in this case, there is an additional absurdity that, from the late 2000s when I was growing into my twenties, this culture I came through now stands out as a time capsule, and in some cases as here like a sore thumb. Among a set of games – Time Crisis 4 (2006) and the pirate themed Deadstorm Pirates (2010) - that were bundled into a Playstation 3 compilation in 2010, Razing Storm screams the late 2000s with a comedy datedness.

Set in an unknown Latin American country in the future, a Special Forces unit called S.C.A.R. (Strategic Combat and Rescue) has to take on a figure named Paulo Guerra, whose private army has acquired a dangerous level of high tech on their side, including monstrous monoliths with building destroying weaponry. Note this is a review of the original arcade cabinet, which could still be found in the wild, as the Playstation 3 version in the game, in Time Crisis: Razing Storm, has more plot covered than what will be talked of here. The immediate thing to nod to is how, as with other Japanese popular culture, such as Time Crisis 4, their games have been as much influenced by the likes of Hollywood cinema from the time period the games were made in. You see the type of Hollywood films from this era, let us say the Michael Bay Transformers films, in how there is an emphasis here on elaborate robots that would have been made in CGI, and a heavy emphasis on bombast and noise, befitting a spin-off to Time Crisis 4. That game, which this takes game mechanic aspects from for the arcade cabinet, could have been a deeply silly Hollywood film involving nanobots that instead got made into a light gun game.

There is also a sneaking suspicion that, in mind to the climate of this era, this was looking at the success of Gears of War. Originally an Xbox 360 title, which became very successful after the first 2006 game, and whose 2008 sequel would be released the same year as this game, that was also about big burly soldiers men in futuristic armor with futuristic multi-weaponry guns, even if that was science fiction involving fighting a hostile alien race and had more chainsaws attached to the guns. Alongside the fact that first person shooters with an emphasis on cover were also popular at the time, not alien to Namco as the original Time Crisis had this but with mind to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare being released in 2007 and eventually selling 15.7 million global units¹, there was a conscientious to looking to trends to adapt the light gun genre to. To Namco’s credit, there is a point to a lot of these aesthetic decisions in good ways for the original arcade version’s game play, that instead unlike Time Crisis where you hide behind scenery, you have a shield to your main weapon that is bullet and laser proof, using the slanted metal foot peddle on the arcade cabinet as with Time Crisis 4 to use, pressed down to hide behind the shield (which is also to reload) and releasing it to get back into the fray. This is at least using the style, of big burly soldier men with sci-fi armor, that has a aesthetic and practical nature in game play which is cool, but this poses the huge issue, alongside being very blatant where the influence came from, that this style, including its brown futuristic aesthetic, is very bland and only redeemed when it becomes very cheesy.

Honestly, including the title, this is a ridiculous game, but it is sadly contrasted by bland aesthetic choices, such as a complete lack of memory figure in the lead, especially as you do not see your lead unlike the Time Crisis games, but are playing a stand in (yourself) who is showered with praise when you are doing well by the squad. Namco honed the light gun game here, so the mechanics are fully fleshed out, and whilst the back of the calf muscle is going to get a work out from the peddle on the machine, nothing about the game style itself is bad and can be taken to task as bad design. Barring replacing the gun with an assault rifle, this is a stripped down version of what Time Crisis 4 does, where unlike that game where you use the peddle to also switch weapons, you are instead given the right tools here for the set pieces they are required within. Most of the concerns in terms of game play here, as with other shooters, is when certain enemies being ready to hit you, forcing you to juggle and time manage these risk in this short game, so there is not a lot which really is different in terms of a light gun here even if aping other aesthetic style. The PS3 version had differences, including the use of Sony’s Playstation Move motion controllers, but that is for a different review to cover those changes.

The setting’s lack of aesthetic distinction is such a shame as, with the graphics of the era, there is a compelling pleasure in a light gun game where environment flourishes especially in damage now could be included in elaborate detail, such as the first level breaking out an extended fire fight in a luxury goods store, fighting personalized mech suits as ceramic goods are obliterated and glass jewelry cases explode in the damage physics. Naturally, amused by the simplest things, the second level having market stores among the outside locations suddenly provided this game with one little moment of personal amusement that helps a game become fonder to appreciate beyond its main game presentation…in realizing the pineapples were shootable and explode in chunks as background and foreground dressing, far more likely to win someone over then this game’s serious and corny plot. Sadly the fact the boss fights are the same, with the same monstrous robots used, undercuts that those monoliths are impressive spectacles for the production, the spectacle of towering tentacle robots you are battling taking what should have appealed in the Hollywood films of the time for me, but did not because they were undercut being padded out storytelling and clichéd aesthetic styles.

Razing Storm, especially as it focused on constantly being on the attack – for how quickly you take out obstacles, and even awarding more points in exploiting the destructible environments take out enemies at the same time – has everything to stand out as fun, especially as it presents all the charm of a Japanese game developer tackling North American action film clichés in videogame form, which is a constant in video games over the decade and still interesting to see. Sadly it was just a case here that fully committing to these aesthetic, clearly meant to sell at the time, also undercuts these pleasures I have talked of. Whilst with better voice acting and graphics which still look strong decades later, it has less of the charm or the playfulness that it really needed to have personality. You do not even get a main villain spouting monologues, which brings up the issue of the arcade version having a lot of loose ends in the little plot it has and a final boss being another robot – [Spoiler Warning] if you never play the PS3 version, presumably Paulo Guerra gets blown up in the enemy headquarters, starting the third and final level, after you charge the team’s satellite cannon to fire at the building, which feels less like heroics but a super villain terror weapon in its own right [Spoilers End]. Some aesthetic choices on a game, bearing in mind personal taste, can just be off-putting, such as the grungy aesthetic, and not having a proper lead but generic soldier clichés to fall back on as a horde of comrades. A more proudly over the top production with these tropes would have helped so much more with what is good here.

You can actually sum this up in one of the most gleefully unexpected choices made in the game to sale to the West, that the cherry on the top is that this timestamps the late metalcore/ 2000s era of heavy metal, by way of two songs Ashes and The Bleeding from an unaccredited Five Finger Death Punch. That is quite hilarious to learn when Five Finger Death Punch, this early on, found their way into this game, as these songs come from their first album The Way of the Fist (2007). (Neither will this be their last collaboration with Namco, with a song for the incredibly maligned attempt to reboot Splatterhouse in 2010.) It honestly does them no favors because it piles on a new clichés, for a band whose success would not be in video game soundtracks, for this game. It is clearly to be the additional Americana spice to a Japanese game about burly American military men blowing up South America fighting robots.

Personal choice also dictates whether this would actually work for the game too as head bangers – Ashes’ are self doubting and self destructive, in a post-nu metal era, and The Bleeding is about a broken up relationship, which is a strange choice considering this should be music putting hairs on your chest as you machine gun grunts. By pure accident now Razing Storm, with no cut scenes explaining this, is now the macho melodrama of being betrayed by men with giant robot tendril monsters that sadly did not have the courage (or time) to just go with manly tears and bro hysterics, which would have been the light gun game with a personality. In mind to this, and being half serious and half joking, Razing Storm is not a great light gun game. Mechanically it is perfect, but baring being justifiable for the “bakage” (stupid) game category in Japan, its un-ironic decision to look and sound as it does is too serious for its own good. “Charm” is strangely, for a game entirely about firing a sci-fi assault rifle at robots, the thing we are missing here baring a couple of slivers.

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1) Call of Duty: A Short History, published by IGN in November 2013