Games of the Abstract: Time Crisis 4 (2006)

 

Developer: Nex Entertainment

Publisher: Namco

One to Two Players

Arcade / Sony Playstation 3

 

Rolling on from the 1995 debut, which had an additional advantage of Namco porting their arcade titles to the original Sony Playstation and even introducing their own licensed light gun peripheral, emphasizing these games in the Sony catalogue, Namco’s Time Crisis alongside the likes of Point Blank were able to have more sequels and even in the case of Time Crisis console only spin-offs like Time Crisis: Project Titan (2001). Light gun games continued into the Sony Playstation 2 era, and here with the Sony Playstation 3 era, but sadly this would become a maligned genre, neither helped by the fact that the technology that made these games possible for the console ports, using the original cathode systems for televisions, was rendered obsolete by the introduction of digital television innovations. Thankfully however the lightgun game still exists in the arcade, if entirely for the fact that the gun controller is inherently something to entice people as a gimmick, with cabinets form the mid-2000s like Time Crisis 4 still making their way around even English sea sides.

What we got with Time Crisis 4 too, developed by Nex Entertainment, is appropriate bombast, a Michael Bay movie reinterpreted by Japanese video game programmers. So many video games are with knowledge of how American films inspired a lot of Japanese developers, and it is now with amazing hindsight for games you were not meant to be seriously how a few of them like this do reflect how American action films got away with things that would not be accepted in Hollywood of the decades after. This has a premise of dangerous biological weapons of an insect form known as “Terror Bites”, but the bigger surprise is that ultimately the villains are members of the United State’s own military using them as part of a plan to obliterate their own cities with nuclear weapons over their poor treatment as soldiers. The Michael Bay reference is apt, as The Rock (1996) was a big brash American blockbuster where American soldiers on Alcatraz Island threatened to release a biological virus weapon on their own people for how they were badly treated as veterans; it is amazing that a decade plus after Time Crisis 4, such premises would be deemed controversial or “woke propaganda” for some, whilst from an outsider’s looking glass, this is Namco’s developers hyper exaggerating decades of action films, like the others in this franchise, in its most ridiculous form. Even with a game like Razing Storm (2009), clearly influenced by the growing popularity of franchises in other genres like Gears of War franchise, was macho melodrama about the evils of military technology with all the absurdity, testosterone and un-credited Five Finger Death Punch songs they could muster.

Two players - Giorgio Bruno and Evan Bernard - have to take on this terrorist cell in a USA of the future, having to deal with those alarming insectoid biomechanical monstrosities, such as cyber slugs to mantises. There is not a lot more to elaborate upon but, with the graphical sheen of this era, there is an attempt at more realism contrasted by this proudly being over-the-top in its tone. There is not  a lot from other lightgun games before, where you have to clear through enemies whilst taking out those who actually can hit a bullseye first, but there is the spectacle, where over large stages, three altogether, you have numerous set pieces within them. It begins in California with a full blown gunfight in an airport against a small militia, juggling action to full blown sci-fi alongside. You will pilot the gun on helicopters multiple times, including through a cityscape. You will have a colleague stuck in a trap, upside down swinging across the screen to shoot around. There is a boss, in the streets, swinging around like Spider Man with the strength to carry an anti-aircraft rifle, another with magnetic power gauntlets and, the best, a mini-gun carrying tank who gets into a comically elaborate brawl with one of your NPCs. There is, to Nex Entertainment’s credit, so much that stands out, and this does not including the couple of defensive moments, where you have to protect the spot you are in from three areas, which can be switched between with a swipe of the light gun to the left or the right.

There is also the fact that, from the first Time Crisis game, the franchise brought its own unique trademark in how you had the ability to duck behind cover. Using a pedal here on the arcade cabinet, you have a different attitude in that you stay behind a protective barrier, allowing you to avoid hazards, but you have a time limit that prevents you from procrastinating behind it, forcing you to blast ahead. Time Crisis 4 has an additional use for the pedal in how, with limited ammo, you have alternative weapons (shotguns, machine gun and grenade launcher) you can switch between. This, once you get used to it, including how sometimes certain weapons rather than ones the machine recommends can be just as useful, and saving the shotgun shells for those defensive moments, becomes a creative take on the lightgun genre.

Where I found how much I really appreciated the game was with its final boss, where to really emphasis the cartoonish nature, the game literally has a man ladder, where soldiers pile on top of each other for you the player to climb on them and fight the boss in a gunfight over your allies’ mass of bodies. This ridiculous, frankly hilarious, way to end the game, with nukes the threat looming over this scene, was the cherry on the cake for the production, where it was not something you could take seriously at all, but within context of a coin muncher that had entertained me and was well made, was the kind of memorable thing you wish to have in an arcade game. The Playstation 3 port for the game came at a time when, with the interest in motion controls for certain consoles of that generation, lightgun games had resurgence, something which dissipated away into the next generation after into the 2010s. Thankfully they are a genre which have managed to last in the arcades themselves, fighting for space next to the ticket machines, so a generation of newer games could run with all the virtues one like this had. Thankfully as well, able to still find these machines, Time Crisis 4 itself is also a delightfully dumb but beautifully made cabinet.