This is kind of a "Crisis Zone done right" situation. It's mostly the same core—you're a big guy with a shield and a full auto machine gun mowing down hordes of enemies and destroying every bit of the environment in sight—but with a higher fidelity presentation and one important change on the gameplay side:

Enemies aren't bullet sponges in this one. That's the big thing that pushes it over the top. Every enemy in Crisis Zone takes just a little too long to die, but never had that issue in Razing Storm. It's just pure big dumb explosive nonsense. A fun time.

Just stick top arcade mode. Avoid the truly horrendous "story mode".

The weakest link of the 3-game collection for the PS3 that shares its title, by far, Time Crisis: Razing Storm shows Bamco’s arcade division losing its way. Next to Deadstorm Pirates and Time Crisis 4, Razing Storm comes off as both somehow obnoxious and bland. It’s hard to overstate how dated the whole game feels, from it’s aggressive butt-nu-metal soundtrack to a rah-rah plot in which an American cybersoldier squad invades Brazil to take town a terrorist. That terrorist inexplicably has giant robots and a massive army of brown people to swarm all over the heavily equipped cybersoldiers from the U.S. of A. This would have been racist and off-putting at any time, but reeks of post-911 market-testing and baiting. That the game came out in arcades in 2009 puts it a further 8 years out of date.

Razing Storm also does away with some of the Time Crisis series’ signature mechanics – namely, ducking behind a shield and switching weapons. The shield is still present, but only for reloading. The player is only given other weapons at scripted moments. That’s a backslide even from 90s light gun games like Area 51, in which weapon bonuses were unlocked within levels and at scripted beats. Time Crisis originally innovated on the genre by allowing players to collect different ammo types and switch freely between them, a mechanic present in this collection in Time Crisis 4. I guess I can appreciate Razing Storm for emphasizing how important that mechanic is to the series, because it is incredibly generic without it.

(I speak for the Arcade version of this as that is where a majority of my time has been spent, the other two games will be reviewed at some point separately)

This is a prime example of what a rail shooter should be:
- Fast action whilst not being unfair. I will admit sometimes it attempts to catch you off guard but in comparison to rail shooter games nowadays, it's nothing.
- Enemies keep on coming instead of making you wait ten years like Time Crisis 5 does. TC5 also had a problem with too many cutscenes making the games pacing really weird but that's not the case here.
- A fully interactive environment. Since this game uses a fully automatic machine gun, you really feel like you are causing major destruction because almost everything in the surrounding area can be damaged/destroyed.
- Differing sections where you use a different weapon (E.g. Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher) to spice up the gameplay but not too gimmicky to the point where it's obnoxious.
- Not amazing but decent writing. Dialogue repeats sometimes which is annoying ("GOOD WORK ALPHA 1!!! YOU'RE LIKE A MACHINE ALPHA 2!!!!") but the characters are distinct and likable to enough keep you engaged. Time Crisis, and many other rail shooters as a matter of fact, aren't needed in the story department. All I am saying here is that the writing isn't cringe like Time Crisis 5.
- Oh yeah and the soundtrack SLAPS.