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 That the game came out in arcades in 2009 puts it a further 8 years out of date.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.
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.
SunnyFranklin
11 months ago
- Obnoxious? Yeah fair enough. But I wouldn't call this game bland. While the story is pretty generic, it's not really meant to be anything substantial, I feel like it's present enough to make you feel as if you're progressing towards something.
- Generic is the last word I'd use to describe the gameplay too, as while it's a spin off that does sideline the other weapons for scripted events (unlike the other games), I feel like that was done to make it more simple to focus more on the environmental destruction. I can see why others would want it back to use the cluster shot or rocket launcher at any given moment to cause a lot of mayhem but in my opinion, having limited ammo for those weapons (as well as the machine gun) would slow the game down when the focus is on raw, fast destructive power. Time Crisis 2, despite only having a pistol, managed to not be generic and I feel this game succeeds at that too with a variety of scenarios that still have me on my toes.
- Even if I'd counter argue that there is Brazilian innocents in the game you have to avoid shooting and save, I can see an argument being made for this game having racist signs. Post-911 market teasing though I dunno man, this game came out almost a decade since those tragic events and I don't really see any correlation between them. There is a lot of American vs typical foreign enemy stories out there and while I think they are everywhere (cough COD WW2 cough), I feel like the devs here just wanted a setting that's easy to pick up so they could focus on the gameplay.