Time Crisis (series)

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Time Crisis is a first person rail shooter and a popular series of video game by Namco initially available in arcades and later released for the PlayStation.

1 Differences
- 1.1 Hit detection
2 Overview
3 Characters
- 3.1 Wild Dog
4 Games
5 External links

[edit] Differences

The franchise's signature feature is the presence of a foot pedal that controlled whether the player's character ducked behind cover (and was thus invulnerable but unable to shoot) or was in a standing position (and could thus attack but was vulnerable). A countdown clock, recharged by clearing an area of "bad guys", forces the player to take risks and stay up and vulnerable most of the time, shooting quickly at any enemy he sees.

[edit] Hit detection

In the first Time Crisis, enemies fired "unannounced" direct hits, and the player did not know when he or she would be hit. Different-colored enemies provided accuracy levels (i.e. red soldiers were the most accurate). Time Crisis: Project Titan tried to address that problem using "different colored bullets," but did not fix the "unannounced" direct hit problem. This problem was fixed in Time Crisis II, as life-threatening shots are indicated in a red flash.

[edit] Overview

In each Time Crisis game, there is a mortal threat to the world. The V.S.S.E, a covert "problem-solving" organization, must send its highly-skilled agents in to clear the way. The first Time Crisis had three stages with four screens each. The second and third installment has three stages each with three screens. The fourth installment adds a prologue with the three stages each with three screens. In the third and fourth installments, supporters from various organizations come in to assist the V.S.S.E. agents either in their mission, or jump in to protect their covert "problem-solving" reputation.

[edit] Characters

Each Time Crisis game features a different protagonist:

Richard Miller is featured in Time Crisis and Time Crisis: Project Titan—he is the sole and/or chief protagonist of the aforementioned two games.
Keith Martin is featured in Time Crisis II and is the first playable character.
Robert Baxter is featured in Time Crisis II as the second playable character.
Alan Dunaway is featured in Time Crisis 3 as the first playable character.
Wesley Lambert is featured in Time Crisis 3 as the second playable character.
Giorgio Bruno is featured in Time Crisis 4 as the first playable character.
Evan Bernard is featured in Time Crisis 4 as the second playable character.

In addition, each Time Crisis game features a different chief antagonist:

Sherudo Garo, whose plot is the central focus in Time Crisis although he is not the chief antagonist in the game.
Ernesto Diaz—who is the chief antagonist of Time Crisis II.
Ricardo Blanco, whose plot is the central focus in Time Crisis: Project Titan although he is not the chief antagonist in the game.
Giorgio Zott—who is the chief antagonist of Time Crisis 3.
Gregory Barrows—who is the chief antagonist of Time Crisis 4, his plot is shrouded in mystery and must be discovered during in-play.

[edit] Wild Dog

Main article: Wild Dog (Time Crisis)

While the game has some contributing antagonists in addition to the aforementioned chief antagonists, they had, in all Time Crisis installments, either have employed and/or conspired with a terrorist named Wild Dog, who has been the only character to appear in all Time Crisis games.

[edit] Games

A followup exclusive to the PlayStation, Time Crisis: Project Titan, came out in 2000 featuring a new multihiding system.
A two-player sequel, titled Time Crisis II, featured two machines linking together, allowing players to cover each other. Each player dispatches enemies on slightly different routes, creating unique environments to defend themselves on.
The spin-off to this game, Crisis Zone (also supervised by Takashi Sano), was also produced. While Crisis Zone had similar play mechanics as with Time Crisis, Crisis Zone featured solo play with a fully-automatic machine gun (as opposed to the standard pistol), interactive backgrounds, and a different storyline centering through the anti-terrorist tasks of elite STF Trooper Claude McGarren (misspelled "Croad MacGalain" in the arcade version). A PlayStation 2 remake of the title has been released in 2004 and is a subtitle to its full name, Time Crisis: Crisis Zone, likely to denote that the port had undergone major (if not total) cosmetic and technical changes.
In 2003, a direct sequel called Time Crisis 3 was released. It granted four different weapons available at the start (handgun, machine gun, shotgun and grenade launcher). The ammo of the latter three had to be recharged during play.
In 2006, Time Crisis 4 was released in August and introduced a refined multihiding system where the player can move the gun in a certain direction to move the character's position in certain areas of the game regardless whether or not the player was hiding or attacking.