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.
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[edit] Differences
The franchise's signature feature is the presence of a foot pedal that controlled whether the player's character took cover (and was thus invulnerable but unable to shoot) or was commencing attack (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 on sight.
In Time Crisis and Project Titan, the clock kept on running down forcing the player to find quick ways to clear the screen. The procedures will pause and reset the time as player progresses after clearing an area with enemies. Also, Time Crisis II, III and IV are more lenient by reducing one life if the time runs out unlike the first two titles which instantly shows a game over.
[edit] Hit detection
In the first Time Crisis, enemies fired "unannounced" direct hits, which was a problem because 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). Project Titan attempted to address that problem using "different colored bullets," but this did not fix the "unannounced" direct hit problem. This problem was fixed in Time Crisis II; life-threatening shots are indicated with a red flash (known as a 'dead-eye') that gives the player time to release the pedal.
[edit] Overview
The setting of each Time Crisis revolves around 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 and remove any peace and security threats. 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 protagonist of the aforementioned two games as a sercet boss in Time Crisis II.
- 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.
- Alicia Winston, a Playstation 2-exclusive character to Time Crisis 3, appears as a non-playable supporter in the arcades.
- 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.
- William Rush, a Playstation 3-exclusive character to Time Crisis 4, appears as a non-playable supporter in the arcades.
- Claude McGarren is featured in Crisis Zone as the sole protagonist.
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.
- Kantaris, who is the chief antagonist of Time Crisis in the extra story mode, and was in the first level of Time Crisis: Project Titan. She is first and so far only female atagonist.
- Ricardo Blanco, whose plot is the central focus in Time Crisis: Project Titan although he is not the chief antagonist in the game.
- Ernesto Diaz—who is the chief antagonist of Time Crisis II.
- 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.
- Derrick Lynch—who is the chief antagonist of Crisis Zone, wants destroy Garland Square with a nuclear reactor, Geyser One. He is named after one of Time Crisis's creators.
- Jared Hunter—who is the chief antagonist of the Crisis Zone side storyline, the Grassmarket District crisis. He kidnaps the S.T.F. Commander's daughter, Melissa Kessler, and plans to avenge Derrick Lynch.
[edit] Wild Dog
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 except Crisis Zone. In Time Crisis 3 and the Playstation 3 enhanced remake of Time Crisis 4, Wild Dog has a younger partner named Wild Fang.
[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 (similar to the one featured in Time Crisis: Project Titan) 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. A Playstation 3 conversion was released in Q4 2007 in the United States and Japan and will be released for global circulation at other countries in 2008.
[edit] External links
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