Game Review - Time Crisis: Razing Storm
Rail shooters are the classic game we cannot help but play. They sit triumphantly in the arcade knowing full well you will feed it with your coins if only just to get the obsession out of your system. These are centred on ease of use where the only thing you have to concentrate on is shooting a pretend gun at a varying amount of baddies on screen. This clarity and focus on enjoyment captures my interest every time. The newest edition to the Time Crisis series, Razing Storm, brings this experience to the comfort of your couch. Coupled with the PlayStation 3's amazing power and the surprisingly realistic PlayStation Move, we should have seen something truly creative and enjoyable. Sadly this couldn't be further from the truth.
You might be thinking “but Razing Storm has 3 games in 1! I'm sure there are loads of things in there to keep me occupied”. Included in this compilation are Razing Storm, Time Crisis 4 and Deadstorm Pirates. Razing Storm and Time Crisis 4 are perfect examples on how to butcher a genre-defining series with an uninteresting storyline and mind-numbing gameplay. Both can be completed in around 2 hours where you spend most of your time in cut scenes or waiting for the enemy to pop his head around the corner. A walk in the park would be more challenging. The scenery and enemies may change as you progress but there is no sense of adventure that allows you to immerse yourself. Throughout I felt more like a spectator than a player.
Razing Storm also contains a mini-game in the collection. Here you play as a prison guard with a sniper rifle trying to shoot escaping convicts and hopefully miss the other guards. It feels stiff and awkward to play and requires you to use the cumbersome zoom function to take out some of the cowering prisoners hiding in corners. This challenge has caused more agitation than enjoyment and it will not be sadly missed.
Deadstorm Pirates on the other hand can be quite entertaining even if just for the briefest of moments. I was fully enthralled by the adventures of a group of ambitious pirates on a mystical island. From fighting hordes of creepy skeletons to getting chased by a giant angry crab, you are fully immersed as a swashbuckling pirate. By the time I got myself into character the story abruptly finished. After a thorough search I was disappointed to find there was no more content for me to explore. This anti-climatic end to an already very short game shows me what little effort was put into these titles.
I can safely say that the Move was not designed for rail shooters. Pressing the shoot button rapidly can be very difficult and tiring unlike the impressive GunCon controllers used in previous Time Crisis titles. I also found myself having to frequently calibrate the controller as the on screen cross-hair seemed to have a mind of its own. I thoroughly believe developers can create fully comprehensive and content-rich games using the PlayStation Move but Razing Storm is not one of them.
Using the Move controller can be done in two ways. The first is holding it like a TV remote giving you little-to-no accuracy and after playing for 30 minutes, you will have destroyed the muscles in your wrist. The second way to play is by getting a gun attachment, yet another thing to add to the already big price tag. Instead of the all important cover button being near the handle, where your hand will naturally place itself, it is located on the top near the front of the barrel. This is quite frustrating and cumbersome to use. Although this is the problem of the gun attachment, you will be hard pressed to find anything else that does not suffer from the same silly problems. Rail shooters are supposed to be about simplicity and little quirks like this one can truly ruin gameplay.
Once you have finished the 3 short and totally underwhelming stories, you can happily throw it out the window content in the knowledge that it is the correct thing to do. Unlike other Time Crisis games which give hours upon hours of addictive enjoyment, there is nothing truly gripping about this title that will bring you back. In short, do not expect any bang for your buck if you buy Time Crisis Razing Storm. In one fell swoop they have ruined their reputation for me and may have ruined the rail shooter genre for newcomers.
Gameplay: 2/5
Accessibility: 2.5/5
Replayability: 0/5
You might be thinking “but Razing Storm has 3 games in 1! I'm sure there are loads of things in there to keep me occupied”. Included in this compilation are Razing Storm, Time Crisis 4 and Deadstorm Pirates. Razing Storm and Time Crisis 4 are perfect examples on how to butcher a genre-defining series with an uninteresting storyline and mind-numbing gameplay. Both can be completed in around 2 hours where you spend most of your time in cut scenes or waiting for the enemy to pop his head around the corner. A walk in the park would be more challenging. The scenery and enemies may change as you progress but there is no sense of adventure that allows you to immerse yourself. Throughout I felt more like a spectator than a player.
Razing Storm also contains a mini-game in the collection. Here you play as a prison guard with a sniper rifle trying to shoot escaping convicts and hopefully miss the other guards. It feels stiff and awkward to play and requires you to use the cumbersome zoom function to take out some of the cowering prisoners hiding in corners. This challenge has caused more agitation than enjoyment and it will not be sadly missed.
Deadstorm Pirates on the other hand can be quite entertaining even if just for the briefest of moments. I was fully enthralled by the adventures of a group of ambitious pirates on a mystical island. From fighting hordes of creepy skeletons to getting chased by a giant angry crab, you are fully immersed as a swashbuckling pirate. By the time I got myself into character the story abruptly finished. After a thorough search I was disappointed to find there was no more content for me to explore. This anti-climatic end to an already very short game shows me what little effort was put into these titles.
I can safely say that the Move was not designed for rail shooters. Pressing the shoot button rapidly can be very difficult and tiring unlike the impressive GunCon controllers used in previous Time Crisis titles. I also found myself having to frequently calibrate the controller as the on screen cross-hair seemed to have a mind of its own. I thoroughly believe developers can create fully comprehensive and content-rich games using the PlayStation Move but Razing Storm is not one of them.
Using the Move controller can be done in two ways. The first is holding it like a TV remote giving you little-to-no accuracy and after playing for 30 minutes, you will have destroyed the muscles in your wrist. The second way to play is by getting a gun attachment, yet another thing to add to the already big price tag. Instead of the all important cover button being near the handle, where your hand will naturally place itself, it is located on the top near the front of the barrel. This is quite frustrating and cumbersome to use. Although this is the problem of the gun attachment, you will be hard pressed to find anything else that does not suffer from the same silly problems. Rail shooters are supposed to be about simplicity and little quirks like this one can truly ruin gameplay.
Once you have finished the 3 short and totally underwhelming stories, you can happily throw it out the window content in the knowledge that it is the correct thing to do. Unlike other Time Crisis games which give hours upon hours of addictive enjoyment, there is nothing truly gripping about this title that will bring you back. In short, do not expect any bang for your buck if you buy Time Crisis Razing Storm. In one fell swoop they have ruined their reputation for me and may have ruined the rail shooter genre for newcomers.
Gameplay: 2/5
Accessibility: 2.5/5
Replayability: 0/5
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