Time Crisis 3 Review

Namco is an excellent publisher that knows how to develop its own titles, unlike many other publishers who rely on various independent developers to do their dirty work. Time Crisis 3 (as the name says) is the third installment in the Time Crisis series. With its fast-paced, constant action, it is hard to say that this isn’t worthy of a glance. While it plays out like a movie (with Dreamcast quality graphics), the game is in first-person and there is a hair-trigger targeting system.

Players in TC3 will venture to Lukano, a small country in the Mediterranean Sea. Lukano has been invaded by the Zagorias Federation; their troops have taken control and the local residents are facing annihilation by a potential missile strike. With the fate of Lukano and neighboring European countries in jeopardy, the VSSE commits agents Alan Dunaway and Wesley Lambert to neutralize the threat in the area and return power to the citizens of Lukano.

After landing on the beach, Wes and Adam have to work their way across the hostile island. With no covert tactics or surprise, they must rely on quick shooting against the combat soldiers, along with the claw-like martial arts soldiers. Unfortunately, Namco sent me the version that does not include a GunCon2, which means you must use your PS2 controller to play, oh boy.

The only real gameplay modes are the choice of one or two players. While playing, players are restricted to movement; hiding behind objects and coming out to fire are the only movements that you make. By hiding behind objects, you are protected from fire and automatically reload. While we are on the topic of weapons, TC3 has four weapons; machine gun, handgun, shotgun, and grenade.

Without the use of a GunCon2, TC3 is frustratingly difficult to beat even the first level. While you do get continues, unlimited continues (with the option to turn them off) would be more entertaining than having to play the whole game over again.

The graphics are far from superb, in fact, like I said earlier, they are Dreamcast quality. The screen feels gritty and unpolished; on top of that, while playing multi-player, the screen is cut in half, but instead of having ½ of the screen for one player and another ½ for the other player, Namco decided to make it like a wide-screen movie, giving you absolutely no room to see what is going on. I had a hard time seeing what I was doing on my big screen television, which is not good news for those of you that have 20’’ television sets.