Written by: Mark

 

 

 

The light gun shooter genre has for some reason struggled on the next gen platforms (barring a couple of quality Wii releases) and on the Microsoft and Sony consoles has just not taken off.

 

With the release of the Playstation Move one kind of expected that we would see light gun games released for the hardware. The first of these is the much anticipated "Time Crisis: Razing Storm" from Namco.

 

The question however would be as to whether Namco could produce a title which would work well with the Move and prove to be a must have title?

 

 

I will admit to be rather surprised to find that the Razing Storm package actually included three different games. These are headline game Time Crisis Razing Storm, a re-release of Time Crisis 4 and pirate themed shooter Deadstorm Pirates.

 

This suggests that the a lot has gone into making the package a must buy game however as we all know content is not everything as the vast majority of gamers would rather have a game packed with quality gameplay at the expense of a little content.

 

 

With this in mind one wonders whether the game would offer enough quality to match the undoubtedly excellent quantity.

 

 

All three games in the package offer similar point and shoot gameplay which still remains popular worldwide in fact such is the popularity of the genre that it seems that light gun shooters (along with dance games) are just about the only genre you will find in most video arcades. Taking this into consideration it is somewhat surprising that the genre has not proved a success on next gen systems.

 

It goes without saying that the action in all three games offers an intense action packed (if somewhat short) ride and all three do offer a slightly differing experience whether this is due to locations, storylines or multiple weapon choices and this certainly brings a level of replay ability to proceedings.

 

I would love to say that the very impressive precise Move controls worked well however at times I was forced to recalibrate several times due to the game not reading where I was pointing leading to the onscreen target often pulling across the screen to where I was not aiming.

 

 

This is unforgivable really and unquestionably spoilt what was shaping up to be a good first light gun release for the Playstation Move and added far too much frustration to the enjoyable and massively successful Time Crisis gameplay.