I’m a sucker for light gun shooters. Seriously - it’s one of the main reasons I picked up a PlayStation Move and it’s basically the only reason I still own my Wii. There’s something incredibly addicting about grabbing a virtual gun with your buddy at your side and shooting through a campy game with a story about tactical ninja soldiers fighting a huge mechanical octopus. Not that that’s the actual story of Time Crisis Razing Storm, but it might as well be.
Razing Storm for the PS3 is actually five games in one - or maybe 3 light gun games and two really awkward first person shooter modes. We plugged our Move into the PlayStation Move Shooting Attachment (yes that’s the official name) and jumped in.
First up is the title game - Time Crisis Razing Storm. The first mode of the game is the Arcade mode, which contains three levels of traditional Time Crisis style action. It looks pretty, sounds good, and has plenty of cheesy action and one liners. The Move is used as a pointing device controlling a cursor on the screen - with each player getting their own different colored one - as you pick off targets and objects being thrown at you. You calibrate the Move before every game and the accuracy is pretty spot on, despite there being a cursor, I felt like my aim was true and it wasn’t needed.
The arcade mode is pretty easy and quickly over - we beat it in about 35 minutes. Moving on from the arcade mode is a Story mode which is actually a first person shooter that is played with the Move controller. I was immediately reminded of trying to play Red Steel on the Wii as soon I tried to get acclimated to the controls. I say tried because it’s incredibly awkward using the Move and a PS3 controller or a sub controller together - especially with the Shooting Attachment. While the game has freedom of movement, it does borrow from it’s on rails shooter brethren in sections where you need to point the controller down to go into cover to lock into place. The problem here is it’s incredibly difficult to actually trigger this action. Sadly this mode is a solo only affair as well further decreasing its fun factor.
Another mode in Razing Storm is an online versus mode - which as of now - has only a few hundred players on the leader boards. It’s devoid of players and simply seems to be a waste of resources that could have been used to make more co-op content.
Moving on from Razing Storm you have Time Crisis 4. The game is nearly identical to its Arcade counterpart. Like Razing Storm’s arcade mode control, it works pretty well - but one problem that was more apparent because of the increased difficulty of this game. Using cover in Time Crisis 4 is clumsy, popping in and out of cover is triggered by the Move button on top of the controller. If you aren’t using the gun attachment, this isn’t a big deal, but if you do use it it becomes an awkward reach of the finger.
Finally we come to Deadstorm Pirates, another traditional light gun style game, and its first appearance on a console from the arcade. One problem is immediately apparent when you go to play the game - it requires a 3.5 GB install. Quite odd since the other titles on the disc don’t require any. That being said it’s a fun, and short, light gun shooter with plenty undead creatures to kill in different settings - including an impressive scenario on a pirate ship.
While there appears to be a lot of content on the surface of this $50 title, the three light gun games won’t take more than 3 hours to complete - if that. The control issues were so poor on the Story Mode of Razing Storm I didn’t even take the time to finish it - despite the ability to play it with a standard controller.
Time Crisis Razing Storm is a good start for the Move in what we can hope is a larger collection of quality light gun shooters. The $20 shooting attachment was a great addition to the gameplay, but it was easy to see that the developers didn’t consider players using it when designing the button layout. These games won’t win any awards, but they are a great distraction, and perfect when a buddy comes over for a quick playthrough.