Time Crisis 4 review

Part of this is due to the Guncon itself. The analog sticks are plastic and tight - somewhat poorly constructed - as if you received the cumbersome orange doohickey free in a Happy Meal. The two extremely light sensors are finicky and hard to keep perched atop your TV, even with the bizarre weighted rubber strips that come affixed to it. It works about as well as it ever did, but once you turn on the jittery onscreen reticule, you'll quickly notice it can't hold a candle to the Wii Remote, or even the damned SixAxis.

But most of the fault is in the game design. Oh, it's Time Crisis alright, but ducking has been replaced with a crouch that doesn't reload or provide cover. You're still dodging extremely slow moving bullets - but damn - it makes theludicrous plot involving rogue military agents and a biological weapon known as "Terror Bytes" seem intelligent by comparison. An assailant popping up right in front of you in the arcade version is expected. But it feels far less acceptable when you know he's there and should be able to see him a mile away,from different angles,yet still can't.

Try as it might, it's still very much "on rails." Except now you can wander around aimlessly before you trigger a typical, Time Crisis-y, shootout against idiotic gunman with no apparent interest in self preservation. It feels more like an unhinged God/Debug mode than any grand step towards first-person immersion. Plus a narrator screaming out your guns as you cycle through instead of showing them on screen only adds to the stupidity.