Time Crisis: Project Titan

Pros • Good sound and character animation • Boss battles where you can move from one element of cover to another are a cool addition to the Time Crisis game • Hordes of enemies and unpredictable ways of jumping them into the conflict • Rapid, game-driving arcade gunplay • You can get the Guncon for only ten dollars extra • Follows all the classic arcade conventions of plot and story	Cons • Follows all the arcade conventions of plot and story • Little interactivity in the environments--I can shoot through the windows, why don't bullets pass through flimsy kitchen chairs or hedges? • Single-player only • Being able to move in the environment is only implemented in a very few levels • Clumsy menu system • No weapon variety
Bottom Line Time Crisis Project Titan provides the most exciting light-gun gaming you can find for any home console. You duck behind cover, you step out, point your Guncon at the screen and start firing. Evil henchmen clutch their kneecaps, chests, shoulders or heads--depending on where you hit them--and spin or drop to the ground. Click, click; six shots later you are out of ammo and drop back behind cover to reload. You step back out just as an elite enemy (wearing a red shirt so you'll know he's dangerous) draws a bead on your chest; Doh! And you drop back behind cover. The red-shirted fool's bullet whines harmlessly overhead and you leap back into the fray, careful to take out that red-shirt first. Time Crisis Project Titan is the best PlayStation light-gun shooter there is. Just be warned that it is very little different from the original Time Crisis.

The "duck'n shoot" gameplay of the Time Crisis series is absolutely the most adrenalized form of light-gunning there is. In a Time Crisis, not only do you have to shoot all of the gun-toting enemies leaping out at you, and to accomplish your mission within a set time period, you also have to remember to reload your gun every six shots. Reloading, of course, is no novel concept, but rather than remain standing stupidly in the line of fire and simply pointing your gun off-screen to magically acquire a full magazine, Time Crisis reinforces the idea that bullets might hurt--you know, like if they, just for example, punch through the front of your rib-cage, and tear your lungs out through a mid-back exit-wound--by forcing you to duck out of the line of fire to reload. You can also duck behind cover should it ever seem like a good idea; like, say, when a bad guy draws careful aim at your chest and there is no way short of some Matrix-style bullet-time miracle--and no matter how real that movie seemed to you, it was not; you cannot dodge bullets--you can shoot him before he squeezes one off. The ducking behind cover also changes your field of view, so every time you duck down and jump back up, you have to realign yourself to the field of battle and take fresh aim, making the game more active and challenging. Fully expect to get so caught up in the action that you physically duck aside at the same time you press the appropriate button to pull out of the line of an incoming grenade, reload and pop back around the corner to bust one in the chops of the jerk who fired it at you. And, you can't just cower behind some boxes waiting for the bad guys to run out of ammo; Time Crisis keeps the pressure on with a relentless timer; let it reach zero and it is all over.

Project Titan takes that rapid Time Crisis gunplay and adds a new dimension. Some of the boss-battles in this new game allow the player to move around the environment, shifting from one element of cover to another. Enemies also move themselves, and suddenly the gameplay is that much more frantic, and fun. Unfortunately, this new element is only integrated into a very few levels, and but for those few levels, there is very little difference between Time Crisis and Time Crisis Project Titan.

Project Titan is still a one-player only game. The game environments are non-responsive, but for windows which shatter when fired through. Why don't small objects react to gunfire more, and if bullets can pass through glass, why not through flimsy kitchen chairs or shrubs behind which you or your enemies take cover. There is no variety in weapons; the sounds are exactly the same as in the original game; not much recommends purchasing Project Titan if you already have the original Time Crisis. Now, if you don't have the original, Project Titan will introduce you to one of the most exciting action games, and the best home light-gun game you can play.

And, you know what I love? I love how doggedly Project Titan holds to arcade conventions of plot and story. The cut-scenes between levels necessarily involve saving a “princess,” a double-cross, an evil and beautiful villainess, and every single last one of the bad guys you shoot is male. Red-shirted bad guys are most dangerous (in direct contradiction to everything Star Trek, where red-shirted guys are useless in a conflict, and sure to die first), and you can stand clear in front of blue-shirted enemies who know how to pull the triggers on their guns, and who make every show of aiming, but obviously have had all of their weapons sighted in by a cross-eyed armourer, for they couldn't hit the broadside of a barn-yard. For some ridiculous reason, you use a six-hot revolver as your only weapon--I don't know about you, but if I'm ever planning to shoot it out with a horde of evil henchmen, I'm going to take a modern automatic that holds at least nine slugs in a magazine, even if those evil henchmen are crappy shots, and I won't hesitate to stoop over and pick up their machine guns after I've shot them no matter how much of a hurry I'm in to save my girlfriend, or my own life or whatever it is.

This is good, solid gaming, but if you already have a Guncon, a weekend rental is all you really need to get what you can out of Project Titan. If however, you don't have a Guncon, and your mother permits you to play with guns in the house, run right out, pick up a Project Titan/Guncon pack, and have at it. You'll have a great time.

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