Crisis Zone

Crisis Zone is a light-gun shooter from Namco that was built on the same engine as the Time Crisis series, but goes its own way both in story and mechanics. The player takes on the role of a member of an assault unit tasked with clearing a shopping mall occupied by terrorists, and instead of the usual hiding behind fixed obstacles, is given a ballistic shield - raised with a button on the gun and used for cover anywhere on the screen, which changes the rhythm of the game compared to classic Time Crisis installments, where the player is tied to fixed cover spots. Setting the game in a civilian shopping mall instead of the military bases or fortresses typical of the rest of the series also gives the game a somewhat different, more urgent tone - it's a fight in an ordinary environment that gradually turns into rubble before the player's eyes.

The 1999 Crisis Zone arcade cabinet ran on a foot pedal and light gun just like the previous Time Crisis, but added the aforementioned shield and a more intense, more enclosed shopping-mall environment full of explosions, collapsing ceilings and burning cars. The campaign is divided into several short missions focused on fast close-range firefights, which makes the pace snappier and more aggressive than the sister series - enemies attack from close range and the player has to raise and lower the shield in a much faster sequence than the classic cover elsewhere in the series. The game later also received home conversions, through which it reached players who didn't know it from arcades, confirming that it was a mechanically distinct and viable departure from the established Time Crisis formula.

Why play it: Crisis Zone is an ideal choice for light-gun genre fans who want to try the shield mechanic as an alternative to classic hiding behind cover - and for Time Crisis players looking for a related but differently playable game from the same studio, with an emphasis on close, chaotic firefights in a civilian setting instead of military complexes.