Film Review: The Phantom Menace

Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace

• Publisher: 20th Century Fox
• Production Studio: Lucasfilm
• Release: 19 May 1999
• Genre: Action, Fantasy
• Director: George Lucas
• Producer: Rick McCallum
• Writer: George Lucas (screenplay & story)

Previously on the SDP, I wrote about the changes made for the Star Wars special editions, which indicated Lucasfilm's growing addiction with CGI.  Let's see what that led to.

I did reviews for the first three Star Wars movies, but they weren't easy to write about.  For lack of a better description, they were all good in a sort of non-specific way.  I did manage to find running themes to base my reviews on, but those came along mid-way through the writing process.  But now that I'm entering the prequel trilogy, I think I'm in for smoother sailing because... hoo boy, I've got some quite colourful opinions on these movies.  On top of that, I'm more familiar with them, especially The Phantom Menace, it being the first Star Wars movie I saw in theatres.  So I kind of want to defend this movie, but as my last few reviews have demonstrated, nothing in life is ever that simple.  So let's see how I manage to divide up the good and bad from this infamous entry.

We start off on a ship orbiting the planet Naboo, which the Trade Federation have put a blockade over and are about to invade.  Two Jedi knights, a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his senior partner Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) are dispatched to talk them out of it, but their demands only result in them almost getting killed.  They escape, of course, and sneak aboard the planet along with the Trade Federation's landing party.  Their army consists of many battle droids, a decision which not only lets the effects team add loads of via CGI, but are also a handy way of ramping up the action, while keeping the actual level of violence against humans down.  Gotta maintain that PG rating somehow!

Jar-Jar Binks is this movie's source of shoehorned-in comic relief.

Amidst all the mechanical chaos, our Jedi also find and rescue a new friend... the infamous Jar-Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), who takes them down to his undersea community of fellow Gungans.  *sigh* Believe it or not, I used to really like this guy.  Look, I was ten years old, and I had a thing for silly speech patterns!  Even now, I consider myself a bit more tolerant than most, but he's still not something I'd want to look in the face for too long.  And some Gungan-to-English subtitles wouldn't have gone amiss, either.  I have no frickin' clue what Jar-Jar said when explaining how he fell out with the other Gungans:

Jar-Jar Binks: You could say, boom de gasser, then crashed into the boss's hayblibber, then banished!

...I got nothing.  And all that said, the plot certainly could have done without him.  Sure, he guides Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan to their destination of Naboo's capital, but they very well could have landed closer to the city, eliminating the need for this diversion to begin with.  And incidentally, it's said they are driving their ship through the planet's core, but, uh... no.  If Naboo is anything like Earth, the actual core of the planet is gonna be immensely hot and immensely hard.  They'd all fry up, get crushed from the gravity pressure, or otherwise die before they got a few miles down.  And even if they didn't, we're talking a journey of thousands of miles -- the latter half of which would be spent fighting against the pull of gravity, by the way -- so by all accounts it should have taken them forever!  And they started pretty much where the Trade Federation's army landed on the planet, so surely it can't have taken them that long, since they're there before Qui-Gon and the others!  Basically what I'm saying is:

Jar-Jar Binks: Theysa settin' yousa up.  Going through the planet core?  Bad bombin'.

Dang straight.  But whatever, they snatch up Queen Amidala (Keira Knightley) from the Federation's clutches, and fly her off into space.  Their ship's hyperdrive engine got damaged in the escape, so they are forced to land on the nearest planet... none other than Tatooine.  Qui-Gon, Jar-Jar, the handmaiden Padme (Natalie Portman), and R2-D2, here one of Amidala's service droids, venture out into town to find some new parts for their ship.  It is here that they meet the future Darth Vader himself, a 9-year-old slave by the name of Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd).  Y'all gonna hate me for saying this, but his performance kind of, sort of... works.  At least Jake Lloyd acts something like a real human his age.  His lines are awkward at best, but do at least show the perspective of a kid who doesn't fully understand how the world works.  Compare that with all the other big-name performers they roped in to this thing -- Liam Neeson, Ewan MacGregor, Keira Knightley, even Samuel Frickin' Jackson -- who deliver 90% of their lines in what we MSTies can only describe as a "dull surprise".  Even Jar-Jar Binks has more spirit put into his (no less annoying) performance, and he's a computer-generated character!  Basically, what I'm saying is that in the land of the blind, the man with one eye and twenty-thousand midi-chlorians is king.

Speaking of, I'm not going to dwell on the subject of midi-chlorians.  The truth is, I couldn't care less.  But so we're on the same page, allow me to summarise what problems this brings up, according to everyone else.  Midi-chlorians are microscopic life-forms which, in large enough quantities, serve as a conduit for the host person to use the Force with.  No, they do not actually replace the Force itself.  But they do restrict who can actually wield the Force.  Where formerly, anyone in the Star Wars universe could earn this power through the right kind of training, that is no longer the case because they weren't born with the right genetic makeup or whatever.  What problem I do have with the concept of midi-chlorians is from a narrative standpoint.  They are used to tell the audience that a character is strong with the Force, but not to show it.  If they just wanted to set up power levels for everyone, they could have just measured Force energy in some consistently arbitrary units, without needing to tie it in to some explanation of how the whole Force thing works.  But hey, if no other (canon) works want to address the darn things, then I'm perfectly fine with it.  In fact, so will I!

No matter how cool the big setpieces are, the plot was made to serve them, not the other way around.

So how does Anakin show his set of talents?  He is a genius mechanic, having created C-3PO in a brief scene which is essentially a spot of plot-irrelevant fanservice.  He also built a pod-racer, a craft pulled from the front by a pair of jet engines, and possesses the super-human reflexes required to drive it.  To raise money to repair our heroes' ship, he enters himself in a race event, because somebody had just seen Ben-Hur the other day.  While this is a fun and tense sequence, it sprung in my mind this movie's fatal flaw, or one of them anyway.  I imagine they designed the setpieces first, and wrote a story around them.  This mentality also explains the narrative slog we have to deal with after our heroes finally leave Tatooine.  For your sanity, allow me to summarise.  Amidala tries to get the Galactic Senate to send an army to help out her home planet, but the Trade Federation blocks her motion, so she manages to get the chancellor replaced with Senator Palpatine (Ian MacDiarmid), a.k.a. the future Emperor.  Meanwhile, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan try to have Anakin trained by the Jedi Council, but Yoda and the others refuse, on the grounds that Anakin has too many conflicting emotions (read: he's gonna become Darth Vader in a few movies).  Qui-Gon insists on them doing so, because he believes that Anakin will fulfill a prophecy to restore balance to the Force, a concept which I have trouble grasping because nowhere is it ever made apparent how this affects the film's universe.  Again, too much telling, not enough showing.

In the end, the heroes return to Naboo, and take back the planet on their own terms.  They manage to form an alliance with the Gungan tribe, once Padme reveals herself to be the real Queen Amidala, the apparent queen just being a decoy.  This was another homage to Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, a film which had already inspired many other elements from the previous Star Wars trilogy.  It's a nice concept on paper, but as executed here, there was no foreshadowing to be had, so it's just kind of random.

This finale represents a culmination of a problem that has been steadily growing throughout the Star Wars movies thus far.  In A New Hope, there was only one thread of scenes in the finale: the battle above the Death Star.  In The Empire Strikes Back, there were two threads, one following Han, Leia, and Lando, and one for Luke.  One lead into the other at such a pace that you got time to absorb both stories equally.  Return of the Jedi had three threads: Han and Leia on Endor's surface, Luke aboard the Death Star II, and Lando commanding the space battle above it all.  We are kept waiting a bit longer, but they still use certain turning points as moments to cut from one scene to the other, to keep the action going.  But now, with The Phantom Menace, we have four such plot threads: the lightsaber duel with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, the palace infiltration with Amidala, the field battle with Jar-Jar and the Gungans, and the space battle with Anakin.  And with the frequency which the film cuts between each of these scenes, oftentimes without waiting for a turning point, we don't get the chance to absorb ourselves in any of them.  For a film with such a devotion to spectacle, it fails to leave an impact.

As for that space battle, what is usually the highlight of any Star Wars film... it's just lame this time around.  Anakin flies up in a starfighter he was hiding in, taking off completely by accident.  His ship is on autopilot for much of the scene, and even when he shuts it off, there's nothing here to impress.  He contributes nothing to the battle until the very end, and none of the other Naboo pilots even acknowledge his presence.  And when Anakin does fire the fatal shot which ends up destroying the enemy space station -- which, coincidentally, also shuts down the battle droids on Naboo's surface, by the way -- he had no idea what he was doing.

And another thing, the Gungans suck at this whole war thing.  Their only weapons are these exploding energy balls, and they'd be bound to run out of them sooner rather than later.  But there's this one scene where Jar-Jar, ever the clumsy goofball, gets his foot stuck amidst the wiry guts of half a battle droid.  When he trips, the droid's blaster goes off, shooting another droid.  Jar-Jar does this again and again, taking down more of the enemy.  Now, if he managed to figure that out, then why, pray tell, doesn't anyone else on his side think to just take the droids' guns and use them against them?  Yeah, even in my less-critical youth, that bit always bugged me.

This three-way lightsaber duel is one of the few things about this movie that everyone seems to agree is still awesome.

The saving grace of this finale, at least, is the duel our Jedi heroes find themselves caught up in.  For one, their enemy is Darth Maul (Ray Park), who looks wicked awesome with his red-and-black face paint and the horns pasted onto his shaved head.  On top of that, he uses a double-bladed lightsaber, which opens up new opportunities for fight choreography.  The kinetic, acrobatic fighting style on display is a step above what was on display before, where the moves were slower and more calculated.  They say the fights from the old movies were better for that reason, and in a way I can see that, with the fighting styles serving the personality of the characters.  This is especially true for the end of Return of the Jedi, where Luke's strikes are calm and decisive, until Darth Vader gets into his head and he just snaps, carelessly wailing on the guy.  But I think the fight in The Phantom Menace captures this theme as well.  Where all the lightsaber users in the old trilogy were either aged or inexperienced, the prequels capture the Jedi Order, along with the Jedi Knights themselves, in the prime of their lives.

At the end of it all, Darth Maul eventually defeats Qui-Gon, only to be killed in turn by Obi-Wan.  The leaders of the Trade Federation are arrested by Padme and her squad, ending the invasion of Naboo.  And Obi-Wan adopts Anakin as his Jedi apprentice.  You are now free to turn off your TV.

I wanted to be nice to The Phantom Menace, I really did.  Fanboys have been using this movie as a whipping boy for everything wrong with the world, not just Star Wars, whereas for the longest time, I've preferred to defend it.  Maybe it's because I was young enough when I saw it in theatres, and because I've re-watched it on video so often since, that I've developed a sort of possessive admiration for it, like older fans have with the first trilogy.  But then again, all those repeated viewings have made me question quite a few things, and you know what?  I'm glad I now have the chance to air them all out.  I'm not mad at The Phantom Menace; I'm just... disappointed.  When this Star Wars movie actually wants to be Star Wars, it can be quite fun.  But it lacks the discipline to focus on those good aspects, and that's the biggest shame of all, really.

Positives:
+ A few brilliant action setpieces.
+ Another knockout score by composer John Williams.
+ Some stylish set and prop designs.

Negatives:
- The plot was built to serve the "brilliant action setpieces" without any care.
- Too much telling, sparsely any showing.
- Awkward comic relief.
- Whatever performances aren't annoying are just boring.

Acting: 1 midi-chlorian out of 5

Writing: 1 midi-chlorian out of 5

Special Effects: 3 midi-chlorians out of 5

Visual Design: 4 midi-chlorians out of 5

The Call: 55% (D+)

Editorial: The Star Wars Special Editions

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, where I made a few passing comments about the Special Edition changes.  Since those took place, chronologically, before the next movie, let's deal with them now.

If you have been reading along with my Star Wars movie reviews and decided to follow along by watching the movies themselves, odds are good that you will not be seeing them as they were originally presented in the seventies and/or the eighties.  See, in the winter of 1997, in the lead-up to Episode I: The Phantom Menace a few years later, Lucasfilm went back and did some work on the original trilogy, re-releasing them in theatres under the "special edition" banner.  These versions became the standard for all home-video releases from then on.  Further changes were made for the DVD release in 2004, and the Blu-Ray release in 2011.  Far from just simple restoration jobs, the changes that were made for the Special Editions have divided fans, so speaking as a Star Wars fan myself, where do I stand on the issue?

Now, it is quite common for old movies to be updated in some form or another, especially when they are prepared for a new video format.  Sometimes, they also re-cut the movie, adding or deleting scenes, in what is often known as a "director's cut".  Off the top of my head, one of the best examples I can think of is Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), which got not only a director's cut 10 years after its first release, but a "Final Cut" after 25 years.  But what Lucasfilm did to the Star Wars trilogy transcends all that.  With the increased abilities of computer-generated imagery, they used this technology to add and change various elements throughout the movies.  Now, speaking as an artist of various formats, I do like this idea on principle.  As Yahtzee once said, "99% of creators claim to loathe everything they made more than five years ago, and the remaining 1% are liars".  But creative freedom is only as valuable as what you do with it, so let's go over their decisions.  If you'd like to follow along, someone made a (rather biased) list of changes made across all four versions for each of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, plus the prequel trilogy, which also got some changes of its own.

(NB: All screenshots below are from the 2004 DVD editions.)

---

I suppose I should get the big ones out of the way first.  In A New Hope, a scene where Han Solo is cornered by and shoots the bounty hunter Greedo (1977) was changed so that Greedo shoots first (1997), or both shoot roughly at once (2004).  The problem everyone has with this is that it lessens Han's evolution throughout the film from anti-hero to hero.  I, for one, think it's all overblown.  One, the affected scene lasts less than a second.  Two, there are other ways that Han establishes a less-than-reputable reputation, such as when he expresses reluctance in saving Princess Leia, until Luke floats the idea of getting a reward from her.  Personally, I'm more offended with how they made that edit in the first place, by shifting Han's head in such a way that no neck could comfortably re-create on such short notice.  But that was for the first Special Edition; in the DVD version, both Han and Greedo shoot at almost the same time, and Han's upper body shifts along with his head.  Well, it's better than nothing, I guess.

Speaking of A New Hope, they put a couple of deleted scenes back in.  One of them is a conversation between Han and Jabba the Hutt, the latter added by CGI.  It was originally shot with a human stand-in for Jabba, and they meant to add the creature with a model during post-production, but they couldn't make it work back then.  There's a bit when Han walks behind the stand-in, but Jabba's character design was later settled on as a fat slug creature, they made it so Han appears to step on Jabba's tail while doing so.  The Jabba model, as it originally appeared in 1997, wasn't all that great... okay, it was totally off and also kind of creepy, but it was updated in 2004, to better match the real thing.

In a few other scenes, various alien creatures were added to the backgrounds.  It does try to flesh out the world on screen, but they way they're animated sticks out like a sore thumb, due to the relatively primitive rendering technology of the mid-90s.  It's not all bad, however.  Some of the best changes were made to the space battle scenes, where they were able to animate more ships and with more complex camera angles.  I said before that the original effects were good enough because they didn't bite off more than they could chew, and the same is true of these particular CGI additions.  After all, the best CGI is the kind you don't notice.

The Empire Strikes Back got off the easiest in terms of changes.  They added a few brief scenes with the Wampa, the snow monster that captures Luke early on, as its costume could not be completed in time for initial filming.  The hologram of the Emperor was re-shot with Ian McDiarmid, the same actor who would play him in Return of the Jedi and the prequels.  In the DVD version, Boba Fett's voice lines were re-recorded by Temuera Morrison, the New Zealander who played his identical father Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones.  And some hallway shots on Bespin's Cloud City had windows added, fleshing out the backgrounds.  All in all, the changes are largely subtle, and do a fair job of expanding the world.

There was a bit of a row with how they adjusted some of the colours for the DVD version of this and Return of the Jedi (pictured), so that Darth Vader's lightsaber appears solid pink, instead of a white core with red glow as with most other lightsabers.  A careless mistake, I must say, but ultimately minor.

Speaking of Return of the Jedi, that one got hit pretty hard as well, and this time I'll work backwards... you'll see why.  At the end of the movie, we see Force ghosts of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker look upon our heroes.  In the original and special editions, they were played by Sebastian Shaw, who played the unmasked Anakin/Darth Vader in that same movie.  But from the DVD version on, the Anakin ghost was replaced by Hayden Christensen, who played him in Episodes II and III.  Maybe it's because this was the last "snapshot" of Anakin, so to speak, before he turned to the dark side of the Force.  But really, we all know the real reason this was done: to advertise him in the then-upcoming Revenge of the Sith.

Apart from Greedo shooting first, this one little change seems to have garnered the most virulent hatred from what I've read.  For starters, it's one of the very last scenes in the original trilogy, leaving viewers with that as the figurative taste in their mouths.  But on a more substantial level, people say that it undoes the character arc Anakin/Vader just went through, because him turning back and killing the Emperor should still count as another "snapshot" of him being on the light side of the Force.  I mean, yeah, this scene still raises a lot of questions, but ultimately it's short enough that I can let it slide.  They also replaced the song for the ending celebration, and added a montage of post-imperial jubilation across other planets in the Star Wars galaxy.  I actually like both of these changes, for the added world-building and for bringing more impact to the victory we've just witnessed.

But then... back at the beginning, there was a musical number in Jabba's palace.  In the original version, the song was performed by a band of three fursuited or puppeted aliens.  It was dated, perhaps, but in a delightfully 80s kind of way, and didn't stand out any more than the band from the Mos Eisley cantina, for example.  But for the special edition, they re-did this scene with a new song and a new band of CGI creatures.  Both this new song and the new effects are way in-your-face this time around, literally even, in the case of the two singers who go mugging at the camera.  It is just excruciatingly painful to sit through.  Out of everything changed in the name of George Lucas's artistic vision, this is the one change I have the biggest problem with.  Greedo shooting first?  Fine.  Han Solo stepping over CGI Jabba's tail?  Fine.  Hayden Christensen Force ghost?  Fine.  But this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I draw the line.

---

Quite a few of these changes, particularly in Empire and Jedi, were made as connections to the prequel trilogy.  I've read opinions from Star Wars fans who hate these changes for trying to tie the two trilogies together.  I don't know, there's just something... self-righteous and possessive about that statement.  Yeah, the prequels aren't the most respected films in cinema, especially not when compared to their predecessors, but who are you to decide what is canon?  Honest to blog, youse guys are worse than Sonic fans sometimes, and I'm speaking as a fan of both myself!

That's not to let Lucasfilm off the hook, either.  Creative control is only as good as what you do with it, and while I'm tolerant enough to write most of these changes off as inconsequential, a lot of them were still careless in their planning and/or execution.  They embraced CGI without considering the limitations of the time, which made some of its creations look completely unnatural, especially when juxtaposed against live-action footage.  And when the time came for additional revisions, their priorities seemed all over the place.  They broke the lightsaber colourings and couldn't fix them across the board, but they had the time to make the Ewok's eyes blink?  Man, I would love to know what was going on in their heads of theirs...

All of this wouldn't be so bad if we had the original, unaltered versions to compare the changes against, but Lucasfilm has been quite reluctant to provide us with that.  The last time they were made available was in the 2006 DVD reissues, where the original versions were bundled with the special editions as a bonus disc.  I myself was lucky enough to snap them up, and having taken in both versions for myself... their execution left something to be desired.  It was just a copy of the LaserDisc prints they made back in the '90s, so the picture quality is a bit scratchy and faded.  Plus. the image is a letterboxed 4:3 ratio, meaning if you're watching it on an (increasingly common!) widescreen TV, you'll have to digitally zoom in, making the picture quality suffer further.  Again, I have no understanding of Lucasfilm's priorities.

That said, it was quite interesting to witness this evolution for myself, having not been alive when these movies first premiered in theatres.  And now that I've had the chance to compare the two versions, I do have some degree of appreciation for what Lucasfilm were trying to do.  While the effects in the original version were innovative, they still had some rough edges here and there.  Literally, in some cases, such as the slightly off-coloured "boxes" surrounding objects that were composited onto the base footage, such as the ships in space scenes.  In an ideal world, someone would go back to the original version and do a fresh remastering of it, making the subtler changes needed to improve the general picture and sound quality, while leaving out the more in-your-face but out-of-place CGI additions made for the official special editions.  Hey, a guy can dream...  But in the end, let us not forget that it's still Star Wars.  I had to re-watch these movies again to prep for my reviews, and even with all those changes, I still found lots to love.  And in the end, that's what's important, eh?  I'm not saying we shouldn't ask for more, that we shouldn't demand better handling of our beloved franchise.  But we should still be strong enough to recognise and take the good with the bad.

Oh, and about that prequel trilogy...  You'll find out what I think about that soon enough, starting with Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, next time on the SDP!

Film Review: Mission Impossible

Previously on the SDP, I wrapped up the 007 Golden Jubilee once again with my Spectre review last month.  But it would seem there's one corner of the James Bond film series I've left unaddressed.  Maybe there's some Bond movie out there not recognised by EON Productions?  Well ladies and gentlemen, that ends now, because today I'm reviewing...

Mission: Impossible

• Publisher: Paramount
• Studio: Cruise/Wagner Productions
• Genre: Action
• Release: 22 May 1996
• Director: Brian de Palma
• Producers: Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner
• Writers: David Koepp, Robert Towne

April Fools!  ...But seriously folks, 2016 does mark the 20th anniversary of the Mission: Impossible film series, plus the 50th anniversary of the TV show that inspired it to begin with, so I figured, why not kick off a new mini-series devoted to them?  Hence, the Mission: Impossible Golden Jubilee.  Links to reviews of the other movies will be provided below as they are made available.

• Mission: Impossible (1996)
• Mission: Impossible II (2000)
• Mission: Impossible III (2006)
• Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
• Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

Now just so we're clear, this event is focusing solely on the five Mission: Impossible movies released thus far.  As of this posting, I have not seen any episodes of the TV shows (yes, plural), so the extent to which I can use them as a frame of reference is limited.  On the flip side, that means I don't have to worry about coming in with expectations that may not be met.  So, how well does the introductory entry hold up two decades on?  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read on.

Our story starts in Prague, where the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) is seeking to recover a list of the CIA's non-official cover (NOC) agents from the American embassy.  The team is directed by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), its leader from the TV series.  The mission starts off well enough, but the agents are killed off one by one -- except its point man, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise).  Hunt is later debriefed by his boss, Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), that the mission was a trap to identify a mole inside IMF -- and by surviving, Hunt is fingered as a suspect.  His mission is then three-fold: clear his name with the IMF, protect the NOC list from the hands of an arms dealer named Max, and identify the mole working with Max.

Mission: Impossible boasts a number of unique shots,
including many slanted camera angles.

Kicking off a long line of star directors handling this franchise, this first entry was directed by Brian de Palma, whose eouvre includes Carrie (1976), Scarface (1983), and The Untouchables (1987).  Among the touches he brings to the table is his use of simultaneous events in the foreground and background to advance the story without cutting, which is good, and a slight over-depenence on tilted camera angles, which is... weird.  Huh, maybe the director of Battlefield Earth got inspired by this movie.  Other notable scenes in this movie, from a directorial standpoint, are a brief section shot in Ethan's first-person view as he gets picked up by Max's henchmen, and two different scenes where flashbacks are used to illustrate Ethan's thought process as he works out the twists laid out to him.

And then there's movie's most iconic scene: the computer room cable drop.  See, Ethan and some other disavowed agents need to steal the real NOC list from a computer room at the CIA headquarters, in order to flush out the real mole.  Said room has only two entrances: a door, guarded by biometric locks he won't be able to fool, and an air vent from the ceiling.  On top of that, the room is guarded by three types of sensors: sound, temperature (to detect the body heat of an intruder), and a floor-mounted pressure sensor.  Ethan thus has to be lowered by cables into the room.  This whole scene lasts about ten minutes, with little to no music or other sensory overloads to accompany it, but keeps managing to find new ways to inject tension, some of them admittedly more contrived than others.  (A wild rat appears?  Come on Franz, you should've brought a Max Repel!)  Still, if you gave this scene to a more flashy director like the Michael Bays of the world, it just wouldn't work in the same way.  For the record, this scene is an homage to the climax of Topkapi, a 1964 heist film about a group of con artists attempting to steal jewelry from the titular palace in Istanbul.

The computer-room cable-drop scene succeds in its quiet tension.

Mission: Impossible got a mixed reception at the time of its release.  Among the disapproving voices were actors from the original TV shows, including Peter Graves and Martin Landau, due to a late-movie plot twist which seemed out-of-character for that person.  (Namely, former hero Jim Phelps is revealed as the aforementioned mole.)  But to its credit, it does manage to respect some of the show's traditions here and there.  Both the initial embassy mission and the CIA break-in show Phelps or Hunt building and briefing their teams, and it is subsequently clear that the success of those missions depend on all of the members doing their part, not just one pointman.  It's just a shame that few team members, apart from Hunt and perhaps Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), manage to show off any sort of personality to distinguish themselves with.  If anyone else had a chance in that department, it would be the wisecracking hacker Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez) and the weaselly pilot Franz Kriegler (Jean Reno), but of course they both get killed at different points.

Apart from that, criticisms were leveled mainly against the convoluted nature of the plot.  If you don't pay attention, it's easy to miss some leaps of logic that take Ethan from one scene to the next.  I for one never had a problem following it, but then again I'm one of those weirdos who could keep track of all the dream-diving in Inception.  Personally, I'd point to the aforementioned altered-flashback scenes as key to deciphering much of the plot twists, as they present exposition in a much-needed "show, don't tell" fashion.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that in this regard, Mission: Impossible is no worse than some of the more complex Bond films, like Octopussy or The Living Daylights.  So, as long as you don't nod off for whatever reason, and you're not too attached with the Jim Phelps of the TV show, I'm sure you'll agree with me that this movie still holds up.

Positives:
+ Several creative shots.
+ The computer-room cable-drop scene is just BOSS.
+ Honours some of its source material's traditions, while doing its own thing with them.
Negatives:
- Bland side characters.
- The plot is challenging, but not insurmountable, to follow.
- Certain plot twists may irk fans of the TV show.

Acting: 4 out of 5
Writing: 3 out of 5
Technical: 5 out of 5
The Call: 80% (B)

Game Review: Crisis Zone

So... that last article left me a little down-hearted. I certainly didn't expect to praise something else above a Studio Ghibli movie, that's for sure. But knowing that When Marnie Was There was, potentially, the last movie they'll ever produce makes it even more bittersweet. Come to think of it, what's so "sweet" about "bittersweet" anyway? Because I'm feeling pretty dang bitter right now! Anyway in these trying times, I manage to find solace in the following words: "And now for something completely different". Let's see, where did I leave off before I got sidetracked with Indie-Cember 2 and the SDP Music Awards? That's right, I was going through the Time Crisis games! Yeah, let's get back to that.

Crisis Zone

• Publisher: Namco 
• Developer: Namco 
• Release: 
• Arcade, March 1999 
• PlayStation 2, 19 October 2004 (as Time Crisis: Crisis Zone) 
• Genre: 3D Action (Rail Shooter) 
• Players: 1 
• Save: Memory Card (80KB) 

You know your media franchise has hit the big time when you can afford to make a few spin-off entries. For Time Crisis, this would be Crisis Zone. In many ways, it follows the example of Time Crisis 2, the last arcade entry to have been released before. It's got the same cover-pedal mechanics, and the same health and time rules. That's not what sets Crisis Zone apart, of course. What does so, however, is the equipment that your player-character brings with him on his job: a sub-machine gun and a riot shield. And wouldn't you know, they figure into the gameplay itself.

To differentiate itself from the other Time Crisis games, Crisis Zone's arcade cabinet supports one player only, and uses a light-gun controller shaped like a sub-machine gun. Not having to pull the trigger for every shot you wish to fire is no doubt a good thing, especially given how relatively heavy the new controller is. In addition, each scene in each level is packed with destructible objects which build up score bonuses as you knock them down in quick succession. However, the game's difficulty is also balanced to account for the inclusion of rapid fire. Whereas most enemies in other Time Crisis games will happily go down with just one bullet, that is generally not the case in Crisis Zone. In fact, just about every enemy, right down to common foot soldiers, have their own lifebars to display how much of their vitals you have to whittle down. I don't mind this per-bullet weakness so much, except there doesn't seem to be any location-specific damage (i.e. more damage for a head shot) as in most shooters.

Destructible scenery is more prevalent here than in other Time Crisis games. (PS2 version.)

You and your team members are also equipped with riot shields. In most Time Crisis games, player-characters generally stick behind one point of cover until they're allowed to move on to the next one. But having a portable shield on hand allows your avatar (and thus, the camera) to move about more freely. It's not player-controlled movement, don't get me wrong; you're still stuck on a fixed path. Honestly it doesn't affect much as far as gameplay goes, but it's a cool development choice when you think about it, as it leads to an experience that couldn't exactly be emulated by other Time Crisis games.

As for the story, it's pretty much just another excuse plot. Crisis Zone takes place in a shopping/office park in suburban London, as it gets overrun by a generic pre-9/11 terrorist unit. They get answered by an international defence force, which surprisingly is not VSSE from the other Time Crisis games. You, the player, play as one of their number, a mister Claude McGarren (or "Croid McGalain" in the -- likely mistranslated -- arcade version). The three levels you have to liberate are a shopping mall, a park, and an office building, followed by one final boss level. Each of them lasts about six to eight minutes, so as with the rest of its arcade-based peers, it's not much for first-play length. Unlike the other Time Crisis games, you can play them in any order. I suppose this is great for those who aren't as good at the game and can't clear any particular level with just one credit, but once you're comfortable with your skills, there's not much reason to do so.

Special weapons return in the PlayStation 2 edition.

The home version of Crisis Zone came about in 2004, as Time Crisis: Crisis Zone for the PlayStation 2. In addition to the arcade mode and the prerequisite graphics upgrades, this port offers a second story, a "Crisis Mode" with stand-alone challenges, and the option to use two GunCons for dual-wielding action. Come to think of it, this came out at about the same time as Halo 2, which made dual-wielding cool again, so I wouldn't be surprised if Namco had taken cues from whatever preview material was available at the time. Another unlockable feature is the option to use alternate weapons, as in Time Crisis 3. Unlike in TC3, where alternate ammo is limited and must be replenished by shooting special enemies, the handgun and shotgun just need to be reloaded as with usual machine-gun. And remember what I said about the machine-gun being weaker to balance for its rate of fire? Handgun and shotgun rounds are strong enough to drop most enemies in one or two shots, to compensate for their lesser rate of fire. Furthermore, when you have them enabled, there are certain points where you can try out special weapons like rocket launchers, flamethrowers, and even a laser rifle. These segments are brief, but deadly fun. As home rail-shooters go, Time Crisis: Crisis Zone is another great package, and a suitable follow-up to TC3.

As for the arcade game it's based on? Meh, it's okay. The machine-gun controller gives it a different feel from its cousins in the Time Crisis series, and the levels are designed around that experience. These changes don't amount to much in the end, but then again, the formula which Time Crisis II arguably perfected didn't need to be changed any more than it was. The best way I could describe Crisis Zone is, then, "TCII with a machine gun". You should be able to form your own opinion on the game based on that statement.

Positives:
+ Plenty of destructible targets.
+ The more constant character movement makes stages feel more dynamic.
+ The home edition is loaded with extras.

Negatives:
- No location-specific damage (still).
- The story is generic.

Control: 4 SMGs out of 5
Design: 4 SMGs out of 5
Graphics: 3 SMGs out of 5 (Arcade) / 4 SMGs out of 5 (PS2)
Sound: 2 SMGs out of 5
Value: 2 SMGs out of 5 (Arcade) / 4 SMGs out of 5 (PS2)
The Call: 80% (B)

Game Review: Super Star Wars

Super Star Wars

• Publisher: JVC / Lucasarts 
• Developer: Sculptured Software 
• Release: 
• Super Nintendo, November 1992 
• PlayStation 4 / PS Vita, 17 November 2015 
• Genre: 2D Action (Platformer, Run & Gun)
• Players: 1 
• Save: None (SNES) 

America has come down once again with a case of Star Wars fever this year, owing no doubt to the upcoming release of the new movie, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Therefore, in terms of video games, the talk of the town is on the new Star Wars Battlefront for the PlayStation 2 and XBox... sorry, I meant the other Star Wars Battlefront for the PlayStation 4 and XBox One. DO YOU SEE HOW ANNOYING THIS GETS!? Title aside, Star Wars Battlefront (the new one, that is) is yet another of those multiplayer-only shooters in the vein of Titanfall and Evolve, which thought they could get away without any single-player story content but still sell at full price. On its own, it's simply bound to get old fast. In comparison to the old Battlefront duology, each of those games being stuffed with enough features to choke a Sarlacc, it is unforgivable. I haven't played EA's Battlefront yet, nor do I ever plan to, but I'll end this rant by saying the game can go take a proton torpedo up its exhaust port, if you see what I mean.

Fortunately, I have something else to fall back on, as the powers that be saw fit to release ports of Super Star Wars for the PS4 and PS Vita. I'm a bit curious as to this decision, as the original game came out in 1992 for the Super NES, a non-Sony console. Indeed, it used to be available on the Wii's Virtual Console shop, along with its sequels based on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but those have since been taken down due to an expired licence or something. Well, whatever you're playing it on, you're getting more or less a straight adaptation of the original Star Wars film. A young man, Luke Skywalker, comes across a pair of droids carrying plans for the Death Star, a planet-destroying space station built by the Galactic Empire, and he must bring them safely to the Rebel Alliance. But you already knew that.

Much of the game is played as a jump-and-shoot platformer, similar to the Contra series. Super Star Wars makes some welcome evolutions to Contra's formula, however. Your blaster fires automatically when you hold down the fire button, and while doing so, you stay locked in place so you can aim in multiple directions without also moving around. And perhaps most importantly, you can take more than one hit per life! Yes, you have a health meter in this game, and not only are health pickups plentiful, with little ones coming out of nearly every enemy you kill, but you can extend it with "Health Sword" powerups (because the health meter is drawn like a lightsaber, I guess...). Other pickups include blaster upgrades, invincibility shields, thermal detonator bombs, and Darth Vader heads which doubles the points you earn for a limited time. Over the course of the game, Luke gains a lightsaber in addition to his blaster, and later on you can choose to play as Han Solo or Chewbacca instead of Luke, who lack the lightsaber (and the awesome, almost overpowered spinny-jump slice that comes with it), but start off with a blaster upgrade and/or a longer health bar.

By holding the fire button, you can aim in multiple directions.

But don't think for a second that this is an easy game. It may look like you have a long health bar even without upgrades, and enemies don't seem to do much damage, but there are a lot of enemies. And if you do lose all your health, all your upgrades go along with it. I do hate when games do this, because it makes it that much harder to get back on track. Furthermore, enemies can push you around easily, which makes what few spots of precision platforming all the more treacherous and unfair. Not helping is the semi-isometric perspective the walls and floors are drawn in, making it a bit tough to determine where each platform begins and ends. Oh yeah, and there's no mercy invincibility, either. That seems to be a running theme with 2D platformer games I've chosen to review. Also, there's a timer counting down as you play each level, but before you start panicking, you don't die when it expires (cf. Mario and Sonic), you just don't get a time bonus at the end. Granted, points are important in this game, as you're given extra lives at certain milestones (cf. Sonic again), and trust me, you'll need them.

And then the levels themselves offer their own flavours of unnecessary challenge. The first major wall of difficulty comes in the form of the fourth level, where you're inside the Sandcrawler searching for R2-D2. About half-way through, just after the only checkpoint in the level, you have to get past these laser grids which block you when you get close. You're supposed to get past these by sliding (hold Down and press the jump button), but it's more of an art than a science, and you're liable to get hurt by at least one, if not all of them. And then there's a surprise waiting for you when you get down to the final floor: instant-kill lava, or sand, or something. Normally you can make longer and higher jumps by holding Up and pressing the jump button, but don't do it here or you'll just hit the ceiling and lose distance instead of gaining it. And you're expected to fight a boss over the stuff. And if you do die here, you go all the way back to the middle of the level, just before the aforementioned laser gates. The Sandcrawler scene is not the only tough level in the game -- the one right afterwards has some precision platforming which has claimed many of my lives -- but it does set the tone for the rest of the game.

Vehicle sections punctuate the gameplay experience.

That's not exactly true, however, as some levels break up the side-scrolling action by way of 3D vehicle sections. In these levels, you pilot a landspeeder or X-Wing fighter and gun down a specific number of targets before you're allowed to move on. They use the same perspective-scrolling technology (a.k.a. Mode 7) seen in games like Pilotwings, F-Zero, and Super Mario Kart. It shows effort, which I like, and if I'm in a good mood I would call it fun. But the vehicle controls are a bit too floaty for me to really get into it. It's almost as if these things ride on air or something! (It's funny because that's exactly the case.) And riddle me this: how come we can only change direction by spending jet fuel? The L and R buttons go unused during these levels; if you felt you had no other options, surely they could've been used to turn or strafe, right? Super Star Wars only offers three of these levels, but it's nice to have that variety. I'd say you'll never get bored playing this game, but then I reflect upon how long and monotonous the other levels are and I'm forced to retract that statement.

The soundtrack is appropriately John Williams-y, and the opening cutscene recreates the movie's famous text-scroll admirably. Unfortunately, all the other cutscenes are just scrolling pictures and text; given what the Super Nintendo can do with manipulating images, I felt that more could've been done in this regard. As for in-game storytelling, the levels are all based on events from the movie, albeit expanded for action's sake. As I said with GoldenEye 007, it's always nice to add content to a story you're adapting. So for simply being an adaptation of the source material, Super Star Wars does its job well, and for being a jump-and-shoot platformer, it also does its job well. I can understand if its tough, but mostly fair, difficulty gets to you and prevents you from enjoying it in full. In the end, it's a pretty good game, but play through it again? I'd rather kiss a wookie!

Positives:
+ Subtle improvements to the jump-and-shoot formula.
+ A faithful adaptation of the source material.
+ Occasional vehicle stages.

Negatives:
- Generally intense difficulty.
- Overly long and repetitive levels.
- Floaty controls in the occasional vehicle stages.

Controls: 3 Health Swords out of 5
Design: 3 Health Swords out of 5
Graphics: 4 Health Swords out of 5
Sound: 4 Health Swords out of 5
Value: 3 Health Swords out of 5
The Call: 70% (C+)

You might also like: Contra 3: The Alien Wars, Mega Man X, Super Metroid

Super Star Wars was followed by two sequels: Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in 1993, and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi in 1994, both based on the films they were named after, obviously. There aren't enough differences in those games to warrant their own reviews, but I would like to say a few words on them now while I have the opportunity. All those sequels are equally as hard as the original Super Star Wars, but add a password system for saving progress, which is good, and ditch the timer system, which doesn't really matter. Also, Super Empire Strikes Back introduces Force powers, but they're integrated in a pretty stupid way. You can only get them in one level, during the Dagobah swamp scene, and you can only find them by using the "flying" Force power, which you have to pick up in the previous stage! At least you start out with the lot in Super Return of the Jedi, but why bother when you can play as Chewie, who has a spin attack which refuels automatically and keeps you invincible while it's active?  Remember: let the wookie win.  Either way, if you got through the first Super Star Wars intact and found it fun, try these games out as well. But not Battlefront; that game can go deep-throat a lightsaber for all I care.

Game Review: James Bond 007: The Duel

James Bond 007: The Duel

• Publisher: Domark / Tengen (NA) 
• Developer: Domark 
• Release: Sega Genesis/Game Gear, 1993 
• Genre: 2D Action 
• Players: 1 
• Save: None 

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed 007 Legends, which apparently performed so badly in retail that it killed off Activision's license to kill -- I mean, make James Bond video games. So my dreams of the second coming of GoldenEye were killed off -- until I brought up the Google Play store one day, and chanced upon the latest 007-licensed "game" called James Bond: World of Espionage (not worth linking), and my dreams of the second coming of GoldenEye were killed off once again. Glu Mobile, whomever they are, have turned this once-mighty brand into naught but a Clash of Clans clone. Let me guess, does it trade off actual gameplay in favour of micro-transactions? Well, pardon my French, but [verb] that [noun]! ...Oh sorry, I did that wrong.

But as bad as times may seem now, you know what time really sucked for James Bond fans? The early 1990s. The film series was in the midst of a record six-year hiatus, due to a legal battle which I touched upon in my Licence to Kill review. As for what we did get during that time period, well, it wasn't pretty. There was that awful cartoon show James Bond Jr., and the subject of today's article: the video game James Bond 007: The Duel for Sega Genesis. Released in 1993, The Duel is not tied into any one James Bond film or novel, despite the likeness of Timothy Dalton on the box art. Oh, but he does also show up in the title screen below, except...

Dear goodness, Timmy, what have they done to you!? ...Anyway, title screen abominations aside, Mr. Bond's in-game sprite lacks sufficient detail to specifically resemble Timothy Dalton or any of the other actors. For all you know... hold on, let me think of somebody random... got it! For all you know, you could be playing as Andrew Lloyd Webber in this game. But on the subject of graphics, I do appreciate the animations in this game. For example, you can make a little dance out of the animation of Bond passing his gun from one hand to the other (by tapping left or right on the D-pad). The music's kind of cool, too, in a Jan Hammer Miami Vice kind of way. The title screens and pre-game demo use a Genesis-friendly rendition of the James Bond theme, but thankfully it isn't recycled by the rest of the soundtrack, as is the case with GoldenEye, for example. The sound effects do not reach the same high notes, pardon the pun. The most annoying examples are the loud and hollow footfalls and Bond's grunting, which reminds me of the Frankenstein monster grunt Master P makes in his song "I Miss My Homies".

So graphics are one thing, but what is the gameplay like? Well, The Duel is a side-scrolling shooter/platformer. Mechanically, The Duel reminds me most of Rolling Thunder, an arcade side-scrolling shooter made by Namco in 1986. You walk, jump, shoot, and duck to avoid enemy shots. They even share a mechanic where you can hide in doorways, in the (vain) hope of letting an enemy forget about you and pass by. But while Rolling Thunder's control was far too stiff, The Duel goes a bit too far in the opposite direction. It's a little hard to describe, but there are lots of little things that feel off about the controls. Bond has only one jump height, and the horizontal distance is often either too short or too long for the precision platforming you need at the moment. As for walking speed, he's slow for about half a second when you press and hold a direction, but fairly zippy afterwards. And here I thought the Genesis's "blast processing" was just a meaningless marketing boast, but what do I know? Seriously, folks, if you're used to better physics engines like in Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog, you're going to have a bad time.

Gameplay revolves around rescuing hostages.

Your objective in The Duel is to explore each map searching for hostages to free, who all take the form of blonde ladies in little blue dresses. And feminism marches on... without them. Once you've found them all, you're not done yet. You have to find a time bomb, set it, and reach the exit before time runs out. Along the way, you are hounded by guards who will respawn if you take so much as a few steps away after killing them. With the high speed of the gameplay, it can get annoying to be walking along and keep taking damage from enemies you don't have the time to react to. In order to stay alive, you'll most likely take to firing blindly every few steps, which renders the flow of play as smooth as a rollercoaster on the fritz. While you do have limited ammunition, the game is very generous with it, at least. Enemies will always drop spare magazines until you're maxed out, and although there's no indicator of how many rounds you have left in your gun, each mag can last you quite a while.

As it turns out, there are only four levels to this game, not including the final boss arena: a ship, a jungle, a volcano, and a rocket launch site. In other words, the settings of a generic "spy" adventure. If I were feeling generous I would say they are rather sprawling levels for a 16-bit platformer, but either way it's still bloody short by any reasonable standards. And just as you're getting the hang of things on your journey across the island of Dr. No-One In Particular, the third level presents you with a wall of difficulty. For starters, getting around much of the place revolves around waiting for elevator platforms, side-to-side moving platforms, and side-to-side moving platforms that you hang from, which all take so long to get from one end to the other that you may very well assume you've reached a dead end at some point. Some of these platforms add irregularly-timed flame jets which are virtually impossible to avoid, and you have to go through at least one of these gauntlets in order to find all the hostages! And of course, this being a volcano-themed level, most of those scrolling platforms hover over magma pools, which of course results in instant death upon contact by 00 agents. But the third level aside, this game is still unforgiving. You get five lives and five hit points per life, but only one continue. And even those life points can leave you quickly due to the aforementioned steady stream of soldiers. Enemy shots can knock you quite far back, and there's falling damage to deal with, too; even a couple of stories down results in, you guessed it, an instant death. Also, mercy invincibility apparently was one luxury which slipped the programmer's mind. The lack thereof ruined Milon's Secret Castle before, and it ruins The Duel in turn.

Most bosses have a spot you can stand in where they won't hit you.

Every so often you'll come across a level boss plucked from one of James Bond's earlier adventures, like Jaws, Baron Samedi, Mayday, etc. because "Canon? What canon?". There are two problems with these bosses, however. One: they are optional, as it turns out. For example, you can easily skip Baron Samedi in the second level by going through the base instead of over it. And two: with one exception, each and every one of these bosses can be bested without breaking a sweat, by standing in a certain spot where they won't bother to reach you. For example, in the first level you fight Jaws, but if you stand on the left-side stairway in just the right spot, he'll just turn around as if you weren't there. Even the final boss (it's Jaws again) can be conquered in such a manner.

I should mention that there is a Game Gear port of The Duel out there as well, so I will. I don't feel it's worth devoting another full review to, however, so I'll describe it in brief. It's longer than the Genesis version, both in the sense that it has more levels (that's good), but also that the action runs incredibly slowly (that's bad). And for some reason, you can choose to have either music or sound effects play in-game but not both. What? I've played a bundle of Game Gear titles in my days and never once before has being able to play both music and sound effects been an issue! So yeah, don't bother with this version unless you consider yourself a man or woman of patience.

As for the Genesis version, you might need just as much patience to make it through this one. It's got that old-school difficulty schema where they instead of making more levels, they just made it harder to get through them. Still, it's the kind of difficulty where you can still conquer it once you've had practice, and you know where to find the hostages, and where to encounter enemies as they respawn ad nauseum. But still, four levels is still anemic for a 16-bit video game. And I did praise the animations and music a few paragraphs ago, but they do just about nothing to build up the context of being James Bond. As it stands, it's just another licenced hack-job of the side-scroller age, and one best left ignored.

Positives:
+ Fluid character animation.
+ Cool music.

Negatives:
- Generally unforgiving difficulty.
- Awkward motion physics.
- No story to speak of.
- Overly short length.

Control: 1 hostages out of 5

Design: 2 hostages out of 5

Graphics: 3 hostages out of 5

Audio: 4 hostages out of 5

Value: 1 hostage out of 5
The Call: 35% (F)

You might like instead: Rolling Thunder 2, Contra: Hard Corps, Vectorman

Game Review: Time Crisis II

Time Crisis II

• Publisher: Namco 
• Developer: Namco 
• Release: 
• Arcade, 1998 
• PlayStation 2, 1 October 2001 
• Genre: 3D Action (Rail Shooter) 
• Players: 1-2 
• Save: Memory Card (74KB) 

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed the first game in the Time Crisis series. Despite its flaws such as the steep difficulty curve, I find it sad to remark that it's become increasingly hard to find in arcades these days. The same cannot be said of its sequel, Time Crisis II, which launched in 1997 or 1998 and is still relatively common to this day. Now, how could that be the case? And why did Namco wait until the PlayStation 2 came out before making a home port? On the off chance I'll be able to answer those questions, let's see what's changed.

Our excuse plot this time around concerns an industrialist named Ernesto Diaz, who has just finished launching a network of communication satellites into space, only as a cover for sending nuclear weapons up there as well. This time around, VSSE sends two agents (named Keith Martin and Robert Baxter) to stop him in his tracks, kicking off a series tradition of colour-coded heroes in red (for Player 1) and blue (P2) outfits. There's also an allied informant named Christy Ryan who tips off VSSE about the evil plot, but she gets captured in the opening cutscene and doesn't show up again until the final chapter. This game doesn't nearly pass the Bechdel Test, is what I'm trying to get across. Oh, and Wild Dog returns, this time demoted to the rank of mini-boss.

TCII finally adds a visual warning for shots that are about to hit you. (PS2 version.)

But where TCII fails to innovate in terms of story, it does so in gameplay. At long last, there is a visual aid to warn you when an enemy shot is about to hit you, in the form of a red ring called a "Crisis Sight", as the game puts it. It only lasts for half a second or so, but when it is on screen it stands out, and let's face it, it's better than nothing. Oh, and if you remember struggling to keep your time limit up in the old game, you're going to love this: instead of carrying over throughout the whole game, your time limit resets for each scene, and if it runs out, you merely lose one life instead of the whole game. Also, your gun's magazine holds nine bullets instead of the six from before. That's something else, I guess. I know this doesn't have much to do with difficulty, but TCII replaces its predecessor's time-based ranking with a more traditional scoring system. You get point bonuses by landing shots in quick succession, landing a series of shots without missing, and by landing shots on the hard-to-find gold-uniformed enemies who gave time bonuses in the last game. Shooting an ally character, by mistake or otherwise, docks you a few points instead of a whole life as in other rail shooters, which again helps make for a less stressful experience than usual.

The story mode is once again on the short side, clocking in at 15 to 20 minutes, and combined with the more forgiving mechanics, it makes the game feel like less of a challenge than before. The PlayStation 2 version fails to include any additional campaigns, as with some other games in the series. That's not to say TCII lacks any replay value, however. To get the full experience, you'll want to play on both the P1 and P2 sides, as they will occasionally branch off into different paths and converge later on, giving the different players chances to see scenes from different angles.

As for the home version, there are numerous unlocks to be had. For your first play-through, you'll have a limited number of continues, but this can be extended by either beating the game or using up all your continues, until you eventually unlock the Free Play option. By beating certain score and/or time targets, you can unlock alternate fire modes similar to the special weapons in later games. On top of that, there also shooting-gallery minigames to be unlocked, some of them based on Namco's old gun-game machines, and a series of "Crisis Mission" challenges which you'd be mad to attempt to earn all the medals on.

Both the first and second-player sides branch off to different paths at times. (PS2 version.)

Speaking of the home version, it is backwards-compatible with the PlayStation's GunCon, but also came bundled with a new light-gun model designed for the PS2: the GunCon 2. The GunCon 2 adds a few extra buttons, including one below the handle if you want to pantomime reloading the magazine, along with a D-pad up along the back. Even though TCII doesn't use these extra buttons for any specific features, the D-pad in particular is a very ergonomic option when used as a button to hide and reload with. As for re-creating the two-player experience of the arcades, your options are either split-screen or to link up two PS2 consoles by their iLink (a.k.a. Firewire) ports. Don't remember iLink? That's probably because it was abandoned by later models of the PS2, even before the redesigned version from 2004. Besides, this option would require you to own two TV monitors, two PS2s, two copies of the game, and two GunCons. If you're that intent on re-creating the arcade setup, you're probably better off buying an original arcade cabinet.

If I had to guess why, I'd say the lasting appeal of this game owes itself to the inclusion of a two-player option. The Time Crisis II arcade cabinet basically consists of two side-by-side machines which can either run independently or in co-operative multiplayer. Think about it from the arcade operator's point of view: you can get more income from a game that supports two people than with one, i.e. the first Time Crisis. As for the home port, it's nice that Namco went above and beyond the call, and added unlockable content to pad out the game's short running time. But TCII's lasting legacy is how it brought its series to a more accessible level of difficulty, and whether it makes the game more fun or too easy to be fun is a call best left for you, the player.

Positives:
+ New mechanics and rules make the game more accessible.
+ The two-player co-op mode.
+ The new GunCon 2, designed for the PlayStation 2 version.

Negatives:
- The new mechanics do take away most of the challenge from the first game.
- Still on the short side.
- Imperfect multiplayer options on the home version.

Control: 3 crisis sights out of 5
Design: 4 crisis sights out of 5
Graphics: 3 crisis sights out of 5
Sound: 3 crisis sights out of 5
Value: 3 crisis sights out of 5
The Call: 75% (B-)

Game Review: Time Crisis

Time Crisis

• Publisher: Namco 
• Developer: Namco 
• Release: 
• Arcade: 1995 
• PlayStation: 31 October 1997 
• Genre: 3D Action (Light-gun Shooter) 
• Players: 1 
• Save: Memory Card (1 Block) 

Once upon a time, arcade light-gun games followed a strict formula. Shoot the bad guys, don't shoot the innocent bystanders, and shoot outside the screen to reload. I've covered a few of those kinds of games already. But in 1995, one company added a new dimension to the formula. That company was Namco. That game was Time Crisis. And that new dimension was a foot pedal added to the machine, with which the player could hide from enemy fire. Over the past twenty years since the original's release, the Time Crisis series has been a mainstay in arcades, with a fifth entry (not including spin-offs) recently having been rolled out as of this article. The series has also carved out a niche for home console gamers, as the premier light-gun game series on the PlayStation family. So, the question I have to end my introductory paragraph with is, does the first game still hold up?

In this game's story, you are Richard Miller, a leather-jacket-clad operative from the spy agency VSSE, and your mission is to rescue the princess of Sercia from the villainous duopoly of deposed prince Sherudo Garo and mercenary Wild Dog. Oh, and some ninja with a claw who serves as the first act's boss. Okay, the story's not that important; it's basically the save-the-princess template updated for the pre-21st century. But Time Crisis has other selling points to fall back upon anyway. The arcade machine uses a foot pedal, which you hold down to advance and release to hide behind cover. You can't just turtle your way through the game, though, since you can't shoot enemies unless you're out of cover. Also, the game runs on a timer, which is extended by clearing each scene of action, and if either the timer or your stock of lives run out, the game is over. Upon starting a game, you can also choose an alternate time-attack mode, which limits you to one of the three acts but also gives you infinite lives, which is a suitable choice for beginner players.

In addition to enemy fire, you have to duck to avoid obstacles.

Time Crisis is not a game for beginners, however, especially if you're used to later, more forgiving games in the series. Only a few of the enemies' shots will land a direct hit if you don't duck out of the way, but if there is a tell for the hurt-shots, it's very hard to... tell. Maybe the damaging bullets are coloured red, I don't know. A rule of thumb is to pay attention to the enemies' uniforms. The red-clad enemies will almost always fire a hurt-shot when they appear, and thrown weapons (grenades, knives, etc.) will always hit unless you hide or, if you're really good, shoot them out of the air. Furthermore, on occasions you must duck to avoid larger obstacles, such as cranes, crates, and cars, which would knock you about otherwise. Fortunately, these obstructions are accompanied by an on-screen warning. Oh, and be on the lookout for the guys in golden uniforms. They don't fight back, and disappear if you let them go, but they're good for a few extra seconds of time, which in this game is very valuable.

The PlayStation version instead uses a special light-gun controller, the GunCon, with two buttons which work the same way. These controls may be customised to the extent possible; not only can you switch which button hides and which pauses the game, but you can even control whether you hide by holding or releasing the button. You can even use a second controller, preferably a dance pad or the pedal from a steering wheel, as the pedal if you absolutely have to emulate the full arcade experience. The GunCon itself, however, is a bit more complicated to set up. In addition to plugging the controller plug into one of the front ports on your PlayStation, there's a second cable which you have to plug in between the video cable and the TV/VCR/etc that it's plugged in to. And then you have to calibrate the gun sights every time you boot up the game. However, you'll have an even worse time of it if you're using a regular controller. This game pre-dates the DualShock controller, so analog stick controls are not supported, leaving you with the relative imprecision of the PlayStation D-Pad to move your cursor about.

The Special story mode in the home version offers
branching paths based on your performance.

On the other hand, the PlayStation version offers its own benefits, apart from the obvious one of no longer needing to hunt down an arcade which still has the first game in operation. This version includes a second story mode on top of the arcade version. This new story takes place in a hotel run by an arms-dealing villainess named Kantaris. (Honestly, there's so little character development to be had that, I don't know why I bother giving you everyone's names.) What's novel about this mode is that the level progression branches off at multiple points, subtly leading you to one area or another based on your performance. For example, if you clear out a room in the first area before the elevator doors close, you'll go down one path, or down another path if you can't make it in time. It's a tall order to try and get all four of the possible endings, given the difficulty of acheiving these unique objectives on top of the base difficulty of the game itself. Honestly, it's a good thing this extra mode was included, because the arcade mode only lasts about fifteen minutes (not including the time lost from re-playing sections of the game after continuing, which is pretty much inevitable), which is short even for the series' already short standard.

The graphical style employed in Time Crisis is typical of the PlayStation era, with low-polygon models and a a hybrid of realism and anime art, allowing for expressive (if unchanging) faces without looking too outlandish. The enemy character models come with multiple coloured uniforms which tell you, at a glance, what role they serve in their futile quest to stop you, such as the aforementioned accurate red-shirts (pretty much the opposite of you'd expect from Star Trek). Whilst there are no bonuses for hitting the head or other weak points, the enemies' death animations do react to where you hit them, such as twirling to the ground when you shoot them in the leg, or half-flipping backwards with a headshot. The music is forgettable and most of the line-reads in the performance are awkward at best, but the gunshot sound effects are impactful and change from room to room, simulating the changing acoustics, and the announcer who tells you "Wait", "Action!", and "Danger!" is just present enough to tell you what you need to know, but not too present as to be annoying.

The impression given by the original Time Crisis was one of trying to find its bearings. It employs on mechanics which were changed and/or abandoned for subsequent entries, and runs the risk of either alienating or intriguing series fans weaned on later entries. It's got that old-school NES thing going on, where it compensates for having a shorter duration by making it really tough to beat. If that's your thing, great. If not, at least it makes beating this game all the more rewarding.

Positives:
+ The cover-pedal mechanic puts a fresh spin on the genre.
+ The game's rules offer more challenge than other entries in the series.
+ The bonus campaign in the home version.
+ Little touches like death animations and gun sound effects.

Negatives:
- The difficulty level is the most unforgiving in the series.
- Limited ease of control if you're not using a GunCon.
- Silly voice-acting and bland story.

Control: 3 gold uniforms out of 5
Design: 3 gold uniforms out of 5
Graphics: 4 gold uniforms out of 5
Audio: 4 gold uniforms out of 5
Value: 3 gold uniforms out of 5
The Call: 70% (C+)