Anyone who's so much as stepped foot in an arcade in the past ten years will be familiar with the Time Crisis games. A series of rail-shooters, they bucked the trend by allowing the player to hide behind cover by releasing their foot from a pedal, automatically reloading their gun and adding a small strategic element to the game. Enemies fire at you constantly, but most of their bullets cannot actually damage you- the game remains tense and engaging however as enemies occasionally fire lightning-fast red projectiles at you which will take away one of your three life points. It's a clever way of keeping the player engaged whilst keeping the gameplay simple, immersive and convincing, and works a treat.

The second game is simply a beefed-up version of the first, with more polished (3D) graphics. There are three levels- a shopping centre, a train, and a top secret military base, and each of these are split up into 3 stages with their own bosses and min-bosses to defeat. It's all very cinematic and exciting, and its very satisfying blasting away at the gun-toting enemies that constatnyl pop up from behind the scenery- assuming you play the game with a light gun, that is. A tv-compatible light gun can be picked up fairly cheaply, but the problem is that these only work with older TVs and not with the majority of modern LCD flatscreens, and playing the game with a control pad just doesnt compare. Instead of pressing a pedal to duck behind cover, you instead have to press a button on the side of the gun, which works just fine, and the arcade feel is replicated very closely (the visuals are identical), although the front part of the light guns do not physically move backwards with a satisfying click/clunking sound as they do at the arcades, although this omission does not detract from the enjoyment all that much (alnd would likely have been very hard to implement on a home console).

The game runs smoothly and looks great, and there are hugely exciting moments throughout, as well as some decidedly silly bits- at the end of the train level your foe fires at you from behind a minigun battery before climbing onto the top of the train, picking up a full-sized nuclear missile and swinging it at you before attempting to escape in a nearby helicopter. There IS a two player mode, but this is split screen, and is both laggy and has screens too small to really play on, unless you happen to have a very large old tv. The final military base level isnt quite as much fun as the first two- it's obviously a lot harder but just doesnt have the same flair and excitement to it somehow, (presumably to kick off the kid playing it and let the next punter with a pocketful of coins get on) but overall its still a hugely enjoyable game. It wont take long to finish, but there are multiple difficulty settings and the replay value is enormous. An essential playstation purchase, assuming you can play it with a lightgun, otherwise knock off two stars.