Time Crisis 2 both offers a lot of gameplay and not much at all. Any lightgunner should be able to make it through the main game within a few hours of starting to play it--as you get further and further into the game, you gain more credits to use, letting you get even further--and, some would say, that's the end of the game. But there's enough extra stuff packed into the game to keep real gamers satisfied for a long time, and the main game's entertaining enough to come back and play over and over. Add in a solid two-player mode and you've got another game to go along with your copies of
Point Blank.
The storyline is typical Save The World stuff--evil corporation, deadly satellites, and only two agents who can save the world. In a big change from the original game, both agents are playing at the same time, with the second player either being controlled by another human or the computer. This makes for an interesting challenge, as you lose points if you shoot your partner, and there are many times when you're firing towards each other.
The game is broken up into three sections, each with three sub-sections. There are two paths in each level, one for each player, and in the single-player game you can go on either depending on certain things that you shoot. Once you beat those nine sections, the main game is effectively over.
In a brilliant move, though, Namco packed in tons of extra stuff. Beating the game completely unlocks a new Crisis Training mode, which has more gameplay than even the main game, putting you into a series of engagements and requiring you to be very precise and quick with your gunplay. There are also three other subgames that are available, and you can unlock new modes in those as well. The skeet shooting minigame is entertaining, as is 'Quick and Crash', which requires you to be fast and precise with your gun. While none of this is as 'deep' as the main game--and the main game isn't particularly deep itself--it's definitely going to add a number of hours to your gameplay clock. Of course, purists would say that the main game itself should be longer, but this is a port of an arcade game, and making arcade games too long is tantamount to money loss.
The game supports two ways to do two-player mode in the main game. In one, there are basically two screens on your TV, one for each player. They're small if you don't have a big TV, but it definitely works. The other way is to use an iLink cable and hook two PS2s with two TVs together and play just like the arcade. Neat.
