App Reviews: Time Crisis 2 HD

The most shooting fun you can have without a headband and mullet


Time Crisis 2nd Strike HD
Platforms: iPad
 
What’s it about?
On the go, on the rails shooting. Time Crisis has always been a franchise to be reckoned with, becoming one of the biggest names in the genre for good reason. 2nd Strike brings several game modes to the iPad beyond the ten normal missions (the first one is free, the other nine require in-app purchases). Once a level is complete it becomes available in Time Attack and Score Attack modes where you’ll have to score as much and finish as fast as possible. We know you’re well-practiced in both of those.
How does it look?
The graphics in Time Strike can’t hold a candle to the cream of the app store’s graphic crop like Infinity Blade. The lacking visual horsepower is forgivable if you’re satisfied settling for the one free mission of the game but we’d hope that our $7 would buy a better looking shooter. What Time Crisis lacks in resolution, it more than makes up for in level design and you’ll find you’re rarely wanting for enemies to shoot because 2nd Strike cranks up the cannon fodder to 11.


 

How addictive is it?
Approaching Time Crisis on the iPad like any other touchscreen app is a satisfying experience....for a little while. What really hooked us on the game was the new integration of the iPhone 4 as a game controller using the free iGunCon app. Stand you’re iPad up, run a quick and easy setup on your iPhone, aim your iPhone at the iPad screen to calibrate your crosshairs and get on with killing hoards of baddies. The paired iPad/iPhone setup recreates the old on-the-rails arcade shooters that ate fistfuls of quarters in your youth. The main result is an authentic shooter experience that no other game in the app store has come close to pulling off. The side effect is hours of your life lost to a shooter that’s damn near impossible to put down. Just like Pringles, once you pop (a baddie...in the face) you just can’t stop.

What’d they screw up?
Besides the low-res feel that makes it tough to shoot distant enemies, there’s not much to complain about. The iGunCon takes some time to get used to because it requires some fancy fingerwork but we haven’t felt so strongly about building thumb-muscle memory since your Mom asked us to do that special thing we do.

Out of five?

4. The free experience found here, though limited, is like a gift to any fanboy who can’t live without both an iPad and iPhone. The accuracy of using the iPhone’s accelerometer to control a crosshair is astonishing. The gaming experience created by a paired iPad and iPhone actually does feel, for lack of a better word, magical. You win this round Apple.

If I like this, what else will I like?
Guerrilla Bob, any other Time Crisis game, a headband around your mullet