That's Crisis Zone, really: it's Time Crisis with two-machine-gun-mojo. CZ leaves behind some of the cinematic spectacle of Time Crisis 3's environments, but replaces it with equally spectacular gunfights.

For one thing, you get to carry a machine gun now. As Claude McGarren, an agent of the Special Tactical Force, you are not sent to a small island with a pistol and expected to shoot it out with approximately twenty thousand people, as is the trend in Time Crisis games.

Now, every square inch of those locations is teeming with terrorists, from one-shot-one-kill cannon fodder to knife-wielding psychopaths who look like the horrific offspring of Dennis Rodman and a ninja. Claude's job is to lead his team in so they can shoot everyone they see and fight their way to Derrick Lynch.

The typical Time Crisis shooter mechanic is in full effect here. Claude carries a riot shield, which you can duck behind whenever you want to reload and take cover. Then you get to emerge and spit death from a machine gun with a forty-round clip, so you can lean on the trigger until somebody dies. You'd think it'd break the game, but instead, Crisis Zone just makes the withering hail of return fire twice as intense.

Another new feature is that your bullets have immediate and lasting effects on the world around you. Missed shots can shatter televisions, upend furniture, break windows, throw shredded magazines into the air, knock crates over, or punch large and realistic-looking holes in the wall. There aren't any explosive crates or barrels of diesel fuel, but then again, you are in a mall. What did you expect? Was U.R.D.A supposed to pick a fight with you in the propane store?

You can opt to make your initial attack at the plaza, mall, or office building within Garland Square, each of which comes with its own advantages and drawbacks. Fighting through the mall lets you blast armored men through display racks and over sporting goods, so magazines flutter through the air as you fire back and forth en route to a final encounter with a heavily armored tank.

As you duck and weave throughout the office building, monitors blow out, ninjas throw knives at you from behind concealment, windows break, and you're constantly chased by a heavily armored man who looks like he was bitten by a radioactive mountain range. You'll duck and weave through several storefronts, and eventually force a final showdown with two of Lynch's lieutenants. One of them's the bulky strongman you've seen before now, who likes to use a machine gun when he's not swatting you with parts of the landscape, and the other's a blade-wielding ninja faintly reminiscent of Street Fighter's Vega.