Time Crisis: Rasing Storm reviewed on PlayStation 3 by James Hamer-Morton. Game provided for review by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Let's not deny the fact, most of the fun of light gun games is the feeling of holding a facsimile of a weapon, pointing and shooting at things on a screen. Time Crisis revolutionised the genre when it first came to arcades way back in the PS1 age by allowing you to take cover, where you'd be safe from assault, to emerge and kill your enemies by stepping on a pedal on the arcade machine. When it came to the PS1 in 1997 it bundled in with it the G-Con gun, which allowed a pretty realistic representation of the arcade, replacing the pedal with a button on the side of the weapon. Having been a great fan of the genre itself, and the Time Crisis series, it was great, if not unexpected news to me when I learned that the PS3 would be getting the latest entry with PlayStation Move support, optionally standing in for the new G-Con 3; one less extra peripheral for people to need to buy.

The package itself is comprised of three games. The titular Time Crisis Rising Storm is the most feature filled of the package. Time Crisis 4 keeps the hiding in cover style of the series, and the disc is rounded off with DeadStorm Pirates, a more classic light gun shooter, made unique by its shooting system and quick time events. In all, for the RRP of just under £40 you're getting three games, all with their own trophy lists, and that doesn't sound like a bad deal off the bat.

It is this good deal feeling that makes me want to cover the extras first, before the main meal of Rising Storm. Firstly, DeadStorm Pirates requires a 3GB install. Neither of the other games do, but for some reason, this graphically poor, simplistic shooter needs to be sitting on your hard drive before it will even boot up. So what? It doesn't affect the game. All 60 minutes of it. It's not that it's a bad game, but the weakest of the package in my eyes.

Essentially it's on-rails light gun shooting stripped to its rawest form, and branched out in a different direction to Time Crisis. There's no hiding from damage, indeed it's just a case of killing the enemies before they take a chunk out of your health bar. There's not even any reloading system to worry about. You'll just hold down the trigger and hope that you're aiming in the right directions. When you bring in a second player however, your shots get much more powerful just by aiming at the same target. Enemies are of course buffed up to accommodate this extra firepower, so don't think you'll find it any easier than playing in Single Player mode, but it's a nice addition to give the game a unique feel.

Time Crisis 4, my favourite game of the package is a lot closer to the arcade Time Crisis games we're used to. You can hide in cover, change weapons by pulling the trigger when hiding, and while it may seem counter-intuitive to have to push the Move Button to hide and reload, rather than releasing it, like the arcade pedals, and will indeed take some getting used to, it is a lot kinder on your hands. The game has a ludicrous plot, and we whipped through it in just over 30 minutes, but it reminded me how much I enjoy the light gun shooting genre, and will definitely be pulled out as a party game, the one caveat being that in multi player, because both players need to be able to hide independently, the screen is split into two, and each screen becomes 4x3, giving a very small playing area. It's hardly the most graphically impressive game you'll see this generation, but it's fast, fluid and entertaining in a mindless way.

The main product however is Time Crisis Razing Storm, of which there are plenty of modes to play with. Your standard Arcade mode is more tailored to multiplayer than Time Crisis 4's version. While you can take cover if an enemy is shooting at you (imminent danger to your player is signified by a coloured target appearing in your player's colour) it doesn't move your viewpoint, merely holding up a shield in front of you until you decide to put it down and take aim again. Blessed with a number of weapons, all with infinite ammo and automatically selected at certain points during the game for you, it's less about accuracy and timing and more about spamming your enemies and being aware enough of the signs of danger to be able to hide quickly enough. It's because of this that the game seems simpler and less entertaining as an arcade game than the others on the disc.

But that's not the end. There is a Sentry Mode which tasks you with taking down escaping prisoners while avoiding and saving the guards. In a number of very short bite sized chunks, they feel manageable to strive for perfection, through replaying them over and over. The biggest chunk of the whole package lies in the Story Mode, which is a strange amalgamation of a First Person Shooter and an on rails shooter. Requiring a navigation controller, or just holding a normal Sixaxis in your other hand to the Move, it lets you turn by aiming your Move, and move using an analogue stick on your controller. Shooting enemies works how you'd expect, but the Time Crisis factor comes in various points close to walls and areas of cover where you can aim your controller above the screen and you'll duck into cover. Then pointing back at the screen exposes you again. It's quite a clever system and a daring development of the genre that still allows you to move freely, but shoot at the screen to kill enemies.

Unfortunately, it feels stilted and never as natural as moving around and firing in a FPS. You'll have to take things a lot slower, and more gently to avoid blundering too far into an area and having enemies all around you; an impossible situation, having to aim and look around at the same time. It's a real shame, because the idea is solid, and indeed, if playing cautiously is your style, you'll get a quite enjoyable few hours of the campaign, despite the overacted plot, and a few more hours in this short package can't be a bad thing.

Online Multiplayer uses the same system of moving and shooting, and without the odds stacked in your favour, despite an acceptable progression system, it feels even more stilted and uncomfortable to control. Sure it adds a bit more life to the package, but arguably isn't really necessary. When reaching the end of each game, I felt a little deflated at how short it all was, but thinking back to the original game on the PS1, it was a single game, as short as just one of the games here, and I remember paying £60 for it and the gun and feeling like it wasn't a bad deal because of the inerrant replayability of the genre, and the desire to beat the previous point scores.

Sure, times have changed, but with so much more content in the package, and a bigger pull than beating a simple points score, Trophies, I find it hard to dislike what is presented here. With further tasks to perform to gain each trophy, the replayability and life of the game is extended far beyond a single campaign play through.

Now it's certainly not worthy of a recommendation if you're just using the standard Sixaxis controller, but if you've got a G-Con 3 or a Move (or two), you'll get plenty out of the package. It's never going to revolutionise anything or win any awards, but for simple shooting fun, you can't go far wrong with Time Crisis Razing Storm.