You know things aren’t going to well if, by the time you should have been playing through the opening levels of a game you’ve just decided to have a go on, you find yourself still desperately stretching confusing amounts of wires across your TV screen in a desperate attempt to get the thing working without blocking your view. As you can well imagine, Time Crisis 4 comes with a whole load of tricky wires to allow you to experience the full arcade sensation of light gun shootery from your own sofa and as such requires a bit of time to set up.

Except, this bloody stupid thing won’t have any of it. Setting some sensor boxes on each end of the top of your telly is all fine and well once you balance them, but you suddenly become aware that in order for them to register that the rather funky tango orange gun is pointing in their direction that you will need to be sitting a good distance away from the screen, something which I can’t actually recall being an issue whenever I’ve had to use any previous light gun title or a Wii on the same screen. It makes calibrating the gun itself a nightmare and hence you’re in a bad mood before the action even kicks off, which is never a good thing.

Of course, the above would have become a slightly irrelevant sideshow had Time Crisis 4 actually turned out to be much good. One thing it was obviously never going to do was weave an intricate, moving story given how classically Japanese arcade the whole thing is. From what I could gather, you play the part of either Giorgio or Evan, two characters who look as much like policemen as I look like a boiled egg and whom find themselves up against a whole range of enemies and a biological insect weapon named – wait for it – Terror Bites. Ah hahahahaha. Hahahahaha. Hahah. Hah. Ha.

Anyhow, the classic arcade mode of Time Crisis 4 brings more of the on-rails shooting that we’ve all grown to know and love/hate/be apathetic toward over the years. To be fair it’s actually reasonably good fun initially, with the opening level being in an airport and seeing enemies approach from every angle imaginable. Choosing between the weapons on offer is simple enough and is a matter of simply tapping the trigger when crouched in cover, and on the occasions when you are entrenched you can very easily wave the gun left or right to switch your point-of-view around.

This is all cool, but what isn’t so great is that the arcade mode itself can be completed in about an hour of play. For the first couple of plays you’re only given a limited amount of continues that you increase by getting further and further through the stages, but anyone with a bit of experience with the genre (like my flatmate, for example) should only see the Game Over screen a couple of times before making it all the way through. You do unlock a few mode tweaks such as allowing the arcade portion to be played through at a harder difficulty, but other than totting up higher scores it’s not tremendously rewarding as a repeat play, even despite the grin-inducing over-the-top nature of the settings and variety given by sections like the Helicopter part.

Something that hampers the game further when it comes to the arcade section is that, as mentioned in the opening couple of paragraphs, setting up the G-Con 3 can be a rather hit-and-miss experience, and this translates to the gameplay. During my time with the game I tried sitting at various distances from the screen and at various elevations (don’t ask), but found that for the most of the time the little crosshair on the screen was not in the line of sight of the gun itself, and hence I had to compensate.

Whilst I’m chatting on about the G-Con 3, I may as well have another little rant at how awkward the thing is to get to grips with. Whilst the previous iteration was a rather sleek blue affair, this one’s so orange you risk getting sunburnt using it and has a side handle to afford it a second analogue stick for reasons we’ll get to in a minute. It all looks a bit Fisher Price and having buttons spread across the barrel and hammer area means that you’re going to have to stretch those digits when using it to full effect, making it feel quite ungainly. One final moan is that it’s a USB controller rather than being wireless, and although the cord is of decent length it’s yet another wire for you to trip over when not paying attention, rather like I wasn’t on Saturday evening past.

So, what’s this second analogue stick for, then? Obviously aware that the Arcade mode would only give the game limited lifespan, Namco have packed in a Complete Mission mode that is more in line with traditional first-person shooters. Sadly it turns out to be quite dull and frustrating, with little variation in setting and some truly awful enemy AI throwing itself into your line of fire. The controls are also somewhat awkward as well, with the analogue sticks being used in conjunction with the usual method of pointing the gun around to aim, thus leaving you often getting yourself tied in knots. The theory behind having something slightly more open and free than the rather rigid arcade mode was no doubt a good one, but in practice it’s not a mode that you end up enjoying too much.

Not enjoying it too much unfortunately seems to sum up the entire Time Crisis 4 package, as well. Despite offering splitscreen fun should someone else have a gun, the whole thing struggles to make any sort of impression on you. It looks pretty basic for a PS3 title with jaggies and basic textures littered around the shop left, right and centre, the audio side is best described as SUPER ULTRA JAPANESE ARCADE BLAST and the game modes, both standard and new, are entertaining to a degree but offer little longevity. With the added annoyance of it being rather fiddly to set up properly and at an increased price (£60 from most reputable vendors) it isn’t exactly a cheap offering either, so with that in mind it’s probably best that everyone bar light gun obsessives leave it on the shelf and train their aim on something else instead.