SCEE to publish Crisis Zone

Following on from Namco's E3 line-up announcement yesterday, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has confirmed that it will publish the latest Time Crisis title Crisis Zone on this particular continent this autumn. Crisis Zone joins an array of other PS2-exclusive Namco titles on SCEE's release list, including Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2 (May 28th), Death by Degrees and Ace Combat 5 (both Q1 2005).

As with previous Crisis titles (and most light gun conversions in general, actually), this one's based on the arcade version and boasts various new features for its PS2 incarnation. For once, however, there's more to talk about than the odd mini-game, with a John Woo-style double-gun single-player mode seemingly waking up to the fact that a lot of gamers can easily get two G-Cons into the same room and wouldn't mind the option.

The other significant thing about Crisis Zone is, according to SCEE and Namco anyway, the addition of fully destructible environments. Obviously windows and crates are generally breakable in these sorts of games, but here you can shoot holes in bookshelves, shatter furniture with your sub-machine gun and generally wreak a lot more havoc than previously - which ought to make up for the fairly low-poly models and bland texturing.

Plot wise (yeah, skip this paragraph), the whole thing apparently takes place in the Garland Square complex on the outskirts of London. Faced with a shopping centre, park, office building and other areas overrun by heavily-armed U.R.D.A. terrorists, player character Claude McGarren makes his way in with his trusty bullet-proof riot shield (preserving the series' classic shoot-and-duck-away mechanic) and proceeds to shoot anything that moves.

Since it'll be on the show floor at E3 next week, we'll try and get round to doing the same. In the meantime, you can head here for a batch of some 28 screenshots.