Game:

Time Crisis II (1998)

Duration: 2:06

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22

A video of 1-1, showing all of the elements that make up the player's score in action. Forgive the strange 21:9 aspect ratio, I miscalculated while editing and adapting the video to 16:9 would have been an insurmountable amount of work I just didn't feel like doing all over again. Use comma and period to step through the video frame by frame.

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What exactly are you looking at in this video? Here's the breakdown. The scoring system in Time Crisis II has three components:

1. Combo
Chaining multiple hits on valid targets within 50 frames (~0.833 sec) of one another is what's known as a combo. When the time window expires, the hit count will reset to 0 and you'll have to start a new combo over from scratch.

You get different amounts of points depending on where you shoot regular enemies. If your combo has 8 hits or less, the values are as follows:

- 800 points for head shot kills.
- 400 points for body shot kills.
- 200 points for limb shot kills.
- 100 points for both followups (officially called "chase shots") after a kill.

In the video, though, you can see that from the second hit onward, more points are awarded. This is due to the combo bonus. The total amount of points awarded for any hit from 1 to 8 can be calculated with two simple formulas:

Kills: (body part score) + (combo hits - 1) * (body part score / 10)
Followups: 100 + (combo hits - 1) * (kill base score / 10)

It doesn't matter where followups land, only where the killing shot does. Shooting an enemy three times in the head or once in the head and twice in the foot will award the exact same score when under the same circumstances.

Some examples:
- If the 4th hit of your combo is a head kill, you get 800 + 3 * 80 = 1040 points.
- If the 5th hit of your combo is a followup to a body kill, you get 100 + 4 * 40 = 260 points.

From the 9th hit on, the rules change and the combo bonus is no longer applied:

- 2000 points for head shot kills.
- 1000 points for body shot kills.
- 500 points for limb shot kills.

The score for followups changes as well:

- 1000 points for followups after a head shot.
- 500 points for followups after a body shot.
- 300 points for followups after a limb shot.

These values stick until you lose the combo.

2. No-Miss Streak
A separate bonus is applied whenever you land 10 shots in a row without missing on valid targets. This bonus grows by 500 points for every 10 successful hits up to a maximum of 5000 points for every 10 shots, and doesn't go away until you miss again, even when moving from one stage to another.

3. Time Bonus
Each area has a par time assigned to it. Here, it's 1 minute 50 seconds. You get 1200 points for every second under this time you complete the area in, which works out to 20 points per frame saved. The countdown starts at the same time as gameplay does (during the "AREA START" message, even before "ACTION") and doesn't stop until the "AREA CLEAR" message.

- Other notes
- Exceptions
Some enemies (bosses, bonus soldiers, the armored enemies from this area) do not use combo scoring rules and do not differentiate between body parts. Shooting them anywhere awards the same score every time (save for Jakov in 1-2).

- Jakov
Interestingly, the second time Jakov appears (atop the truck), he'll give you 1000 points for each hit while he's armored, and NO points at all for the hit he flinches from. Your streak will also be broken and your combo timer won't reset. This shot is, for all intents and purposes, a miss. Try to quickly move on to another enemy to save your combo after shooting him here.

- Bonus soldiers
Not all yellow enemies award the same score. The first hit always gives you 5000 points, but followups may be worth either 500+500, 5000+500, or even 5000+5000 for totals of either 6000, 10500, or 15000 points.

- Combo, combo, combo
In my opinion, this is the very first thing you should aim for in order to get high scores (go for head kills with two followups as much as possible). To this end, you should try to memorize under what conditions and in what order enemies spawn. In a lot of cases, certain soldiers will not appear until you've dispatched others, so you can take those out first so that the next set of bad guys will be on screen on time for you to continue your combo.

Also, if you have the means, it's a good idea to shoot bosses, objects and bonus soldiers first, and then move on to regular enemies. If you can get at least 8 hits before shooting any normal baddies, you'll be setting yourself up for a much better score. For example, a max score 9-hit combo is worth 6140 points, but if you shoot eight bottles first, that turns into 17 hits and 12080 points- a veritable difference.

The minimum score you can get from an enemy is 200 points (limb kill), while the maximum is 4000 (9+ hit combo, head kill with two followups). Unless you need to save your combo, aiming for the head is always worth it even if you only get one shot (3 hit body combo: 720 points; single head shot: 800).

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