Timeshift

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC - Developer/Publisher: Saber Interactive/Sierra Entertainment
Genre: First Person Shooter - Single Player Campaign, 2-16 Multiplayer

Reviewed by Chris Cesarano (a.k.a. Grohdinger)

Introduction:

Timeshift is one of those titles that has been in development under several different studios for several years, so when it comes out you’re always unsure what to think of it. The game might be good, or it might be humdrum. Even worse, it could be absolutely terrible. While TimeShift certainly doesn’t feel like a refined title under development for several years, it at least isn’t terrible. It’s simply…ok.

The game certainly does the basics very well. It controls relatively smoothly, though at times awkwardly. It pretty much takes some getting used to, especially if you usually customize the aiming sensitivity in other games. Like Call of Duty 4, it gives you set look speeds, and while for some these speeds may be fine, they can take some adjustment for others. Also like CoD4, you are given the choice to “aim down the sites of your weapon”, which is more like a small zoom in. This allows more precise aiming, but can also be too slow as well. In the end, it takes adaptation. The game also performs pretty well, though it gets inexplicable lag and framerate issues. One scene that is less intensive on the hardware than others may suddenly slow down for no reason at all.

The graphics and audio are also decent enough. While the game has some very beautiful models and textures, every environment you enter seems to be roughly the same color. The only time you can truly appreciate how great the game looks is when you are in the grassy outdoors areas. Even Gears of War had more color variation than this game. The musical selection is also pretty nice, but it is easily forgettable. All you really know is that music is playing, but it doesn’t really add anything to the experience. It doesn’t add adrenaline or fear, it is merely there. The voice acting is at least of pretty decent quality, with some exceptions. Some of the enemies just sound totally unconvincing when they flatly say “put your weapon down” or “who are you?”.

The game’s A.I. also works well enough, though at the same time rather foolishly. Enemies will try and flank you, they’ll use cover, and many of the other typical things enemies should do in shooters. However, there are also times where the enemy can be pretty stupid. Hiding in the back of a truck with a shotgun, one by one each of the enemy comes running by only to get a pair of shells in the face. After five or six of these guys, one of them actually surprised me by coming down one side first, turned around and then attacked me from the other side. The enemy doesn’t have much trouble following its comrades into certain oblivion.

The level design tends to be a bit confusing at times as well, where there are a number of doors early on that all look the same, but only certain ones will open for you. Later on the doors will clearly be marked with red and green lights, but at the start there is no such indication. There are merely several times where you’re not certain where to go, and the objective icon on the radar doesn’t reveal that maybe there’s a ladder or a drop for you to take to proceed on. It’s merely pointing out that five feet away is the next checkpoint to your objective, but no indication that it is, in fact, below you. There are also several time puzzles placed into the game, but once again, these aren’t always clear. You may think you need to use one sort of power that was useful at a similar puzzle, but in fact that’s not it. There are also many paths that aren’t visually clear unless you’re lucky enough to catch them in your peripheral vision.

Speaking of the time abilities, that’s just the beginning to where the game begins to spiral further downwards. It may do a decent job with the control, A.I. and level design, but everything else begins to fall flat. While you will make constant use of the time abilities, primarily in combat, there’s not really much to them. You either slow time, reverse it or stop it altogether. The game will automatically choose which time ability works best with the situation, which is good for when you’re in combat and don’t want to bother manually choosing the time ability. Certain enemies are only able to truly be taken down when time has been stopped or slowed, as they have weaponry or armor adjustments that make fighting them as a regular soldier near impossible.

While these powers are used often and constantly, they really don’t make this game stand out amongst its competition. If anything, it makes these abilities seem and feel more standard. The overall feeling you get from the game is that you’re playing F.E.A.R. without the scariness and more time powers.

The weaponry itself, is decent, though again nothing too fantastic. Each weapon has an alternate fire, though many of these are pretty standard. The pistol is only slightly more useful as the alt. fire is an auto-fire mode, the shotgun blasts two shells like in Half-Life 2, etc. The futuristic weapons aren’t so interesting, either. The crossbow is a combination of the one in Half-Life 2 and the Torque Bow in Gears of War, the rocket launcher has a very subtle and unexplained tracking mode, and there’s a lightning gun that either fires pulse blasts like a rocket or a long bolt of electricity. The clutch grenades, which can be thrown back using time reversal, are simply the plasma grenades from Halo. While there are plenty of weapons, there is nothing that makes them stand out or make them all too memorable, partly because you can relate them to a weapon or weapons you’ve seen in games before.

By the end, the game isn’t very hard. Most of the times you die are going to be from time puzzles you get little warning of and no idea when to react, and if you react too early your time powers will run out ahead of time, causing you to die anyway. Some puzzles are simply unexplained, and you’ll find yourself performing a trial and error with the abilities to see which one works right. The enemies, on the other hand, won’t really be doing much to kill you.

The game’s replay value is next to nothing. The only reason to go back is to get achievements for harder difficulties or the multiplayer, which itself isn’t really anything great. It’s a typical tacked on shooter multiplayer, only with time grenades thrown in so you don’t constantly have the world slowing down like it does in Stranglehold. The grenades are merely there to attempt a balance at using the time slowing or stopping, but instead the multiplayer becomes a grenade throwing race.

What truly hurts this game most, however, is the story. The opening cut-scene will confuse the Hell out of you, and while over time you will figure out the basics of how everything started, it never truly becomes clear. You are working in a lab where you are banging the assistant of Doctor Kroner, and there are two time suits made. Kroner, whose been doing his own secret work and plotting, steals one of the suits, a handheld time device, travels to the future and blows the lab up. You witness your girlfriend die, grab the other time suit and get sucked into a temporal anomaly into a future where Kroner is in control. You never learn why he is now in control of this terrible, fascist world, and the members of the inevitable resistance decide “hey, why don’t we give you a gun so you can help out?”. After that, the only cut-scenes you get are those that interrupt the flow of the game and flash back to before all of this happened, slowly and agonizingly explaining what led to Kroner going into the future, but nothing else.

In the end, every time a cut-scene comes up, you wish it didn’t so you could just get back to playing the game. This game would have ultimately been better without the story. It would have been better if it was all explained in the instruction booklet and the game just let you play through, uninterrupted by its attempt at a narrative, just like an old NES, SNES or Genesis game.

Conclusion:

While the very basics of TimeShift are decent, even pretty good, every feature that is intended to set it apart from the competition in fact hurts it. The game isn’t the most painful experience I’ve ever had, but in the end, you’re not going to enjoy this title unless you are a really big fan of first person shooters. Even so, just rent it, and only when you’ve run out of anything good to rent. This is a title that it doesn’t hurt to let pass on by.

Pros:
+ Controls and performs pretty well
+ Very good graphics
+ Challenging A.I.
+ Constant use of the main Time Abilities

Cons:
- Bland time powers
- Often confusing level design
- Some poor puzzles
- Almost no replayability
- Tacked on multiplayer
- A story that the game would’ve been better without

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Reviews, Other Gaming, Wii60.com, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.