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Some games never see the light of day, failing to make it from the development studio and onto game store shelves. Some games, though, are given extra time; time that you’d assume would result in the final game being significantly better than it was originally going to be. Things move quickly in the current climate though, so tinkering with a product isn’t always a wise move.
As you’d expect from a game called TimeShift, Sierra Entertainment’s FPS features a storyline centred on time travel, in this case made possible by special suits that let their wearers jump through time. This allows the game’s main enemy, Dr Krone, to jump into the past where he creates a new history, in which he is the ruler. Thankfully a second suit is available, so you follow him and attempt to take him down.
Your suit isn’t as advanced as Krone’s but it does allow you to do some pretty flash things. During most instances you simply press a button and the suit knows what you want to do, but if you want to manually choose whether to pause time, slow time or reverse time, that option is available to you. As good as that sounds, the abilities just aren’t used as well as you’d hope.
You’d imagine the time shifting abilities would be worked into some clever set pieces and puzzles, but sadly these instances are few and far between. Often the need to alter time is so obvious and signposted that you get none of the self gratification that you might be expecting. If a floor falls then you know that you’re going to have to reverse time; if a body of water is electrified, freeze time and you can walk over it without trouble. It’s rarely rocket science.
There’s the odd moment, mainly during the game’s opening sections, where you think you might be in store for something genuinely clever. Being able to freeze time, run up to a guy, take his weapon, hide behind him, watch him look around in shock at this loss of weapon, before you shotgun him in the back will make even the most veteran FPS players at least raise a cheeky smile. Sadly moments like this repeated over and over again don’t make for a hugely entertaining game.
Visually TimeShift looks really good and quite rough at the same time. While the game’s reworked visuals are shiny and full of bump and normal mapping, the overall look is rather rough. It’s like someone who’s had plastic surgery done really well: at first the makeover is impressive, but look closer and the cracks become clear to see. The actual geometry in TimeShift is the worse offender, with no lick of paint, no matter how shiny, being enough to lift the game into the territory currently occupied by Call of Duty 4 and BioShock. The rain effect that crops up in a few levels is pretty impressive, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen elsewhere.
TimeShift isn’t a terrible game. It can be good fun at times, especially if you want a challenge – seeing as you really need to make the most of your time bending abilities in order to progress through the larger open areas. But had the game been released a year ago it would have faired far better, even if the visuals wouldn’t have been so clearly next-gen.
Multiplayer is offered for up to 16 players, and thankfully some of the game’s time control has made its way into the online arena. You can’t simply choose to slow time or rewind time, as that would obviously cause more than a few problems with everyone trying to do the same. To get around this you are given time grenades, which feature altered time when you cross into their blast radius. A nice idea for sure, but sadly it’s resulted in online games where people simply lob grenades like maniacs, hoping that someone will wander into them for an easy kill. A large online following could have overcome this problem, but it’s not looking likely at this stage.
It’s admirable that developer Saber Interactive was given more time to make TimeShift a better game, but in doing so they’ve released at a time when the FPS genre has never been more competitive. If you’re somehow done with all the big FPS releases of the year then TimeShift isn’t a bad option, it’s just not a game that will get a second look by most gamers gorging themselves on the likes of Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4.
