TimeSplitters
Reviewed by Dale Kulas
The Game
This first person shooter game has been building some heavy
hype recently. Mostly because the publisher, Eidos, and
developer, Free Radical, have been claiming that former Rare
employees who worked on the award winning First Person
Shooter, Goldeneye 007, are now working on this game. I saw
other publications gave this game high scores as well, like
Next Generation magazine giving it a perfect 5 stars. So
will this game live up to all the hype surrounding it? Let's
get onto the review and find out.
The Story
Well, you're stuck traveling in time, trying to kills some
bad guy so you don't alter the history of the events over
time, hence the game's name Timesplitters, and save the
world from destruction. Simple story, nothing special, but
then again most first person shooter's have weak storylines,
with the only exception off the top of my head being Goldeneye 007.
Graphics
Well, I have to admit, this game has some pretty great
visuals. The arenas and environments look great, and super
realistic. The multi player arenas look just as better with
several different textures to choose from like virtual
(plain white), or even gothic, where your level looks like a
big church. Just about everything is detailed down to every
notch, and the tiniest details are easily noticed, like
wacky 70's costumes of most of the characters. I was really
expecting some slowdown when playing the game in multi
player mode with 2 players and 10 'bots' (computer
players), like the kind I was use to with 2 players and 8
simulants in Perfect Dark multi player, but surprisingly
there was no slowdown at all, even with 4 players and 10
bots, there was no slowdown visible at all. The game's level
editor is nicely laid out in a green grid, pseudo, 3D type
format. And it's really easy to use, although tricky at
first, but you'll easily get use to managing it after an
hour or so. Each gun has it's own distinctive design, which
is neat, but some look like altered ripoffs off other games,
for example the game's 'mini-gun' looks like Goldeneye's
Grenade Launcher.
Of course, with no slowdown at all, there had to be some
sacrifices to make the game run at a smooth rate, once in
multi player with loads of bots, you'll notice right off the
bat that the levels look really jaggy and it does get
distracting at times. Also all names of the guns and player
descriptions are kept to a bare minimum during game play.
Also, after staring at the game's character select screen
for over an hour, you'll notice that just about all of the
game's characters are horribly thin for some odd reason.
Also the bigger created level's you use for multi player,
the longer it takes to load, for example, a level my friend
made that just about took up all the allowable space in the
level editor, took about a whole minute and a half to load.
Another odd thing in the game is that there is no opening
movie describing the game's story that is usually found in
most other first person shooter's . Oh, and where's the gore?
I didn't even see a tiny drop or stain of blood in the game,
hence the Teen rating. And the only other down point about
the visuals is that the game's menus aren't as easy to
navigate and use like Perfect Dark.
Sound
Well, the game has a lot of neat background tunes during
game play. Most of them sound like gloomy, mystic tunes
you'd hear off some Cheap, B-Rated horror movie. But I guess
they fit the game's theme well, and you usually never hear
it during the game play over all the gunfire and everything.
The sound effects are appropriate, each gun has its own
separate sound effect. All the explosions and gunfire sounds
like they usually do, and there really is nothing much to
complain about in the sound department.
Game play
Well, I guess Free Radical wanted to start its own style of
controlling for first person shooters like others did, (Like
the infamous 'Turok-Style' controls that Turok innovated
on the N64 by moving with the C buttons, and the
'Goldeneye-style' innovated by Goldeneye by moving with
the control stick. But did Eidos include these 2 famous
control style's as the game's default? Nope. Instead they
opted to use one of the PS2's analog sticks to move, and the
other to look, with one of the shoulder buttons used to fire
and aim. Resulting in a very confusing, tricky experience
which would seem impossible to adapt to. Heck, the game also
had a couple other different control scheme's to pick from,
and Goldeneye's wasn't even in there. And the game's
customizable control screen was so hard to understand, that
it took me a whole half hour to get the scheme down for me.
The one player mode plays out a lot like the other recent
first person shooter's, where you complete certain objective
in order to complete the level, but I found most of these
levels rather simple to complete, and not that much of a
challenge, and nowhere as much fun as I had playing Perfect
Dark's solo missions. The multi player mode is what I had
the most fun playing, choose from a variety of characters,
and play in several different game modes against up to 4
human players with up to ten computer controlled, bots. The
action, is fast, fun, and furious, and even up to par on the
fun PC multi player death matches of Quake 3, Delta Force,
and Unreal in my opinion. The game runs really fast, no
matter how many guys are playing, and you'll be blowing up
stuff in a matter of minutes. Heck, I played a 100 team
score limit game against 4 teams of bots, and me and my
friend won the match in 11 minutes! The multi player saves
all your stats (and control schemes too, thankfully). And it
borrows a page out of Rare's book by including all the
awards after the game. A couple of different things from the
multi player experience from Rare's games are that you'll
notice that the heads actually fly off your opponents when
you shoot them in the head. Also the computer players tend
to have a lot more life also. Timesplitters also has a new
'give-take' point tracking feature, where you gain a point
for every kill, and lose one, every time you die. Making
death matches last more longer than you can imagine if you
don't set a time limit. Unfortunately, you can't create
characters, or even name characters or players for that
matter.
Replay Value
The game's level editor is a big plus in the game. And just
like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 Level Editor, it's a free
course in game designing. You'll just be spending hours
making a level unto it pleases you. But the bigger you make
the level, the more memory it takes, (like say, near a whole
meg on your memory card if you max out the space available
in the level editor. The multi player can be compatible with
up to 4 players, and it is a blast to play, just a tad notch
more fun than Perfect Dark because of the fast frame rate.
But if you're looking for a strong single player game, you
should probably not even look into this title for the matter.
In Brief
+: Super fast frame rate that remains constant during the
most unimaginable moments, great multi player action, level
editor is innovative and by far the best I've seen!
-: Awfully jaggy in multi player, no gore, the worst default
control scheme I ever witnessed, can't edit player or team
names, Weak Single Player
The Final Ratings Rundown
Graphics: 7. 2
Sound: 7. 4
Game play: 7. 0
Replay Value: 7. 7
Overall: 7. 3
Comments
Timesplitters has both major ups and downs going for it, all
mentioned in the In Brief section of this review. But I
think the minuses outweigh the pluses here barely. If you
just love multi player madness or just got to have a first
person shooter on the PS2 (avoid the non-online Unreal PS2
version), then you should buy this game. Otherwise, stick
with Perfect Dark and Goldeneye 007 for your home console
first person shooters, or at least just give this title a
rent. I'd wait for the expected sequel though, we all know
how Eidos is with sequels (Like about 3 Tomb Raider games a
year), which I think will be really polished off.
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