TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

"TimeSplitters: A Decent Future"

Yaey, The third one of the series, but this time its not published by Eidos, Its published by EA games, can it live up to it's past games? Or fall into obscurity?

Gameplay:

All the things that you loved in TimeSplitters 2 is back, fast gameplay, Time travel, and monkeys.. Monkeys is a must. Sadly this is not the dueling system like Halo 2 where you can duel wield two different weapons at a time, you have to dual wield the same weapon.

Another gripe is that still you cannot jump, so in multiplayer there is no way to dodge bullets. Unless you have a Speed Power-Up or Shrink Power-Up.

"Wait can't you crouch?", you could but it doesn't help if your a 12 foot Robot or Stone Golem. Although I blame the Robot and Golem part on me because I like being the Robot and Golem.. =)

The good things about it though is that there is tons of multiplayer characters available from the start I don't know how many, about sixty characters. There is still fast, frantic gameplay in story mode, challenge mode, and multiplayer. Not as fast and frantic as TS2 or TS1 sadly... I guess they did that so sniping can be effective. You have the choice to have a cross-hair or no cross-hair, or no crosshair yet the invisible cross-hair thats moving(like the old TS's).

The controls are more like James Bond 007 Nightfire, this time around you use the D-pad to change weapons, and all the rest of the buttons are like Halo 2. The A button is the action button, X button is reload, B button is melee, R trigger is fire your weapon, and L trigger is to throw a grenade.

They have a 'Gravity Glove" (think Half-Life 2's gravity fun) to flip switches from a far. You can also pick up objects but the physics are bad, boxes, big gun turrets, tables and hammers all seem the same if you throw them. They still have challenge mode which is really frustrating, once you master it it gets less frustrating. An example of which is the Cat Racing challenges, you're driving a vehicular cat, and you are racing the clock, seems simple.. Not really, controlling the cat is a nightmare because the cat slides on the ground like it's ice.

There is grenades but you don't need them, by that I mean, they aren't helpful. The blast radius isn't big enough to become helpful, and your character throws them too far.

The vehicles are less than spectacular, they control well (unlike the cat), but they are equally as helpful as the cat (meaning they aren't helpful). Some vehicles have gun turrets, but the gun turret cannot aim down to shoot infantry, and you don't encounter any vehicles. So that destroys the purpose of having a turret.

Story
I'm Lazy so I'll scan it straight from the instruction booklet. Oh wait.. the instruction booklet tells you nothing..

I'll try my best to remember it

You are Cortez some bald guy, that wears goggles, and who's name seems reminiscent to a spanish name. He and a few friends whom he meets on the way are the only one that can save the world you have to go back in time to stop this evil dude from creating the Timesplitters (think mutants) that will eventually kill everyone. The Timesplitters are monsters that travel threw time to kill people in the past to destroy the future (that's what the creatures did in TimeSplitters 2, but now you only see the Splitters in the future).

The first location of the game is at a remote island that is about to explode and you meet up with some british person that wants to save his 'assistant (she looks like a female version of Tarzan). Then you end up meeting up with your future or past self and you help him (or you?). I don't want to say too much about the plot because that would be spoiling it. A majority of the cutscenes in the game are funny, or somewhat funny, and that helps immensely. Its not a great story but its an excuse to travel in time.

Why does Cortez wear those goggles anyway?

Graphics

Not the best graphics for the Xbox they are still pretty good! the game uses the Free Radical style of graphics, slightly realistic but yet cartoony. That's one thing a distinguishes TimeSplitters from everyother FPS. Absolutely no clipping. from what I see. An improvement of TimeSplitters 2, the characters look a lot more.. normal.

Sound & Music

Sadly the music is not very good, so you won't find yourself humming much tunes. Not like you can hear them anyway, the sound effects are loud enough to ignore the music all together.

Although the sound is great, guns sound like guns, bullets ricochet sound like they should, explosions sound like they should. I used 5.1 Surround Sound and heard bullets coming from everywhere. But nothing much spectacular, nothing that stands out from any other game.

Online Play

I give props to EA games, they came out with a patch, that fixes a lot of it's problems. You can now log in Xbox Live anywhere in the game. They cured a majority of the lag (there is still some lag). You can choose your character while the game is going. The games are up to 16 players. You can share player created maps, creating maps themselves are fun, and you can create single player maps. The game allows guests to join in, which is a great addition.

And you can look at scoreboards for challenges and versus. For challenges you can look at the person's replay to see what you can improve and do. It's good that they have this feature because the challenges are challenging enough.

Although, I've grown accustomed to Halo 2's Party system. And it's hard to go into a game with players of my skill level, or close to mine.

Overall:

Great game although Free Radical should of thought of putting the Havok physics engine in there, jumping and a better driving experience. More noticeable music, and sound that determines itself from other games. And the most important thing, put in helpful features.

8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/07