TimeShift

"Timeshift is fresh and original, though it lacked something."

Timeshift is a FPS game that goes somewhere beyond where most FPS games go. It allows you to manipulate time to change things around you. Timeshift is an excellent concept that was executed quite decently. Several times in the game, you use your time-shifting abilities to go places where you normally couldn't, do things you normally can't and outrun any enemy fire. Though as fun as this is, it is repetitive. By the end it becomes the same old, same old. Not necessarily boring, though tiring. Nothing ever changes in this game.


[Gameplay: 9/10]

The gameplay is definitely the best detail in this game. It is quite exhilarating, exciting and fast paced. There is a somewhat limited supply of weaponry in this game, though the weapons you have are really good. As for your time-shifting abilities, they are the core of this games gameplay. Without it, this game would have been boring. They give you freedom of where and how you want to use your time-shifting abilities. Even after you have way outplayed this game, they are still fun to play around with.


[Graphics: 8/10.]

The graphics in this game are very detailed and colorful, though they are not the best graphics out there. You will notice that when it is raining, you will see rain drops sliding across your visor. This game has good graphics, though I wouldn't go so far to say that they are excellent.


[Length: 5/10.]

This is one of the worst details in this game. This game's length was very un-fitting to what the game was and how detailed they wanted to make it. This game was 7-10 hours long. Normally, that is decent. But by the end you just felt like “That was it? How could that possibly be it? There HAS to be something more!” But of course, there isn't. Timeshift was building itself up like it would be at least 30-40 hours long, and then it ended. It ended just like that. You hardly realized you just began the game by the time you watch the end credits roll down. Now don't get me wrong, the game's length wasn't bad because it was short, it was bad because the length didn't fit what the game was.


[Story: 7/10.]

The story to this game is decent, though very slow moving and hard to follow. You kinda always feel lost until you go through it all again after you beat the game. It's a good storyline, I just wish it was easier to follow during the game.


[Multiplayer: 1/10]

This game was simply not meant for multiplayer. It's as simple as that. First of all, it is near impossible to get a match with anybody. I was trying to get one person to play with me online for almost 30 minutes and I was unsuccessful. Second, you cannot use your time-shifting abilities in the multiplayer. What fun is that? You can't even use the main concept of the game in its multiplayer! Well, if you think about it, it would be very hard to add it. But why even add the multiplayer at all if you can't? There is no reason that this game should have had multiplayer. It is actually less useful than the multiplayer for Metroid Prime 2. So you might as well just ignore its existence altogether.


[Difficulty satisfaction: 6/10.]

This game was very easy to beat. Maybe a little bit too easy. Though does that make it bad? It definitely makes the gameplay much less stressful. Although it lowers the challenge of the game, allowing you to simply fly through the game with only dying a couple of times. This is the case for Timeshift. When you come up to an enemy , or a group of enemies, you can simply slow down or stop time and use your crossbow to kill all of them just like that. Although this is very fun to do, it also makes sure that there are very few challenging fights in the game. This is quite true. There were only a few fights in the whole game that gave me any amount of trouble to beat. The rest were rather easy. Also, all the puzzles in this game are childishly simple if you have played Portal or Half-Life before. I was able to look at them for five seconds and decide how to pass it. Only one puzzle ever stumped me for any amount of time. There were also not enough puzzles in this game. You only came across them every once in a while. Though for what puzzles there were, they were fun even though they were simple.


[Sound & music: 7/10]

The music and sound effects in this game were good, though just like the graphics, nothing incredibly memorable. Every sound effect fit what it was meant to fit, and every song fit for what it meant to fit. You won't be blown away, but you won't be disappointed.


[Replay value: 2/10.]

As interesting and original as this game is, I found nothing very interesting the second time through. It is still fun to use your time abilities, though the game still makes you use them in the exact same ways and strategies. I hardly got through level one again before I decided to just turn the game off due to tedium.


[Overall: 7/10.]

This game is an overall enthralling, beguiling and gripping game the first time through, though the second time it is just tedious.

Here are the pros and cons of this game.

[Pros.]
Good music and sound effects.
Incredible story mode gameplay.
Good puzzles.
Good graphics.
Decent plotline.
Good weapons.

[Cons.]
Terrible multiplayer.
Puzzles were too easy, and there weren't enough.
Story Mode was slightly too easy.
Story Mode was very short.
Plotline too hard to follow.
Not enough weapons.

Although Timeshift should have been at least twice as long as it was, Timeshift was an excellent game that you should not pass up.

Rent or But: Rent.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/16/09

Game Release: TimeShift (US, 10/30/07)