PC News and Game Reviews

I recently played through a demo of Timeshift. This title has been on the cards for quite some time, but due to changes at the 11th hour it was delayed for some time!!!

Graphics

Timeshift is built using its own proprietary engine. The engine itself scrubs up pretty well, features include depth of field effects, some fancy “Crysis-esque” blurring effects and decent textures. The lighting was nice and the demo opened with some really cool water effects….it poured rain and water flowed from gutters etc. It looks good, and is certainly not let down by visuals.

Setting

Having read the developers website the story goes as follows. You play as one of two guys who have just invented a “Time suit”. The trouble starts when your partner in this venture grabs the working time suit and jumps off into “time”. You fix up your time suit and follow him forward in time. The game starts here in the future, with your former friend by now a dictator (having used his suit for pure evil like he should!). The demo opens with you viewing 2 “rebels” being kicked about the place by armed soldiers who look a bit like the combine. Now maybe its just the demo that reminded me of City 17……but I felt like I was playing HL:2 at one stage. There are giant screens littered about the city with your old “friend” quietly reciting rhetoric in an attempt to talk the rebels down. Now where have I seen that before? A mad doctor on a screen in a ruined city (17).

Game Play

I must say that it feels very much like a console fps game. The interface is clunky and stupid, in-line with using an XBOX controller, not a mouse. The combat is fun and frantic. Enemies seem to jump out from every corner in a heavily scripted ballet. The weapons in the demo are a machine gun with a grenade launcher (HL:2), a crossbow (HL:2) and a type of shotgun (HL:2). The demo consists of running and gunning your way through a linear path, with the occasional fixed gun emplacement to allow you to should “git some, git some yeah” as you mow down men!

Seen it all before you might say…..well yes you have…..but not all in the same game. Your time suit has a few unique features. By pressing F you activate your time suit allowing you to rewind, pause (slow) or forward time. In the demo the computer basically decides which way to manipulate time. For instance if you just hit F in a fire fight you will go into Max Payne “bullet time”. You can then move up and grab weapons from your enemies….or shoot them several times in the head. You then hit F again and time speeds up…and everyone starts spewing blood onto the ground. It’s captured a little better in the cut scene at the start of the game, but it is certainly a good game feature. The rewind time is used once in the demo. You basically run down a corridor and up ahead of you a rocket slams in blocking your path…..not for long! Again you hit F and time rewinds…allowing you to pass before the rocket strike!!! You then speed things up again and the rocket slams into the corridor, with you safely on the other side! The demo ends with one of the fixed gun battles I talked about already.

Conclusion

Now the idea I had in mind for Timeshift is a little different to what has been made. I had an idea for jumping between thousands of years….and each level being a completely different setting (i.e you chase the evil geezer through ancient Rome…only to end up in the trenches of the Somme Twelve Monkey’s style). I’m well aware of the horrendous balancing challenges this would present for a game, obviously so are the Timeshift developers (they went nowhere near it). But what it looks like they have done is make a good FPS, with a few novel features. Its fun to play….but it is a) on Rails and b) Easily a HL:2 mod. With the addition of the time features you are half the way there I think. I’ll wait for the full game!