TimeShift Demo - 5/10

Depending on where you look around the net there has been either huge hype about this game or none at all. Not usually a good sign but with it appearing on the US PSN Store I thought i'd give it a go.

There is a brief intro sequence which serves as not much more than a promo video for the game and reveals very little about the storyline. There is some cinematic examples of the time shifting abilities and then up pops the start menu.

There isn't much more on the start menu other than an options menu and start demo. Being the person that I am I jump into the options, invert the y-axis and off we go into the game.

The demo starts by dumping you behind a wall while some black clad villain types beat up some defenceless beanie wearing homeless looking people. While i'm willing to support any government plan to assault beanie wearing types I don't think the game is really aimed at voyeuristic beanie haters so I better get to it. A short step out of the hide you're dumped in gets you an automatic weapon and the villain keeping watch for the beanie bashers seems to take offence.

This is when I died.

I'm not sure if it's just because i'm tired, because I suck or the game is just hard but I died at least 5 times before I got the gist of how this game works.

The developers seem to have spent considerable time developing the timeshift ability and want you to know it. To facilitate this the beanie bashers are freakishly resiliant. They seem to take the equivalent of their own bodyweight in bullets before finally admitting they are dead. Seriously. It takes at least 3 shotgun blasts to get these guys to lie down. Meanwhile your health is dropping faster than Paris Hiltons non-existent underwear and while it will regenerate it does so very slowly and relies on a not getting hit for X amount of time mechanic.

This is where your Timeshift ability comes in. Pause time and you're healed freakishly quickly and while you're healing why not circle strafe beanie hater #1 while empyting a whole clip into his thick concrete rendered head? And here comes the dilemma. While it certainly is coll and matrix-esque to shoot guys while they are in slow motion or paused, how do you know they are dead? You don't. You can guess, but I guarantee you are wrong and get shot when time flashes back into colour.

Anyway, on with the demo.

After a brief ammunition exchange with the beanie bashers its off through a nearby passage and into a much larger fight between Team Beanie and The Coalition Against Woolen Headwear. This is where your objectives are given to you. Basically you're fighting for Team Beanie. Why you ask? No idea. No reasoning is given and whether you like it or not you're with the Beanie brigade. The bad guys just seem to pour forward into your defensive position and you can pick them off quite easily using the time honoured shoot everything that shows red on your reticle and then duck till your health comes back and repeat formula.

Then the (tank?) shows up and starts blowing everything to pieces, so it's time to get away. Exit via a newly formed opening in what was a building and you're away and trying to rendezvous with the beanies. You follow one down a hole only to watch him run across a passageway and get blown to pieces. The game nicely tells you to use your time reverse function here to pull the passage back into one piece and run across before time repeats itself. You make your way through the black bad guy infested buildings and back out into the open. Queue another Timeshift related puzzle whereby you freeze time to get through elecxtrified water. Then advance on for yet another shootout. Once again you duck and shoot as the bad guys repeatedly come from the same positions only for another tank to show up and blow you another hole to advance through.

On the other side is a series of wooden ramps that only seem to drop you back into electrified water and a large pipe. Now before I even realise the pipe was my objective the game told me how to solve the puzzle. You jump up into the pipe and run through it to get onto an eleveated embankment, but the pipe is on a see-saw like movement and you have to freeze time to stop the other end dropping.

This is where I got frustrated. This game is so alike to Half-Life its quite ridiculous. The bad guys are clad in similar black uniforms, the good guys are wearing similar cream coloured clothing and mandatory team beanies. Heck, the locations are so very similar it probably was taking place in City 17 and Gordon Freeman was only a few blocks away. It's all here, the firefights through ruined apartment hallways, the physics puzzles, and the downtrodden and beaten rebellion fighters.

Take away the timeshift dynamic and this game is a poor copy of half-life 2.

The demo ends with a fight through some trenches to a turret where you simply hold down the primary fire button and lazily move the crosshairs back and forth across the screen before a cutscene where a paradox warning appears on your hud and the whole thing reverses and you're told to run out and buy the game for more exciting boredom!

I know i'm being really harsh and I probably shouldnt be. If the game had offered any kind of introduction to the storyline I probably wouldnt have minded so much. Why was I fighitng for the Beanies? Who are the bad guys? Why am I using my time travelling Ian Thorpe full body spandex swimsuit to solve poor imitations of Half-Life physics puzzles?

I just don't know.

As far as an FPS goes it's fairly middle of the road. Timeshift is a nice gimmick but will probably be shoved down your throat so much you get sick of it very early in the game and it just gets annoying. I'm not sure if its ability to be used in multiplayer will be implemented well and redeem the whole game.

No storyline is revealed which dissapointed me.

While it's certainly not bad looking the graphics are nothing spectacular and pretty run of the mill for most PS3 FPS games.

This game seems to be a poor imitation of Half-life 2 with a time controlling VCR remote stapled on.

I'm giving it 5/10 just because the demo was very short and the complete game might completely surprise me. But I doubt it.

It's only 476mb to download the demo so it's worth getting to try for yourselves and come to your own conclusions.

Submitted by Palpatine 03/11/2007 8

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More Info:

TimeShift

Other Reviews:

• Palpatine Review 5/10 by Palpatine

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