For those who don’t know I am behind in the times. I have a girlfriend, a job, and now school to keep up with! Because of this gaming had to take a backseat for a while. However I have recently put in the hours to complete another game. So with that I welcome you to a year ago with my review of: TimeShift.



That comic pretty much sums up how I feel about Timeshift. Replace ‘cats’ with F.E.A.R. and ‘pies’ with Half Life 2, and that is the basic summary of the game. If you have played both, them I recommend the title as a romp, and nothing more. Why is it like the combination you ask? The game is made by some of the same team as FEAR so the guards all kinda look like the mentally controlled soldiers. Also at any time during the game you can use an auto refilling bar of slow down time. So in that respect the game was fun. As far as Half Life the game tried to replicate so much, but failed in having the same power. It was linear. You are an unnamed scientist who travels back in time for some reason. You help out Le Resistance against the bad dude. The bad dude is on big TV’s. The clincher though is the vehicle sections. A little ways into the game they give you a bike, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t reminiscent of Half Life. Just saying.

So besides being a failed merger of two good games, how was it? Let’s start graphics. They were all pretty sharp; a lot of detail went into this game. I didn’t notice any texture glitches, which was pretty neat, because they pop up a lot in some games. There were a few framerate issues in the later parts of the game, but it wasn’t too terrible. I have to introduce the main catch of the game here, as it is my favorite part of the graphics. You can slow down, stop, and reverse time. Pretty cool, huh? And half the levels are raining. So when you slow down time you see each drop. And when you stop it, they all stop suspended. It made me happy.

So how did that time thing work out? Well the game assigns the ‘use a time power’ button to the bumper. Your suit automatically chooses which one would be the best. This makes puzzles easier and if you are dying or an enemy is in your face it will freeze. The default is slow. Pretty much you just slow down time and kill hordes of enemies. Its pretty fun, really. There are puzzles, but I came from Braid, so there were failures in the difficulty part by comparison. The game was made insanely easy by these additions too. However it had excellent execution compared to many other ‘good idea, bad use’ games. If you got stuck by a grenade you could stop time and it falls off. If you stop time you can grab weapons from enemy’s hands. You can shoot out the enemy’s weapons from their hands. It’s pretty fun. The rest of the gameplay is pretty good, using standard Halo controls and feel. Regenerating health and time powers makes you too good a superhuman though.

Finally the story. I think there was a twist at the end. I think I got it. They tried so hard to make it cool. The story fell pretty flat. It was a run and gun, go to point A for some reason, then back to point B for another. It wasn’t compelling. Oh well.

Using the Dtoid scoring system I would give the game a 7. It was not the worst piece of crap that I have played. I enjoyed it. I played it over other games. It was a bargain at 15 dollars. It was in no way stellar, but certainly fun for the price. Concept was executed very well, just could have used a better plot. Hooray.