TimeShift Review
There's nothing like a good, explosive weapon to resolve a conflict. You know the scenario: a handful of goons pop out of a truck, loaded to the teeth with machine guns and grenades, who send bullets whizzing by your ears while another batch of their cretin buddies sneak around to ambush your hide from behind. Luckily, you have that trusty rocket launcher strapped to your back. You whip it out. You load up a few rockets and watch dismembered bodies dance around in the air with a great big KABOOM. You feel a sickening pleasure in the pit of your stomach; a faint smile snakes across your face. You even chuckle, thinking "have a friggin nice day."
Now throw in the ability to manipulate time. Crank down the eternal flow and watch those silly goons as the rocket impacts, thrusting their slow, flailing bodies into the heated air like ballerinas performing one last gig. And if you turn on the gore and blood settings, arms and legs spread like toothpicks in a cloud of smoke and blood. Oh, how we love our explosive weapons, our carnage and our need to kick ass. Thanks to TimeShift, we get that and then some, complete with fast-forward, reverse and pause.
Saber Interactive's TimeShift blends first-person shooter action with time control gameplay.
Life is good. Or is it? Sierra's latest foray into the first-person shooter genre offers more than just a cool, handy gimmick. While time control is nothing new to the gaming industry, developer Saber Interactive seems to have it figured out without seeming to rip off The Matrix or Max Payne. Sure, you can dodge bullets with the click of a button; you can even rewind time and send those bullets back to home. But TimeShift actually feels fresh in this aspect, offering gamers something seemingly new and not letting the whole time-control scheme get out of hand. However, like a handy rocket launcher, you can only use the weapon so many times until it's time to reload.
The player's ability to control time stems from a unique suit, which scientists of the not-too-distant future designed. The antagonist, Aiden Krone, head of the time-shifting suit project, goes postal and slips on the "alpha" version, heading back to 1939 where he alters the timeline, making himself ruler of the known world. In the present, before his departure, Dr. Krone sabotages the laboratory and the second "beta" suit. The protagonist, associate scientist Tom Swift, jumps into the "beta" suit - despite its malfunctioning system - and follows Krone back in time. Apparently, the "beta" suit is more advanced and is a military-grade model with a built-in A.I. system (S.S.A.M.) to aid in time-shifting and to prevent time paradoxes. In other words, the bad guy got the sucky suit and you're going to kick his ass with the deluxe model. One would think that - being the lead scientist and head of the whole time-shifting project - Krone would pick the better of the two.
Perhaps even geniuses can be morons. Once gamers reach 1939, the world is nothing as it should be. A giant robot spider-thing stomps around and fills up the entire grim skyline. Soldiers litter the streets with advanced armor and weaponry. The Occupant Rebellion struggles to take down Krone and his regime, but the outcome doesn't look good. Of course, your place in this alternate timeline is to help the Rebellion by any means necessary. You can't return home; it no longer exists. You may even have to kill your mentor in order to restore the original timeline.
With a story like that, one would think that the game would be some type of FPS/RPG hybrid. Unfortunately, the TimeShift story steps out of the spotlight altogether. Gamers will find themselves asking "why are we here again?" or "are we at the end yet?" Because of this, the game will ultimately end up in a pile of old-school titles that really never offer storylines save for the brief manual summaries. While TimeShift offers a few cut scenes and an in-game sequence here and there, you never really feel any story progression, only a physical advancement from point A to point B. Levels consist of flip this switch to open door, go though said door and proceed to next area. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes the use of time is needed in order to activate multiple switches; pull one lever, pause time, pull the other lever, un-pause time. Look! Door opens!
You might as well play Doom. Perhaps that is a little harsh. TimeShift is far from the simplicity of id Software's flagship FPS game. But when you have very little story integration and old-school AB level design, you can't help but think about the old days when games played on DOS and graphical hardware acceleration was still in its infancy. On the other hand, TimeShift's enemy AI tends to drag your wandering mind away from the root gameplay, coming at you from all sides with an uncanny aggression. Choke areas will force you to re-think situations as you plummet to the ground and the loading screen laughs at your failure (which can be over and over and over). One can surmise to say that TimeShift is an old-school shooter wrapped up with a smarter, meaner AI system and topped off with sharp, sophisticated graphics.
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