REVIEW: TimeShift (360, PS3)

Scribbled on December 14th, 2007 by JBonner71
Filed in Game Videos, Microsoft Xbox 360, Reviews, Shooter, Sony PlayStation 3, TheCritics.TV

TimeShift is a game that had an interesting development cycle – it was a few bugs away from being complete when a new publisher, Sierra, stepped in and gave the developers, Saber Interactive, a whole year to revamp and tweak the game. And, for the most part, that extra year in the oven has shaped TimeShift into a quality FPS title.

The good: the time-altering powers are most cool to mess around with, the graphics are very well done, the single player campaign is quite long for a first person shooter and the multiplayer, which supports up to 16 players over Xbox Live, can be very enjoyable under the right circumstances.

The bad: this game desperately wants to be Half-Life 2, the paragon of First Person Shooters in my book, and it does come close on certain levels, but the story and writing are obscure at best – even by the end of the game you still really have no idea who the hell you are and what your ultimate purpose is – other than to kill the main bad guy. This was an area where Half Life 2 greatly excelled and TimeShift is severely lacking. On top of that, the majority of the weapons found throughout the game seem underpowered and the enemy A.I. isn’t going to win any Mensa awards.

The ugly: I found that if I was playing in large chunks (over an hour) the game would get buggy, the sound and frame rate would stutter for a bit and it would ultimately freeze up on me. I’m not sure if this was a software or hardware issue but I haven’t had any other Xbox 360 games do this to me in the two years or so that I’ve owned the console.

So, at the end of the day, I see TimeShift as the “butterfaced” stepsister of Half-Life 2 because there are good times to be had here if you can get past some superficial ugliness. Rent it for the single player game but keep it for the multiplayer action.

FINAL RATING: (out of five)