If it's a bad day in the office when the coffee machine breaks, what about when a bomb causes a rip in the time-space continuum? One theoretical scientist is about to find out as he jumps into a time-warping suit of armor and finds himself stuck in a rebellion to save the past and, by extension, the future.
1. Gameplay
There are few games that are horribly scarred by bad writing, dated graphics, and lack of features yet also worth recommending. TimeShift is one of those games. Despite its complete lack of a coherent story, its utterly nonsensical cliff-hanger ending, and its uninspiring environments, the developers of this game poured everything they had into making their featured mechanic not only functional but an awesome addition to the list of “great ideas for First Person Shooters”. This game may not have the AAA-budget flair of Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, but I found it far more enjoyable.
I’m not going to even bother trying to describe this game’s “story” in any detail. It’s impossible. The basic idea is that you use a super suit to jump forward in time to escape an explosion. In this future, one of your former coworkers has appointed himself dictator and now you have to lead a rebellion to overthrow him and get back to your real time. It can’t even describe it as ham-fisted. A good chunk of the game, especially the story, was ripped straight from the Half-Life series. Remove the “alien” element and this game is basically Half-Life 2.
But the mechanic of this game is the meat. The player has the ability to slow down, stop, and reverse time. This works flawlessly with the normal combat. Enemies are tough normally, especially the ones with jetpacks, but when you slow down time they become a lot easier to take down. It’s not a cakewalk, even on “Normal”, but I could get through most segments of this game without much trouble. Time manipulation isn’t infinite, so the player can’t just run around with time frozen, but it recharges fast enough that I could hide behind cover for a few seconds and be ready to pop out for another fight.
The designers also threw in a number of time-based physics puzzles, which helps break up the combat. Sometimes there’s a wheel you have to crank that brings down an elevator, but the second you let go the elevator returns to its original floor. When that happens, crank the wheel, freeze time, then step on the elevator at your leisure. When you release time, the elevator returns to its position with you on it. Each of these puzzles was a creative and inventive use of the core mechanic.
If you’re going to fail at making a game, this is the way to do it. The gameplay is solid and fun, which makes all of the other missteps totally forgivable. There probably won’t be a sequel to this game, but if there were I would be looking forward to it.
This game is surprisingly short. It took me somewhere between six and eight hours to complete the entire campaign. With no multiplayer modes and no choices in the campaign, there’s very little reason to go back and replay this game.
That being said, I enjoyed this game’s mechanics enough that I would look forward to a sequel.
The first fifteen minutes of this game are absolutely awful. The timeshifting mechanic in this game makes the lack of cover and the poor selection of weaponry survivable. But the first fifteen minutes of the game don’t allow the player to use those mechanics. So all you’re left with is shooter with poor cover and terrible weapons that weren’t designed for ADSing. It’s painful. If you can get past that, you’re in for a much better experience.
Not that the rest of the game is as smooth as butter. There were plenty of segments where I couldn’t figure out what the designers wanted me to do, but it wasn’t nearly as frustrating as that prologue.
2. Parental Notices
Violence is the most prominent factor in this game by far, but it’s still fairly mild. Hits from all weapons will result in blood. The amount of blood heavily depends on the player’s distance to the target. If the player is close, blood is easily visible and some can get on the screen. If the player is far, blood is almost completely invisible.
One of the weapons has an undermounted flamethrower equipped. If the player gets close enough, he can light enemies on fire. Enemies do react to being ignited.
Gore is present in this game, although its inclusion is generally limited to a select few scenarios and weapon types. High damage weapons, such as mounted machine guns and heavy-damage explosives, can cause enemies to gib into chunks.
There are a few situations where the player will have to avoid giant spinning fan blades. If the player is unsuccessful in avoiding them, he will be chopped up by the blades.
There is a cutscene (repeated a couple of times) where the main character is clearly in bed with a naked woman. There is no nudity in the scene, but it’s fairly safe to assume that she’s naked. The cutscene only lasts for a few seconds though.
Substances are not a factor in this game.
Gambling is not a factor in this game.
3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
Regardless of the motivations, the player does aid in the violent overthrow of the ruling force. This outright lawlessness would, through a different lens, be seen as a brutal rebellion. While the rebel cause is just, it’s still a rebellion.
While there were multiplayer modes for this game when it launched, it’s so old that they no longer function. As a result, the online community is not a factor in this game.
The player will have to do some fairly absurd things once or twice in this game, but these are tempered by the mechanics of the game. For example, the player might have to reverse time and get blown up a giant windtunnel, but the game doesn’t call a ton of attention to this idea. Once the player is at the top, it’s over.
The player can’t directly control any vehicles either. While there will be some trains the player can activate and ride, these hardly qualify as “extreme”.
While the game attempts to make it clear that the time manipulation mechanics are purely technological, it doesn’t go into any detail about how the technology works. Because the idea of manipulating time, even in small amounts, seems fairly ludicrous without a more detail explanation, I consider it to be magical.
There are no additional factors in this game.
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