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TimeShift Review - Xbox 360

Introduction

Since the creation of Bullet Time by the motion picture saga The Matrix, the First Person Shooter genre saw the creation of, and resultant flood of titles to, the time manipulation sub-genre. With some games, such as the infamous F.E.A.R, bringing gamers a whole new perspective on FPS, many attempts have fallen short of doing the sub-genre justice. With that said, the new title TimeShift has had one of the most intensive creation processes this year, and being backed by the veteran game creators Sierra, the title was shaping up to be the new benchmark for time manipulation FPS. Boasting some of the best graphics seen on the Xbox360 and a plotline so in-depth, it would put Tom Clancy to shame, the only question left is, where can I buy it?

I found this title a little lower on my priority list, with Mass Effect and Assassins Creed all but released, I wasn't exactly pacing outside my local games store the morning of release. With that being, I was pleasantly surprised when I loaded this title up. The graphics overall are quite stunning, on par with Gears of War, and yet retaining a real gritty nature that adds that extra bit of realism to the maps. The rain effects are also done very well also, and add to the time effects nicely. The sound is quite well done, with a decent musical score and sound effects range, and from the minute I got into the campaign I sensed a good storyline in the mix.

Gameplay

Without giving too much away, the player takes on the persona a highly skilled scientist, working on a top secret military experiment to developing a suit capable of time travel. However, something within the research facility goes terribly wrong, and your only way out is to don the prototype suit, and jump through time. When you emerge from time jump, you soon realise you are not in the same world you left behind. Interesting, yes? And yet, one feeling I couldn't shake the entire time I played this game, was I had accidentally bought Half-Life 2...

Time Shift plays like most FPS, a nice array of weaponry at your disposal to run around shooting up your enemies, all having a primary and secondary fire ability, from grenade launchers to simple rapid fire, but with the added twist of being able to manipulate time. Now, I was a massive fan of F.E.A.R, I played it through like 6 times, and one would expect, sharing developers, that TimeShift would be similar. Not true. The story, setting, graphics and time travel appearance and mechanics are all different. Rather then being able to just slow time, you can stop it completely, or even go backwards, and unlike F.E.A.R, there are 100's of situations in the campaign where your life depends on using these abilities. As expected, slowing time is also quite useful for gun fights. It allows the player to stop time and unload an entire (continued next page)