Timesplitters Review

Timesplitters is a first person shooter originally released for the PlayStation 2 on October 23, 2000. Published by Eidos Interactive and developed by Free Radical Design, the game draws heavy inspiration from other popular first person shooters of the past, such as Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark (both developed by Rare on the N64).



Timesplitters keeps things simple by glossing over the plot of the game, and throws you right into the action. The gameplay itself is simple, run and shoot. There is also a way to aim using a radical, but you'll find yourself rarely wanting to use it because of how clunky it feels. The story of Timesplitters is made up of nine levels, each with easy, medium, and hard difficulties in order to keep things challenging (and it sure does). Finishing all of these levels unlocks challenge mode.



Challenge mode drops you into stages where you are tasked with a specific objective (such as breaking all of the windows in a stage under a certain time) Playing through these unlocks even more challenges, "cheats", and characters, for a total of 27 different challenges.



Arcade mode is where this game shines its brightest. With its large variety of maps, excessive number of characters, and vast catalogue of weapons, this part of the game will keep you playing for hours. Luckily Timesplitters is also one of the few games to support the multi-tap, which allows four players to share the fun of blowing off the heads of zombies together. And if for some reason you get tired of that, even more playable characters and stages can be unlocked by playing through story levels at certain difficulties. There are a variety of game modes to play on each stage as well (anywhere from death match to capture the flag). There are also a whole bunch of settings, which allow you to adjust each game you play drastically.



The last portion of Timesplitters is the map creator. The creation tools are pretty basic, as they give you only 20 or so assets to construct your masterpiece. Because of this, most maps being made are somewhat limited, and often fall short of the maps in game, and certainly of what you hope to make. Despite this, it's still nice that they decided to include this feature at all.



Overall, the game is a blast to play, whether it be staying up late playing with your friends, or trying to finish every single challenge stage. Regardless, the game still has essentially no story, making what you are doing seem somewhat pointless. The gameplay lacks a good aiming system, and there is a disappointingly basic map creation mode included. However, Timesplitters is still one of the most fun games to play on the PlayStation 2, and I recommend picking it up if you still have your old system lying around.

Rating: 8

Product Release: TimeSplitters (US, 10/23/00)