Publisher: Sierra Entertainment
Developer: Saber Interactive
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Pentium 4 2 GHz or equivalent; 1 GB RAM; Windows XP or Vista
Genre: First-person shooter
Release date: Available now
Review by: Bob Mandel

This holiday season is chock full of first-person shooters for the PC. How many times do you see games the quality of Bioshock, Painkiller Overdose, Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, Crysis and Blacksite: Area 51 all being released in such close proximity to each other? Of course, that’s not even considering non-PC blockbuster releases such as Halo 3. In the midst of this embarrassment of riches, Sierra Entertainment has published Saber Interactive’s TIMESHIFT (released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as on the PC). Can TIMESHIFT stand up to its competition?

The story in TIMESHIFT rings very familiar. You play as a mysterious physicist doing research on a special suit — originally developed for time jumping — under a former physics professor named Aiden Krone. After an explosion in the lab, the unscrupulous Krone steals a prototype of the suit and flees to a different spot in the time-space continuum; you grab the other prototype and race after him. You find yourself in an era reminiscent of the 1930s, characterized by violent turmoil between the dictator Krone, who’s commanding a large army, and a valiant resistance movement called the Occupants. As you progress, cutscenes move the story forward. In retrospect, the plot is both disjointed and peripheral, and could’ve been more novel and fleshed out.

The largely linear level design is enjoyable, but again, not especially innovative. You’ll often find yourself navigating stark corridors looking for buttons or levers that open passages, although to a certain degree, that’s balanced with more open and expansive areas. The action takes place in diverse locales, including rundown streets and warehouses, armaments factories, and construction sites within urban settings. While you move about mostly on foot, on a few occasions, you can ride around in a Quad ATV or fly in a really exciting, massive zeppelin, obliterating foes from on high. As you move forward, you’ll face an endless array of armored enemy military units. Nothing you encounter is startling, although your journey across 24 combat missions is a pleasurable one.

The central feature of TIMESHIFT is your ability to manipulate your time powers, which includes slowing down, stopping and reversing time. While slowing down action using “bullet-time” has become commonplace in first-person shooters, here, the time dynamic is much more fully exploited. If you slow down time, you can easily mow down distant enemies with sniper fire or readily escape from a tight situation. Stopping time allows you to snatch weapons from your foes and then watch their fright and confusion when time starts up again, place grenades in the pockets of your enemies, shoot your adversaries with volatile arrows and then watch their explosive demise, or mow down several opponents with head shots before they can dodge the bullets.