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If you reverse time, you can correct ill-fated moves or worm your way through a collapsing structure before being crushed. Because there are limits on how long you can use your suit to manipulate time, and because these limits are tighter for stopping time than for slowing it down, you have to be careful about when and how to apply your powers. When you manipulate time, the game handles the mutations well, with raindrops freezing in mid-fall and dead bodies convulsing and flying through the air in slow motion. Time manipulation plays a pivotal role in both puzzle solving and battle fighting, and its use is consistently entertaining.
TIMESHIFT offers an ample supply of firepower without, in any way, revolutionizing the weapons business. Arms include the Carbine Assault Rifle, the Pistol, the Shotgun, the Crossbow, the Sniper Rifle, the Rocket Launcher, the Magnesium Projectile Launcher, the Submachine Gun and the Electric Surge Gun as well as grenades, laser mines and stationary turrets. You can carry three weapons at a time, and every weapon has a secondary fire mode. It’s also possible to use weapons as blunt objects to smash your foes. Because ammunition is generally plentiful, you don’t have to skimp. The powerful weapons, particularly the crossbow, are a blast to use, and full understanding of their capabilities and your time powers is essential to success.
The characters you encounter are mildly interesting, but you won’t get emotionally involved. Among your allies is Commander Mason Cooke, the leader of the anti-Krone resistance movement, who provides advice and helps you try to bring down the dictator. Your foes include flying guards, cybernetic guards and guards that can warp in and out of existence. A sign of the unimportance of character development in TIMESHIFT is that the S.S.A.M. (Strategic System for Adaptable Metacognition) artificial intelligence program within your suit — which plays audio clips, video clips and memories to help you achieve mission goals — is as stimulating as many of those you meet.
The environmental puzzles you encounter pale in comparison to the combat. You might need to rewind time after moving a platform into place so you can get onto it, slow down time so as to press buttons in quick succession or stop time so as to get through a door before it shuts. For example, after you locate the entrance to a subway, you must figure out how to get across electrified water; and when facing Krone in his murderous robot spider, you have to figure out how to avoid incoming missiles. None of these puzzles is brain-melting. You receive recommendations when you approach obstacles about which time power to use, and usually, there aren’t many alternatives available. By the time you get to the end of the game, you’ll have the puzzle dynamics down pat.
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TimeShift is one awesome game. I just got the retail version, but did play and finish the demo and was very impressed with it.
You neglected to mention what a pain the game is to get it to run properly on a PC with SLI. I wrote about that aspect of the game on my web site. I really wish PC reviews would include “install” along with all the other aspect of the ratings. Sometimes even good games aren’t worth the trouble.
For those of you still having issues getting Timeshift to run on the PC (/w nVidia hardware) here’s the trick.
1) disable SLI
2) download the 163.71 nVidia driver (it’s in the archives)
3) download the latest direct X from Microsoft’s web site.
Don’t ask how long it took to figure out those combinations, especially since the game keeps telling you to download “beta” drivers that goof everything up for many of us.
Hope that helps,
IceDragon
To say the game is linear is to grant it to much credit. A cross-bow for sniping…a physicist as a hero…hmmm…
I’d rather play Half-Life Episode 2
Could not agree more nick. I bloged about this game and called it HL2 (physicist hero) meets Max Payne (Bullet time= play, stop reverse time) and they buy a Nano Suit (sorry erm time suit)
that said I did enjoy it. Taught it looked good and the combat was very close quarters and intense! Would not pay full price for it tho, will buy it when it comes down in price.
go Gordon!
Mine runs like a champ! 2560 resolution, an NV 8800GT, A core 2, 2.4Ghz, and 2 gigs of fairly fast PC 6400 ram.
The game is sweet. It has a nice long single player (22 hours on Elite) and I’ve been having lan parties with my pals–with amazing configs on the multiplayer. This is a sleeper hit and I think it’ll be evergreen as heck. Check out the Parallax and Normal Maps with all the dynamic shadows. It’s even more fun when you turn off the gore and juggle the heck out of your enemies. I got one up about five hundred feet. I hear there are five new maps coming. Can’t wait. Bob… You gave it a fair review. Check out some who reviewed the game without even playing MP (GamePro–and laughed about it, as if that’s not about half a game when done right.)
Richard
–PS. To heck with Gordon. He’s five years aged, the tech is dated, and they had to include a little puzzle toy written by a student? There was nothing new there–and it was more linear than TS by a wide margin. At least in TimeShift you can play with or without the time powers and change them up for serious variation.
Why does every know-it-all think that if an FPS has elements of other games that a) it is a ripoff and b) that this somehow makes it bad? The HL2 comments are just plain stupid and are made by people who clearly know nothing about games. Oh yeah, that and the inane FEAR comments that pop up. What FPS (including the apparently vaunted HL2) doesn’t borrow from other games?
TimeShift is fun in its own right – innovates more than Ep. 2 and COD4 and looks and runs great.
can my notebook can play timeshift??
mine is graphic medi accelerator 950
intel centrino
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