My Timesplitters Epiphany

RespawnAction: "I have been hearing/reading a lot of good things about the Timesplitters series for quite a while now. Back in the day I was a huge fan of the N64 Goldeneye game and had many a night playing multiplayer with my friends and cousin. Whipping out the dual P90's or dual Lasers was great and I'm sure even today the multiplayer would be loads of fun.

Recently I had been looking at Youtube videos of Timesplitters 2 and saw a great similarity between that game and Goldeneye. I thought to myself about how I had never heard of the series before. I am sure my cousin had told me about it as he was always playing first person shooter games, but I guess I had blown it off. I have been playing a lot of online shooters and was in the mood for a nice single player adventure. I love those old school single player FPS games; the games that had a great focus on story as opposed to just the multiplayer. So after seeing Timesplitters 2 for a while now I finally made the trip to Gamestop and picked it up used for roughly $7. Quite a deal, huh? There's something about buying a last generation game in this day and age, I just can't describe it. Maybe it is my feeling of last generation games being superior to this generation. Who knows."

[-Alpha]

Good stuff
Yes, TS is a tremendous game.

The story was goofy, and nothing serious, but the meat of the game was the split screen and the challenges mode, in which you would participate in insanely weird challenges like hurling bricks through windows, etc.

It's a fantastic game (#2 in particular) but unfortunately Free Radical decided to strip themselves of all that made that franchise unique and interesting and decided to follow in the joyous footsteps of "generic-super-marine-in- a-war-torn-society-that-nobody - cared-about" path to utter destruction.

Haze ruined these guys.

But there is hope. I am sure they are working on the next Timesplitters as they did have a teaser when they were working on Haze.

I want my frantic multiplayer fulled to the brim of monkeys on fire, robotic fish bowls, 70's porn stars, etc. TimeSplitters was by no means the greatest, but it survived because it had heart and didn't take itself too seriously. On top of that they had the most varied, local and online multiplayer that only Halo today carries on. Why they decided to make Haze I will never know.

[Bilbo65]

Seriously these games were just pure fun, tons of unique characters, great weapons, alot of games modes (infection so fun), even the map editor was pretty extensive. Alot of good memories playing with my buddies.

I really hope crytek makes a new one, but it has to keep the soul of the series which made it so great.

[CPmonkey]

TS is awesome indeed.

FreeRadical were talking about making TS2HD before they went bust.

[respawnaction]

Wow, a TS2HD would have been sweet, and I am sure loads of people would be on the multiplayer.

[mistajeff]

We really need a new TimeSplitters game. Shooters take themselves way too seriously. Hopefully we'll see a TimeSplitters 4 on the CryEngine 3 now that they've been picked up by Crytek.

Lots of GoldenEye comparisons here, but wasn't Free Radical started up by a whole bunch of the Goldeneye/PD devs who left Rare?

[respawnaction]

Yeah Free Radical is a bunch of Goldeneye people, and TS resembles that. That is one of the reasons why I got TS2, hence the comparisons. The revelation here is why I hadn't gotten into TS games earlier. As in last gen, lol.

[Timesplitter14]

I remember being really confused with the controls back when TS1 came out.

But I'm curious... were there other FPS games before TS1 that used the dual-analog FPS control scheme or did TS1 pioneer it?

[respawnaction]

On IGN
TS1 came out in 2000, so i guess they started it, but then Halo mastered it for the consoles. Unless something else came in between.

[peeps]

ppl always say halo mastered controls for console fps, but how exactly...

[respawnaction]

The Halo controls made it more accessible to people, and got the controls just right. I love Timesplitters now as I am a new fan of the series, but something about the aiming controls just isn't completely there. Especially when aiming using the trigger to zoom, the weird bouncing of the camera just seems awkward to me.

But I'm not the Halo fanboy saying it is the greatest. But you have to admit it did bring console FPS to the next level with it's controls. It's like the next step above Goldeneye where that had the great controls for the time and split screen multiplayer, Halo refined it. I guess you can look at it that way. I don't think I explained it as well as I had it in my mind. :/

[table]

the controls in timesplitters1 were not very clever to be honest and Halo's were a big improvement. I do feel the xbox halo controls are overrated though, they still hadn't quite grasped the fluid aiming even in that game.

[farhsa2008]

split screen was and is the most fun part of playing games, just a shame games nowadays do not have this option

[peeps]

it's kinda understandable though. i mean if it takes so much cpu/gpu etc power to display the game once, ur then asking it to do that x2 or x4

i could be completely wrong, but i do imagine it would be quite tough cus ur kinda running the game twice or 4 times in a weird sorta way

[peeps]

used to love hooking up 2 tv's and ps2's and playing 8 player games.

the original timeplsitters was my first ps2 game, and what a game lol

future perfect for me just didn't seem right though but i would love to hear that a new ts is on the way. It's a shame they released haze instead of ts4 lol

[Sir_Ken_Kutaragi_]

I was playing the 4 player split-screen mode last week;) (Timesplitters 2) STILL AMAZING FUN!!! ;-P
+ 'Timesplitters 2' is my most played PS2 game... ;-P

+ I wish they would do(even tho FRD are no more) :-( a 'Timesplitters' game with all the Multiplayer levels(on all 3 Timesplitters games)in 'HD' and stick them all on one Blu-ray for the PS3 and erm ;-D of course have 4 player off-line Split-screen mode with Bots... ;-P
Oh well...nice dream...IT'S TIME TO SPLIT...

http://www.youtube.com/watc... ;-D

[HOSe]

ts2= best local mp of all time.

[EL Lanf]

Timesplitters 2 and 3 were some of my best multiplayer experiences ever. The death of co-op is lamentable, not just with my mates, but at my university's gaming society, it's really suffering due to the lack of good 4 player local games, especially on the 360.

Sure online gaming is good for some games, especially larger team-orientated ones, but wheres the small frantic, and most importantly fun, FPS games like timesplitters gone?

Heres hoping TS4 does get to see the light of day...

[FantasyStar]

Timesplitters is the reason I still pop in the game, call 3 friends over, and mash it up in Assault Split-screen versus 8 other bots. Pure madness. The split-screen co-op? Oh, LAN Support?

Free Radical knows how to give a game legs. Years from now, I still love this game to death.

[washingmachine]

t2 was a fun game,so much like goldeneye when it came to objectives etc and the mini games were fun aswell. we need t3 for this gen

[HOSe]

timesplitters 3, been there done that. what we need is timesplitters 2 hd and timesplitters 4 to be released together, sort of like mw2 and cod classic but a million times better. i dont see why this cant happen. Crytec or whatever the company is called that now owns the free radical guys knows that there is demand for a sequel to timesplitters. it may happen, who knows.

[Picnic]

It sounds like the mulitplayer was much better but all the single player game did was give you a taster of different kinds of games - an introduction to a Goldeneye-type dam level, an introduction to a Perfect Dark-type Bladerunner level, an introduction to a Chicago themed level. The single player game wasn't nearly big enough. It had some character in a kind of creepy, goofy, way though. And some of the themes of this game seem to have been taken up by Bioshock to some extent, which made them in to one cohesive whole- but, yes, without the humour.

[Ripyealip]

my favourite FPS of all time. THE FALLEN SHALL RISE AGAIN!!