Not to beat a dead horse, but if you are a regular reader of my reviews you know how I feel about demos. A demo can be a developer’s best friend, but in the case of Time Shift it can also be your worst enemy. I was originally very interested in Time Shift. I closely followed the games development right up until the demo released on Xbox Live, but this is where the proverbial wheels fell off for me.
TimeShift is the story of a scientist (Dr. Krone) who steals a prototype time machine (the Alpha Suit) and travels back through time, altering history to make himself leader of the world. You take on the roll of another doctor (who oddly enough does not have a name) who steals the beta suit (a more advanced model than the alpha suit) and follows him. When your character arrives the changes have already taken place so he must find Dr. Krone and stop him in order to correct the discrepancies in the timeline. As interesting a premise as TimeShift is, the story is pretty forgettable. Without a name, you can imagine how involved the character and story development is.
In TimeShift your character is in possession of a suit that can manipulate time in multiple ways which is easily the games best feature. I never got tired of stopping time and moving behind my enemies and watching them become completely confused as to where I was. In TimeShift you possess the ability to fast forward, rewind, slow and stop time. Each ability inevitable comes in to use and is implemented into the gameplay well. I was especially impressed by the way in which you could prevent death by rewinding time if you were quick enough on the trigger. Actually, as a whole the gameplay is pretty solid. Environments are designed pretty well and the enemy AI is solid. I never saw any characters looking the wrong way or not shooting at me when I was in plain sight.
TimeShift probably has some of the worst graphics I have seen on the 360 to date. I know it was originally supposed to be released in the last console generation and it appears that the developers stuck with that philosophy when they were designing the game. Everything in the game is just straight ugly. The environments, although diverse, are as bland as they get; character models are poorly rendered and even the weather effects look terrible. Also the game just isn't very much fun. The weapons are pretty boring and as much fun as time shifting abilities are, the mapped controls for using them are horrible. The game defaults a specific ability given the situation but trying to manually select a different ability is horribly designed given the games pacing. It's a shame that the games best feature and biggest selling point is so poorly designed.
There is a lot of potential for TimeShift. Unfortunately the game suffers from some avoidable flaws that diminish the overall product. If you are a fan of shooters then you should at least try TimeShift but I can not recommend it for everyone, and you will most likely want to pick up a used copy or make this one a rental.
TimeShift had a fairly muted launch in 2007, and while it doesn't rewrite the FPS rulebook it does offer an enjoyable campaign even now.
Never heard of this game until someone mentioned it here last year. Played it and it basically represents most games from the PS3/Xbox360 era—good graphics, amazing physics, and extremely fun gameplay (time powers rock), but barely any story, weird pacing, and at least one annoying AF level. I finished Prototype last week and the same applies, except Strike Teams. Fuck Strike Teams.
I miss when ganes used to experiment with physics and world interaction
This week Chase(@CrucialChase) and Scar(@Scarfinger) from Scarcasm Live(@GeeksGoneRaw) joins Mike (@AssaultSuit), Tiny (@Tiny415) and Aaron (@Ind1fference) to talk about: Scarcasm Live, Chrome, The Crow, The Room, Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, Rollerball, The Boondock Saints, The Big Lebowski, Door Dash, Monster Mania, Kane Hodder, Friday the 13th the Game, Robert Patrick, The X-files, Dicknado, Sharknado, The First, Sean Penn, Black Mirror, West Side Story, Tales from the Hood 2, The Good Place, The Dragon Prince, Shaq-Fu, Vall Halla, Persona 4, Borderlands, OverWatch, Tales of Berseria, Killing Floor 2, Rimworld, Prison Architect, Rock Band 4, Two Point Hospital, Saints Row, Crackdown, Timeshift, Metroid Samus Returns, House Party 2, Life is Strange 2, Valkyria Chronicles 4, The Outfit, Brute Force, Red Dead Redemption 2, Marvel's Spider-man, Grand Theft Auto V, Perfect Dark Zero audiobook, Marble It Up!, Pig Eat Ball, Log Jammers, The Garden Between, Creed, Racket Fury Table Tennis VR, SINNER: Sacrifice for Redemption, SoulBlight, Electronauts, Dimension Drifter, Fortnite, Beat Saber, Astro Bots, The Talisman Principal, Fiery Snickers, Pepsi Jazz, Sprite Remix, Randy Pitchford, Project Stream and more.
Carlos writes "It’s been a great month so far for the backwards compatibility scheme on Xbox One, but this week may just be the busiest week of all since its introduction. 10 more Xbox 360 titles have made the generational jump and are now playable on Xbox One, so let’s take a look and see if they are worth returning to once more."
And its part of EA Access, hoping they put 2 and 3 in the Vault so I can replay those aswell, never beat 3 Co-Op
xbox is killing it with backwards compatibility. but they'll STILL find a way to downvote any xbox-positive comment into oblivion. N4G is completely infested with Sony fanboys lol smh
While I agree with your comment about BC being a great thing, I downvoted you because of your fanboy comments about Sony. I own both the XB1 and PS4 and enjoy both of them, and really appreciate that MS has worked so hard to bring 360 games to the XB1.
@ superchiller: my comment was about N4G not about Sony. so i'm going to give your reading comprehension a downvote.
Nice job turning an Xbox positive article into a whine about fanboys. You are as bad as the people you whine about, dude.
@ Razzer: i'll just say something like "phil spencer is doing a great job" & it'll have 50 downvotes for no reason... if somebody says "Phil Spencer, more like FAIL Spencer... amirite?" it will have 50+ upvotes & top comment. if you're pro-xbox, commenting on N4G gets annoying after awhile. you already know what people's opinion is going to be. PS4 = good. / XB1 = bad. no matter what good xbox does, its never good enough for them. it got so bad to the point where i had to address it. so i did.
same, that and resonance of fate, magna carta 2, eternal sonata, fable 1, maybe even star ocean 4.
Did you review the demo or the full game ? ... because the way you have written the review it sounds like you have just played the demo.
I didn't think the graphics were quite as bad as you said, but can't disagree with the overall score.
I played the game through once and have not been interested in playing it through again.
I also tried the online multiplayer out, and with all the time-grenades it was just crazy. Mind you, this was when the game first came out, I can't imagine it being that easy to find an online game now that it is 6 months after release