TimeShift demo on Live

By Tom Bramwell Published 31 August, 2007

Time is on my site.

TimeShift is available for you to try out on Xbox Live thanks to a 582MB playable demo, which ought to give you a steer on whether the game's additional year of development was a good idea.

As you may know, TimeShift made it so close to the point of completion that only seven bugs remained, only for Sierra to offer the team another year to radically overhaul certain elements and make a better game.

This they reckon they have done, as we reported earlier this year.

Gone is the original aethetic, and reworked are the physics, FMV, bad guys, special effects, renderer and plenty more. They even scrapped the lead character, coming up with a new tale where Dr. Aiden Krone takes the original game's Alpha suit and hops through time with it, forcing you to chase him in the Beta suit.

Doing so - as the game name suggests - will involve toying with time as an adjunct to combat and puzzles, a bit like Blinx the Timesweeper but with a gun. We miss Blinx. Sniff. The full game is due out on PC and 360 on 30th October and in December on PS3.

Final point - the TimeShift demo is sadly not available in Germany. Sorry, Tanja!

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • bioreit #1 5 years ago

    Downloaded it last night, but then got too involved in Space Giraffe to give it a whirl.

    Will try it (and MOH:Airborne) tonight.

    Although kinda hoping I don't like it, as already ordered Call of Juarez based on the demo and I've got six pre-orders between now and Christmas!

  • repairmanjack #2 5 years ago

    Germany are getting off lightly. This is absolute crap.

  • Darren #3 5 years ago

    Still not very good is it? Maybe I've just been spoilt by BioShock but even with TimeShift's time manipulating powers, it still manages to feel linear and generic. It looks better than it did before but there's still an air of blandness to the visuals. I don't think I'll be buying this somehow unless the demo is totally unrepresentative of the actual game.

  • hamstand #4 5 years ago

    hmmmmmmmmmmm it's....... ok.

    fun for five minutes maybe? timeshifting powers are done really well, but everything else is pretty dull.

  • BadBoyBonner #5 5 years ago

    When something like this comes out it just makes me feel sorry for the team that made it.

    No doubt their hearts have been pounded by the total graphical overhaul which added months to the release (thanks Gears of War) - and on the merits of the demo, the game isn’t that great, even after all this time.

    At least they got to do something they loved doing for a few years.

  • hamstand #6 5 years ago

    Is it Unreal 3 engine? (i don't remember seeing the logo but it feels like it)
    Edited by 2 at 31/08/07 @ 10:34

  • THATinkjar #7 5 years ago

    I look forward to trying this.

    hamstand: It doesn't use the Unreal engine - I believe it is their own.

  • Xerx3s #8 5 years ago

    All in all a solid demo, can't see anything negative about it. I won't buy it though. Not at full price anyway. The 360 simply has too many AAA titles to invest in this. If it was released in the post Christmas drought I might have considered it.

  • YourMessageHere #9 5 years ago

    "the original aethetic"
    ...fail.

    Any sign of a PC demo? Of course not.

  • Smashy101 #10 5 years ago

    PC demo due in a week or so

  • BBIAJ #11 5 years ago

    Well I for one bummed it, and have had it on pre-order since the original demo, so ner to you Darren!

  • Kiigan #12 5 years ago

    It is as if TimeShift has "shifted" through time from roughly the year 1997. Looks awful, plays like shit, keeps dropping frames. Plus the awesome special time control powers don't even work consistently or as well as (for example) stuff like Prince of Persia Sands of Time or Blinx. There's a guy being executed - can I rewind time to save him? Not really, no - the event seems to be hard-coded so that no matter what I do the guy dies. Delete demo.

  • JunoBlaster #13 5 years ago

    I agree with most of the above comments. It is linear, the guy getting executed is gonna die no matter what, and it would've been amazing in 1997. I have to say though, I really liked it. The graphics are nice, the time-shifting WORKS when used sparingly and disregarding the auto selection of which time shift is used. It nearly reminded me of Call of Duty 2, just how the aiming, movement and jumping are all balanced - which is not a complaint. I'm still interested in this game. I just hope you can at least do as it shows in the video prior to the demo beginning and load a tank with a few grenades whilst time has been stopped. If they can match the pacing of that video in the game itself it will be fun. They've clearly attempted to do that in the demo with a lot of enemies to dispatch.

    But, I am bearing in mind that this IS a demo and maybe the full game will offer a lot more in terms of variety and set pieces. Give it a chance.. it isn't THAT bad, as repairmanjack may suggest.. We've been spoiled lately with BioShock, true, but that doesn't make every other game crap as a result. Just speaking my brain...

  • Razorus #14 5 years ago

    Will give it a go, but when last I checked, it seemed to suck.
    Played MoH: Airborne today, and was quite impressed. Timeshift has been too long in development and will be coming out at a very very bad time.
    Bioshock still reigns but the threat of the juggernaut that is Halo 3 looms ever closer...

  • Shrike #15 5 years ago

    Played it this morning: reminded me of FEAR with a few extra bells and an atmosphere ripped from Half Life 2 without any of Valve's solid direction. That Breen-esque speech in the background really began to grate after about two minutes.

  • Darren #16 5 years ago

    I think the time manipulation features make the game too easy. Why worry about enemies attacking you when you can just pause time and pick them off. It actually makes the battles less intense and less exciting I think. Sure you can just not use them but if you don't then the game just becomes another corridor-based shooter with little identity of its own. Even the visuals look like they've been borrowed from Gears of War. TimeShift is a soulless game.

  • RazorObsession #17 5 years ago

    played it last night, was fun, but i can see it gettin old pretty quickly.

    hopefully the time grenades in multiplayer will make a selling point.

  • convercide #18 5 years ago

    So I'm the one of the only people who really like this game so far? I thought the weapons were fun, the environments detailed and the time manipulation well implemented.

  • DFawkes #19 5 years ago

    I really liked the game too, Convercide.

    I was laughing like a demented clown the first time I froze time and stole a guys gun. First he was just surprised, then looks at you and begs you not to kill him. So of course, I froze time again, unloaded a full clip (his own guns) into him, and watched as he almost exploded when real time kicked in.
    Also, smashing through a window, jump in, then reversing time to fix it again wil keep people against blatant vandilism happy :)

    I hope they can keep the whole game feeling fresh. I loved the demo but if the full game doesn't have some new tricks up its sleeve, its going to be garbage.

  • captainrentboy #20 5 years ago

    I reeeally liked the demo, infact before I played it I wasn't remotely interested in Timeshift, but now it's a definite purchase.
    Bar the slight snag of not being able to stop the guy being executed, I thought the time powers themselves were great, nothing beats pausing time, shooting a guy in the nads with an exploding bolt, and happily watching him go boom when all is normal again. Good stuff.

  • wanksta10 #21 5 years ago

    i thought the graphics were bland and even though the time powers were interesting, the weapons on the other hand were not...they just had no ommph to them whatsoever, even that sniper gun which shoots out exploding arrows, the machine gun was weak and HOW MANY BULLETS DO THESE GUYS TAKE???? i unloaded a full clip into one guy with him dying right at the end of it.

    i was left underwhelmed and would never buy it at full price