TimeShift Review

By Tom Bramwell Published 2 November, 2007

Clocking in.

Version tested: Xbox 360

Relax! Do not adjust your internets! This is indeed a first-person shooter about manipulating the flow of time. But this one can do more than just slow it down! It can pause it and rewind it too! It might not sound like much, but this sort of evolutionary step gave us F.E.A.R., which took an old idea and made it all atmospheric and exciting again. Can TimeShift do the same?

It's certainly had long enough. Thrown back into development for an additional year, it now sees you, a scientist with a fancy time suit, jumping into an alternative timeline in search of another scientist with a fancy time suit, who has rebuilt the world in his image. Quickly dragooned into the local resistance, you set off in search of him, utilising your fancy suit's fancy abilities to press your new friends' case in violent fashion, solving the odd puzzle along the way.

Not that they need much solving, which is a shame. With your suit's built-in AI advising you of environmental obstacles (fire! electricity! etc!), and pre-selecting the appropriate time-shifting ability for a simple left-bumper tap, you won't have much trouble working out what to do. If there's a door that closes quickly in the vicinity of a switch that opens it, you can probably figure out the rest. If not, I doubt your computer made it out of the box and you're not even reading this. It gets a bit more complicated, but never enough to hold you up for longer than a few seconds.

'TimeShift' Screenshot 1

Saber's engine is pretty impressive, and handles the action well.

Combat's more interesting. Slowing people down lets you smash them to bits with shotguns, assault rifles and sticky grenades, and you'll need to be on your toes in case one of those sails your way, because a quick rewind will detach it and save a chunk of your health bar. Although the game selects the most appropriate time tweak when you press LB, holding it and pressing a face button lets you pick and choose, so you'll need to get good at doing this on the fly. When you do, you'll be able to take advantage of the self-charging time-bar to pause enemies in a bottleneck and hurl a grenade into their midst.

Enemy AI isn't as advanced as F.E.A.R's though, and your radar shows you where everyone is anyway. And while the initial guns run out of ammo quite quickly, forcing you to sit back, pause time and dash in and out again, things get a lot easier when you can add things like the sniper rifle and particularly the crossbow to your three-weapon arsenal. The latter works like Gears of War's - fire a bolt, wait a second and watch your target explode - although the gibs aren't as delightfully silly as they are in Epic's alternative.

Which leaves, er, not a lot, actually. Unless you want to dwell on the bad. There's nothing wrong with simple puzzles, for instance, but they should always be satisfying. There aren't many in TimeShift that are. Slowing time to ride a spinning zeppelin blade is quite neat, but the abundance of see-saws (hop on, pause/slow, run, jump) and simple switch puzzles relegates them to a footnote. The lack of invention would be jarring anyway, but a month after Portal it just leaves you cold.

In combat, too, enemies are a bit too thick and generic to be troubling or interesting. Better ones, who dash around with their own primitive time-shifting gizmos, are more of a challenge, but once you pin them down and lash an explosive cross-bolt to their heads you're laughing. Albeit only on the first few occasions. And while we can understand enemies paused in time failing to react to being hit, surely the real-time one we've just shot in the chest with a shotgun ought to tweak a bit prior to the killing blow?

Environments and narrative development are a bit pedestrian too. The bleak dystopian opening is evocative of Terminator's future bits mixed with Half-Life 2's Breen voice-over opening, but quickly descends into a fairly simple set of running battles and siege elements, after which everyone says how amazed they are that you survived. You're amazing! You don't feel it. One good set-piece has you zipping through a building under heavy fire from the biggest ED 209 rip-off in history, but like the spinning blade it's the exception rather than the rule. Most of it lacks verve, and falls into bad old habits: snowy bit, sewer bit, turret bit, train ride. There's a certain satisfaction to riding a zeppelin doing a bit of Han Solo turret-gunning (don't get cocky) and using slow-mo to neuter the jet-planes, but that's more a case of laughing at a typical FPS scenario you've always groaned at because now you have the upper hand.

'TimeShift' Screenshot 3

The crossbow's great against everyone, but then it was in Gears too. Hrm.

Played online, you get to deploy special time grenades, which slow down objects caught in their blast radius, and this has potential, which couples well to the overpowered weapons and makes things approachable for anyone who's spent a couple of hours tooling around the single-player. But it's by no means essential, and whether you're playing on PC or Xbox 360 (PS3 comes later), there are better ways to kill people already.

The latter point is TimeShift's problem all over. We've already had one good, and far more energetic time-fiddling shoot-'em-up recently with Stranglehold, but even if you didn't like that you can still reach for The Orange Box or Halo 3, both of which do offline and online FPS action with much more intelligence and imagination. It's not that TimeShift's a bad game; it's just a bit flat and uninspired, and doesn't add anything to the genre, or even the sub-genre, apart from a neat little phrase to use when you're referring to "time-shifting" abilities.

Graphics whores will like it - it's a solid 30 frames per second despite the occasional explosive indulgence, delivering tons of detail and some natty lighting effects - but, again, there isn't anything new here, and there needed to be if TimeShift was going to leave any sort of mark. As it is, the things it does are rife with potential it doesn't really exploit, and the result is adequate but nothing more - worth picking up in the January sales when you've overdosed on the competition, perhaps, but otherwise unremarkable. So, to return to the original point: no.

6 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
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 (46) Latest comment 4 years ago

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

  • TheDudesRug #1 4 years ago

    If this is the same game I played a demo for, which I think it is, a six is unnecessarily heaping praise on it.

  • mkreku #2 4 years ago

    So there's really nothing wrong with this game.. it just deserves a six?

  • the_dudefather #3 4 years ago

    when someone says halo is a generic shooting game, point them towards a REALLY generic shooting game

  • jack_klugman #4 4 years ago

    If the art style was less bland I'd certainly want to care more.

  • spidermanalf #5 4 years ago

    Bugger was looking forward to this as well!

  • MoFo #6 4 years ago

    Halo is a generic shooting game.

  • Pulsar_t #7 4 years ago

    Can't have enough of those endlessly samey FPS's!

  • Der_tolle_Emil #8 4 years ago

    Wasn't a huge fan of the demo - and with so many good games out I'm fine not getting this one anyway.

  • DUFFMAN5 #9 4 years ago

    Gamer tv (on Bravo) said as much last week end. Can we please have some more THIRD person games. Fed up aiming a gun at the screen. Playing Halo 3 at the moment so no need for any more. For what's it's worth I think Gears is a lot better than Halo 3, their I said it.

  • Darren #10 4 years ago

    Demo was shite and the game got a 5/10 from gamesTM as well so definitely not interested in buying this game anymore than I was Jericho. With so many other better games imminent across three platforms, including Super Mario Galaxy, Assassin's Creed, Ace Combat 6, Mass Effect and Ratchet and Clank Future, there's no space in my collection for average games like this anyway.
    Edited by 1 at 02/11/07 @ 09:13

  • bonker #11 4 years ago

    Shooters ...

    zZzZzZzZzZ

  • Scimarad #12 4 years ago

    Really enjoyed the demo so I might have to pick this up at some point despite the review...especially considering how low EG scored Resistance...
    Edited by 1 at 02/11/07 @ 09:13

  • Steroyd #13 4 years ago

    I tend to like 6/7 rated FPS from EG.

    Haven't liked a game EG's rated a 10 oddly, still looking forward to Orange box though. :/

    Well at least there's a demo of Timeshift.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #14 4 years ago

    Halo is a generic shooting game.

    No, Halo is a branded shooting game :)



    Edit: stupid HTML tags
    Edited by 1 at 02/11/07 @ 09:14

  • Darren #15 4 years ago

    Apparently this game has a V-sync on/off option, like BioShock and the patched Saints Row, and doesn't tear *much* with v-sync enabled! Erm... doesn't anyone else think that sounds soooooooo wrong? ;) LOL

  • Les #16 4 years ago

    "So there's really nothing wrong with this game.. it just deserves a six?"

    That's what you get if you're a new IP. Only games with big marketing budgets can get away with doing nothing revolutionary.

    Review scores are useless as they are the opinion of a single, prejudiced person. Sites like metacritics will create some objectivity by cancelling out the subjectivity but this doesn't work well with the big budget games because with those you often see reviewer groupthink. Just read the text and form your own opinion.

  • BBIAJ #17 4 years ago

    Darren, the tearing with it on is minimal, and you have to go out of your way to make it happen.

    Like I said over on OXM, you of all people should appreciate the option being there from the beginning, as opposed to via a patch some 6 months later.

    You're not getting the game anyway, so why cry about it?

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #18 4 years ago

    Some v-sync tearing is down to people's TVs.

    Alternatively, Xbox 360 also has a variable vsync setting that means it won't bother stopping the tearing if the game is running too slowly and needs to catch up with itself.

    But from the sound of things vsync is the least of this game's problems when being compared against this year's FPS heavyweights.

  • Les #19 4 years ago

    "Halo is a generic shooting game.

    No, Halo is a branded shooting game :)"

    No, Halo is a branded generic shooting game :p

  • Madder-Max #20 4 years ago

    Damn! So its as generic as halo 3 then?

  • symbiote #21 4 years ago

    "It's not that TimeShift's a bad game"

    So, as a shooter-fan and in the tradition of the usual journo-fps-bashing, I can add a couple of points to the score and have a jolly good time with it?

    Thought so.

  • lambtron #22 4 years ago

    Not if the demo was anything to go by.

  • symbiote #23 4 years ago

    ""Halo is a generic shooting game.

    No, Halo is a branded shooting game :)"

    No, Halo is a branded generic shooting game :p"

    No, FPS bashing is generic.

    Fixed.

  • rudedudejude #24 4 years ago

    haha, I saw v-sync tearing on the in game fotage shown on the TV advert, I laughed

  • Additive #25 4 years ago

    Been playing it the last couple of days and it's enjoyable. I'd give it a 7.

  • crazyhorse174 #26 4 years ago

    Gamer tv (on Bravo) said as much last week end. Can we please have some more THIRD person games. Fed up aiming a gun at the screen. Playing Halo 3 at the moment so no need for any more. For what's it's worth I think Gears is a lot better than Halo 3, their I said it.

    Gears is baws...there, I've said it.

    Booted it up yesterday after having not played it in ages and it was off within about 10 minutes. Most overrated piece of crap I've ever played.

    As for TS...had a feeling it'd only get an average score.

  • reality_cheque #27 4 years ago

    I'll probably pick this up on the cheap next year when I run out of games to play :)

  • Les #28 4 years ago

    "No, FPS bashing is generic.

    Fixed."

    Who's bashing FPSs?

  • Scimarad #29 4 years ago

    I've just found something that REALLY irritated me on the demo. There's a guy who is just about to shoot a prisoner in the back of the head and you absolutely cannot kill him UNTIL he executes the prisoner. I was standing there shooting him in the head (visibly causing him damage!) but he was absolutely immune until he had shot the guy.

    Why the hell put in a scripted moment like that in a game with the ability to manipulate time and not let you do anything?

  • sailesh #30 4 years ago

    damn, those ads on EG for it made me care a bit. oh well..

  • Apologie #31 4 years ago

    Well... just anothet ordinary shooter for the X360

  • UncleLou #32 4 years ago

    @scimarad:

    PC or 360? You can definitely kill him before he shoots the hostage in the PC demo.

  • Rirekon #33 4 years ago

    Quite enjoyed the demo, though I have got to say that once I found the exploding crossbow I didn't use anything else, it's beyond overpowered really.
    On that note, no more exploding crossbows please, they are stupidly powerful weapons.

  • Scimarad #34 4 years ago

    @ UncleLou

    The 360...I stood there shooting him in the head in time stop mode and he definitely wouldn't die;-) I played the demo first on the PS3 but I don't remember what happened as I hurled a grenade into the room!

  • Sir_TimAlot #35 4 years ago

    +1 @ Symbiote (all posts)

    I love FPS so I always add 2-3 points onto scores given. I've got it and I'm really enjoying it, should keep me busy for one more week until COD4 owns my soul (COD4 kicks the shit out of Halo3 online IMO)

  • Bonzrat #36 4 years ago

    I had a whale of a time with Timeshift. It's massively stupid and entirely traditional, but, after the nasty opening level (making that the demo was rampant idiocy), has a great flow to it that makes for sustained fun.

  • urban #37 4 years ago

    6? this deserved a 4. purely to stop the developers from crying because they spent years on the ugly thing

  • crozon #38 4 years ago

    i got the PC version and i like it. it looks good, not crysis good but good. heard the pc version looks a lot better than the 360.
    The combat is fun, playing it on the hardest difficulty and its a challenge. the time shifting abilities are great during combat.

  • GitSomE_UK #39 4 years ago

    Played Demo... was cack

  • Feanor #40 4 years ago

    "So there's really nothing wrong with this game.. it just deserves a six?"

    That's what you get if you're a new IP.


    TimeShift being a new IP has nothing to do with it getting 6/10 from EG. Review scores are far from useless, they tell you how much fun the reviewer had with the game. In this case, Tom had a lot less fun than he did playing a dozen similar, better FPS games.

  • YourMessageHere #41 4 years ago

    Once again, EG gets a PC and 360 release to review and chooses to review the 360 version. Good thing the demo finished off any remaining optimism I had for it - very very samey, fiddly and me-too in feel, and the time powers and weapons sucked.

  • captainrentboy #42 4 years ago

    Apologie, it's coming out for the PS3 too y'know?.... Just in a few weeks or so, as is the norm nowadays.
    I haven't played the full game yet, but I actually really liked the demo, mainly for the slow-mo bloody explosions, I'll get it when it drops by a tenner or so.

  • George-Roper #43 4 years ago

    @Apologie

    "Well... just anothet ordinary shooter for the X360"

    As opposed to the huge selection of worthwhile games on the PS3, regardless of genre, I take it?

    I mean, I could equally say "Well....just another ordinary shooter for the PS3" except it would need to have more than a couple in the first fucking place.

    Tit.

  • smurphs #44 4 years ago

    ..Ed209....Ahh...

    About time for a new Robocop game I think.

  • BBIAJ #45 4 years ago

    Greg "Matt Parkman" Grunberg from Heroes does a voice in this, but he's not credited on IMDb for some reason...

  • Madder-Max #46 4 years ago

    Whoever reviewed this did not play it or was paid to dis it. Timeshift is a very good game. Dont listen to him up there.