Rewind. "Who the f*** wants a puzzle?" It'll be a while before I forget my first experience of TimeShift two years ago, and the bravado of the developer presenting it.
He clearly believed he was putting on a good show, selling his sci-fi FPS purely on how its time-control gimmick facilitated pretend-man-killing. Puzzles? For losers. After the event, games journalists exchanged uh-ohs about the gaudy, braindead and characterless game.
Fast forward. What a difference a redesign and a new publisher makes. Finished at last, sporting a more grounded and consistent look, TimeShift is still stupid, but it's a focused stupidity. Puzzles? Apparently we the f*** did want puzzles, so they're here, but most can be solved in under 30 seconds and with a single button-press.
Yes, it's a long way from Half-Life, but clearly Valve aren't the only devs to understand the importance of constant forward motion. For a game involving time control, there isn't much stopping in TimeShift - it's a breathless sprint.
Waitasec. Time control? Sort of. The time travel element is no more than a plot hook to dump you in 1939, thanks to a baddie from today fleeing into the past. The in-game clock-interference is best thought of as tweaked bullet-time rather than actual chrononautery. There's none of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time's rewinding from death, for instance. In fact, there's little thought involved at all.
The techno-suit you wear makes three forms of timeshifting possible (pause, slow, rewind), and you're (almost) free to use any of them, but you won't. Press F and TimeShift will pick pause or slow if you're in combat, or whichever of the three is needed to solve the nearest puzzle. Enemies slowed? Calmly head-shot 'em all. Enemies paused? Lob a grenade into their midst, or nick their guns. Either way, you'll feel in control and oh-so-cool.
Playing this way - and you will - creates a certain guilt that you're sidestepping some of the game's tactical thinking and complexity, but that's not the case.
Partly because claiming there's tactical thinking and complexity in TimeShift is like saying you buy Barely Legal for the articles; partly because there's enough variety of enemies and locales to stave off ennui; and partly because reaching for a single button, rather than dithering about which of three to press, keeps the game fast and exciting - and keeps you feeling like a superhero. Because that's what TimeShift's about.
It's a big dumb shooter in a way many of its peers fail to be, because it totally understands the importance of pacing. The two comparisons that spring to mind are SiN: Emergence - which tried a similar meatheadedness but tripped itself up with lousy cutscenes, wild difficulty spikes and no variety - and Half-Life 2.
The influence of its setting is hilariously obvious: TimeShift's action occurs in a steroidal version of the Combine-ravaged Earth, though with an all-human cast and more visual variety.
HL2's storytelling also informs TimeShift. There are just 18 cutscenes, most of which are under ten seconds long. The narrative is advanced primarily in NPC radio chatter, but amounts to no more than 'keep moving and killing'. For once, here's a game that knows that's all people want; there's none of that misguided faith in a hackneyed tale that plagues most action games.
Even the protagonist has no name, voice or face, keeping the star of the game as little more than an arm to hold the gun so as to keep up your own sense of involvement.
Unfortunately, this also means you're not sure what's going on beyond the box blurb. Why has this Doctor Krone (ouch) gone to the trouble of hiding in 1939? Apparently so the game can have a vaguely art deco/Soviet kitsch look.
What's his plan for the Earth? Apparently just to be mean to it. The reductionism of the tale means there's no humour, no characters to care about, no sense of purpose beyond 'kill!'. For once, that doesn't really matter.
Everything I hate about first-person shooters is in TimeShift: total linearity (though there are some open outdoor segments), non-functioning doors, excessive gore, evil scientist villains and a refusal to tango with most of my brain. But it knows it.
It's yesterday's testosterone nonsense clad in today's slickness, and savvy about the nature of fun.
I agree, but only to a certain extent. A lot of storyline can be missed or lost if you allow too much freedom. STALKER was great because you could go anywhere within that area, but you were pushed in the right directions by impassible radiation and road blocks. CoD4 is pretty linear, but the storyline doesn't really suffer for it - but it's military-based, so your objectives are clear. You can't just saunter off on your own on an army mission.
As long as you never forget the reason you're going somewhere or there's other missions around if you happens to stumble into something, freeform will work. But as long as where you're going feels natural, linear can work as well.
Yeah - I only agree to a certain extent. I think that a game should have decisions and consequences but if a game is completely open ended it tends to be aimless and boring(I'm looking at you Oblivion).
A game that has done this well recently is The Witcher. It's story driven but at the same time the game very much changes depending on the choices you make. Deus ex is another game that I felt did this well - ultimately linear, but certain playstyles effect the world.
YAY for more open-world games, a lot of people are starting to realise that linearity is dead. OK here comes contradictory statement number one. Will this mean the death of the linear shooter? NO. Will it mean that linear shooters will get a major boost of jaw-dropping development injection and worthwhileyness. OH YES!
Vive la difference!
And kudos to Timeshift for (apparently) getting lots of things right in a stale, overdone genre. I was more than willing to overlook this title, but (when I have the funds) I will certainly be giving this one a go.
I feel the urge to defend the linear game here. It allows the developer to tell a story with much more control. Personally I would much rather have a professional tel me a story than create my own half bottomd one. Games designs have been doing this for years a should know what makes a fun game, in most cases. When a game becomes non-linear we have to make our own fun out of it. Take a game like oblivion, huge open world with lots of potential; go shopping, picking wild flowers, become expert swordsman or archer, master magic, and so on. But did it make the game fun, not for me it didn't. The world felt bland, characters had zero personality and all said the same thing, the plot was boring carbon copy fantasy with no originality, the mechanics behind the combat was felt lackluster.
Deus Ex came close but again suffered from poor combat with weapons that were nearly unusable (recently bought this off steam, as I had only previously borrowed it from a friend, in the hope that my original thoughts on it were false, but it still feels wrong. I'm spending the whole time sticking with the pistol and sniper rifle, which is easier to use without the scope )
Unfortunatly, my support for linearity doesn't seem to apply to this game, as I see the main advantage of linear to be story telling. But still looks like it could be fun for a few hours of mindless blasting.
Well fair point on STALKER, it was one of the better games to emerge out of the last few years. But it wasn't really that non-linear. Sure it had huge areas to play about in but many of the side-quests it offered were very simple and repeated too often. Dialogue too was terriable, although most of them seemed to come up due to poor translation. KOTOR is a different kind of game entirely though and don't think that can be considered in this discussion. The gameplay revolved around exploration whilst combat was carried behind the scenes with a roll of the dice. The problem I have with many non-linear games is the loss of the basic gameplay elements that, I feel, Deus Ex, Oblivion, GTA, and, to some extent, Bioshock (although that had other more significant problems that you can read in numerous other Bioshock threads.)
Some other points you make that I can touch upon - length: Quality not quantity is always my judge on whether a game deserves my money. My £25 (where you buying PC games if your spending £35+ on them?) can go towards that 5 hour shooter if it is of a high quality. And that multiplayer that you dismiss out of hand as you don't play it is played by many other people and has a lot of time put into by the developer and they deserve the money for that effort.
A new DVD can be had for about £12, around about half the price for a game. Films are usually about 2 hours so you are getting less for your money from a film. Plus the fact that they aren't interactive I think warrents a lower price tag.
And lastly, what makes you think that just because I like a developer to take me on a journey through the world they have created makes me into a child. Is it only children that like other mediums where it is only possible to view a world though the creaters eyes?
... A new DVD can be had for about £12, around about half the price for a game. Films are usually about 2 hours so you are getting less for your money from a film. Plus the fact that they aren't interactive I think warrents a lower price tag.
Just wanted to add my perspective here (not a rant).
What if movies generally used to be 10 hours long?
What if only certain films today offered 10 hours of value for your £12?
Or put another way, would you spend £12 on a 15 minute movie?
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
)
