Also available on PlayStation 2 and Gamecube TimeSplitters is the spiritual successor to the Rare-developed N64 FPS legends, Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark. Rare didn't make TimeSplitters, but a lot of the talent on the teams that made Goldeneye and Perfect Dark had gone to Free Radical and worked on TimeSplitters. I haven't played the first TimeSplitters, so I can't speak to how that one compares, but TimeSplitters 2 is very much Perfect Dark brought into the 21st Century. Forget Perfect Dark Zero (although I love that game), this is the true successor to the Perfect Dark legacy. These screenshots were capture via the Xbox Series X's backwards compatibility. The premise of TimeSplitters is that an alien race - the TimeSplitters - is hellbent on destroying the human race by going back in time and destroying us before we can resist, but a small group of 25th Century humans is holding out against the aliens, trying to gather the time crystals and thwart their dastardly plans. Honestly, TimeSplitters 2 doesn't really give you a whole lot of story. Each of the game's ten levels has you playing as a different character in a different period of time from the 19th Century's American Wild West to the 25th Century with contextual objectives to accomplish in addition to the "retrieve the time crystal" and "escape through the time portal" objectives that are in every level. This is a truly great game, but the story isn't really here. So what makes it so good? The gameplay. The gameplay is phenomenal. It takes everything that made Goldeneye and Perfect Dark amazing and brought it into the 21st Century with better 3D visuals and dual analog controls. With that said, the controls aren't the best. Rather than holding the left trigger to aim - that's a convention that wouldn't become standard for a few years yet - you press a button to toggle an aim. It's also not aiming down the sights; it just puts a better crosshair on screen and a very slight zoom. The real problem with the aiming button is that the aim always returns to the center of the screen, but the right stick changes to control the crosshair, not the camera. So you're not moving the camera to put the crosshair over an enemy; you're controlling the crosshair on a static camera to put it over an enemy, and you have to hold the crosshair there actively while you shoot. In the end, I never used the aiming; I just relied on the Goldeneye-esque aim assist and hip fired the whole game. It worked great and was way less frustrating than "manual" aim. I haven't gotten to try this out yet because I don't have friends, but there's also a multiplayer mode in TimeSplitters 2. From what I've seen and can tell from fiddling on my own, it's basically the Goldeneye multiplayer but better looking and controlling. I mean, what else do you need? Goldeneye multiplayer is a fond memory of anyone who grew up with a Nintendo 64. TimeSplitters 2 may not be everyone a modern gamer wants from a shooter - it's 20 years old, after all - but for those of us who remember Goldeneye and Perfect Dark with nostalgia and just want something slightly more modernized and playable on a modern console (the Xbox version is playable on Series X), this is a pretty dang good solution. My Rating - A |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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