Timeshift Review

Timeshift for me had little in the way of story. There were only a few poorly fleshed out characters, I only know the name of the bad guy, which is a bad sign if you don't know many names by the end of the story. The hero has amnesia and some of the story comes back to him in flashbacks, but they are disjointed and cryptic. Which is how I felt about the whole story. I don't really know for sure If I know what was going on at all.

I can make a guess. A research company makes a device for time travel which is in the form of a suit. There are two suits an alpha and a beta. One of the scientists seems to have been a bit of a Bond villain in his spare time and decides to pinch the suit and go take over the world. I presume he does this by going back far enough in time and using his advanced technology and knowledge to gain power and influence. The fly in the ointment is that another scientist jumps into the second suit to avoid being blown up by the bad guy and ends up jumping randomly through time with a messed up suit.

The game starts with a dystopian setting where Krone (the bad guy) is ruler of the world and a nasty dictator to boot. There is an active resistance trying to overthrow him. Into this our scientist finds himself thrust. What does he do? Well, he runs around helping the resistance for a while with his time power suit and eventually this leads us into conflict and showdown with Krone.

The problem is that you don't ever see the human face behind the suit. This may be a nod to Halo, however I don't think this game was ever going to achieve that level of fame and no one is ever going to be clamoring for a glimpse at the timeshift guys face. So we have nothing to connect ourselves with the hero. There are some generic resistance fighters that we meet who add nothing. There is the heroes girlfriend that we meet in flashback and see die, hint to developers we need to know a person before their death has any impact, without any emotional contact her death is just another cut scene.

The story premise is there, and it's actually not that bad, so how about the meat, how does everything move from intro to endgame. Well, we go through city level, then forest level, then industrial level then meet the final boss. Oh what? You actually wanted a coherent stream of natural events? Oops. I suppose I am being slightly unfair, it is a game and not a movie, and all the story does is serve as a backdrop for the levels in most games, however if you want your game to feel like a cinematic experience you have to have strong reasons for going to point A and doing this, then going to point B and so on. Krone is on his big spider boss thing the whole game it seems, it just takes endless running around in the wilderness for our hero to realize this it seems. Not a good progression really is it? There are reasons for going from A to B Its just that they aren't really clear in the context of the muddy flow of the story.

The game is a straightforward FPS, its main hook and I suppose innovation is the time control elements. The ability to stop time for a few seconds, slow it for slightly longer and to reverse it, are used reasonably well. At some points a lack of enemies heralds a puzzle where you have to work out how to get from A to B by using switches and elevators, only you find that you can't do it unless to stop or reverse time in the middle of running and jumping around. These puzzles are interesting, they are few and far between and all of the same variety. This means that even if you can't work it out at first you instantly know that it is something to do with time that will solve it, this hook to the puzzles ensures that they are all solved quickly.

There are some sections on a vehicle which is suspiciously like the quad bike from Halo. These sections are reasonable. Though they do seem tacked on so that they could use them in screenshots and add a bullet point onto the list of features.

You occasionally meet other timeshifting enemies and they become much harder by virtue of being immune to your time ability.  The usual enemies are swiftly despatched by slowing them down which does seem a touch unfair. There are some walker type enemies, though they are few and far between. The weapons are fairly standard, with the gears of war style torque bow type thing standing out as particularly useful. Your health is the suits health which recharges in a few seconds if you stop taking damage. The time abilities are also limited and recharge slowly otherwise the game would become far too easy.

One thing that this game has that I heartily recommend is that while it has the usual checkpoint system, you are also able to save the game at any time. All games should do this in my opinion, it makes replay frustration a thing of the past, I hate being stuck in a particular section and every time I die having to replay for several minutes before I get to the area I died in. It might make games shorter and easier, but I feel developers will just have to live with that.

The levels are good looking, with the forest level standing out to me as particularly pretty. The graphics have that chunky feel of early xbox 360 games like Quake 4 and Perfect Dark Zero. Notable is the destructible environment idea that was demonstrated in the Gears of war tech demo from GDC 08 actually implemented in this game, walls suffer damage and crumble leaving their iron rod reinforcing behind so that the walls look like they are destroyed but player freedom is still curtailed. It doesn't really add much to this game. In a game with a cover system it would have stood out more. Still it's there after all.

There is nothing good to say about enemy a.i. Nor is there anything bad to say about it either, its pretty dumb but average. For short periods you interact with friendly characters and these don't actually get in your way which is a bonus.

The final boss deserves a mention here for a big build up and very poor pay off. I thought I was going to be in for a scene similar to Halo's scarab assault scenes. What I got was shooting some lights off the top of the boss and it crumbling to the ground.

The sound is adequate, effects are good and music is of the dance/forgettable type.

I never got around to playing the multiplayer on this. I was to busy with Call of duty 4's multiplayer to give this a spin. It may be brilliant, I will probably never know.

Menus are there, obviously and are uninspiring, there is some concept are galleries that looked incredibly dull.

The achievements are fairly well balanced and there is nothing particularly clever or bad about them I played on the hard level and got xxx points from the game. Most points for completing levels and the game.

When I look back at this I feel like I am being harsh I don't mean to be. I enjoyed this game a lot, it was a lot of fun. It was decidely average though. Coming out in a lean period this game might have garnered more attention. Coming out when it did among the christmas rush to market it never stood a chance. If there was a Timeshift 2 I would be interested. Somehow I don't think there will be.

Microsoft possibly releasing a Wiimote?

I read the news of this rumour and cringed a little. My first instinct is that this will be another Xbox live vision cam.

I bought the vision cam and used the video chat to a friend once. Played some uno and saw an interesting cross-section of the dregs of humanity. However Uno wasn't good enough to keep my attention, and none of the other Xbox live arcade games have seemed interesting enough to buy. I am not a fan of poker or chess. The totem ball game I could never get working, maybe it's my lighting or my wallpaper but I could never get the darn thing to work. It's just possible that the camera is rubbish as the thing is cheaper even than Sony's original eye toy.

That was it for the vision cam though, the only use it has got in the last year is to put my face onto my Rainbow Six Vegas character, something that is desperately needed for all third person games and something that I hope Sony implement for Home. I don't want to spend hours making my avatar roughly look like me when i can take two quick pics and have my likeness added perfectly.

So looking at Microsofts track record here the attitude seems to be "we need an eye toy on the market, see to it". Once the product is out and launched they have simply abandoned it to third party developers to produce any games or uses for it. Will they do the same with the Xmote?

It would tick the box so that Microsoft can position the Xbox 360 as a direct competitor to the Wii. That is all Microsoft want to do in my opinion. The Wii buyer will see the Xbox 360 arcade console in the shop with its wii mote, sorry Xmote, and most probably a bundled sport game. Rare sports anyone, Viva pinata vs Banjo Kazooie characters in sports fun with cameos from Master Chief and Marcus Phoenix. The casual buyer will see the Wii with Wii sports and the Xbox 360 with Rare sports and the only deciding factor will be the price. If on closer inspection the more savvy customer sees that the Xbox 360 can play movies from portable hard drives unplugged straight from their PC or from DVD, can play their music CD's and has HD graphics etc then the contest is really over before it begins. In all honesty the Wii is no competition as a console with the Xbox 360.The only advantage is its web browser.

So from a business point of view this is a good thing. That is really all Microsoft want, money. That isn't a bad thing; a company that doesn't want your money is a bad thing too, Microsoft need to look like they want you to have a great time whilst also wanting your money, which is what it's all about. E.A need to take a long hard look at that. Buying guns in Battlefield and the European prices for Rock band are a poor joke. Rock band is a disgrace. The US price is 130 dollars, that should convert to 85 pounds, Factoring in VAT you get 100 pounds, they want to sell it at 180 pounds, an interesting diversion suggests that if you were to do this the other way around and charge the uk price converted into dollars in the US for a product like they do in Europe your Rock band kit would cost you 354 dollars. I wonder how well that would fly?

I personally own a Wii, well technically it was a Christmas present for my son. He plays all sorts of games on it, from Mario Galaxy to absolute shockers like eledees. He seems to like the Wii, but also plays Viva Pinata on Xbox 360 and Ratchet and Clank on the PS3. Super Smash Bros seems to attract his attention despite not being out for a few months here in the UK. Wiimote controls on the wii are ok, but personally I hate having to waggle furiously at certain points in games, don't get me wrong I hate it in games like God of War too, when you have to bash buttons to open doors, kill bosses etc. My point is that the basic premise of the Wiimote is good when used as a pointing device / light gun for shooters but beyond that it's really an annoyance to me.

So if this is more than some idle rumour then how can Microsoft do this right? Well in my opinion the possibilities that this opens up are many.

1) The most obvious is the copycatting of successful Wii games that use the Wiimote well, such as aforementioned wii sports. On that point that is all I want to see. One or two titles that make heavy use of the Xmote for authenticity in sport simulation, golf being the most obvious candidate.

2) Use it as a mouse substitute; I have bemoaned the lack of mouse in a prior post on my blog. I still want to see mouse support on the Xbox 360, but using an Xmote on the dashboard and a new shiny Windows mobile type internet explorer web browser would be something special to announce at E3, make it so Microsoft.

3) With the possibility of pointer control real time strategy games come back into play on the Xbox 360. Patches for Middle Earth and Command and Conquer, and support for Supreme commander and Halo wars when they arrive will see me first in line for an Xmote.

What I don't want is to be frantically shaking the damn thing in every game out there, I want the option Microsoft. If I want to have motion control in FPS's games, then let me choose the option, if I want to carry on and not buy the Xmote then I shouldn't be penalised or feel I am missing out on features.

That's it then, If I was Bill Gates, or whoever is in charge of the final decision. I would announce within a month of release window and once the thing has been tested to death to prevent any RROD embarrassment. That the new Xmote is coming out with improved tracking over the wiimote, a better product entirely with charge and play kit included. Also an Xmote bundle coming with either Rare sports/Banjo Kazooie or a different bundle with Halo wars. The follow up announcement from the same stage would be that the Xbox 360 is getting internet explorer and it is compatible with the Xmote.

Surely that's not asking too much?