I remember renting this at BlockBuster back when it was released. TimeShift didn’t receive the hottest reviews, but it looked good for the time. Fast forward all these years later and I didn’t remember a single thing about the game except the cool rain effects you only see at the beginning and end levels. The story is stupid and non-existent. I have no idea what’s going on. Sadly, this was an issue with many shooters during the HD era of gaming. They didn’t bring an identity like Doom, Quake, Half-Life, or other games before it. They were ugly, boring, and felt so generic. Nothing could capitalize on the success of Gears of War at the time. It was an unstoppable juggernaut and every studio wanted a piece of that gray shooter pie, but they ALL failed. That’s the sad thing. Gears of War still stands as the best shooter of that generation next to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter.
You play as some dude in a suit that can manipulate time. Wow sounds great right? It’s not. Instead of giving you enemies that require a certain strategy or an ability to defeat or even puzzles the game haphazardly throws boring, dumb, and generic soldiers at you and you only have to use the time abilities because you die in a few hits and there’s just way too many of them at once. You will die a lot in this game so quick saving is a must. Running through the open levels seems promising enough. The game shows some great visuals on a technical level anyways, some giant robot creatures, lots of allies running around, and a cityscape you must navigate through. This seems not too bad at first until you’re dumped into the next area. It’s just the same boring gray levels with boring generic warehouses throughout the entire game. Even the weapons and shooting can’t save this one.
While the weapons look and are designed in interesting ways they all feel the same. There’s no weight, no recoil, and the enemies don’t really react to hits either in a satisfying way. There are generic assault rifles, shotguns, pistols, and rocket launchers, but the more interesting weapons shoot plasma balls, explosives darts, a machine pistol with a flamethrower as a secondary fire, and a lightning type gun. These just don’t feel good to shoot and there was no reason to even use half of them. I went through most of the game with the assault rifle, shotgun, explosive dart gun, and plasma ball gun. That’s it. I didn’t need any of the others as the game gave me no reason to need them. The enemies barely vary with some with shields and a few with time warp abilities themselves but are easy if you use yours. You just mow through enemy wave after wave flipping switches and solve what barely qualifies as puzzles.
Some situations require you to use your time abilities to solve some puzzles, but these are little more than flip this switch and use the reverse time ability to ride the elevator. Hit this switch and jump on the train and reverse time back into the depot. Stop time to walk through the fan blades. Just stupid boring stuff like that. There are a couple of missions in which you are on a turret, and you can man a turret against waves every so often, but it’s just the typical run and hide behind containers to recharge your health and time bar and jump back out and kill more baddies. It doesn’t feel fun, it doesn’t look fun, and there’s not even a cool story to make it worth playing through. The game gives you a few pre-rendered cut-scenes with a few lines of dialog going on about a scientist and a dude you must stop and it’s so spread out and so razer thin that you won’t care.
Sadly, I even remember back in the day that multiplayer doesn’t even redeem this turd. Despite a few cool guns and graphical effects, this is nothing more than a game that will waste your time. It’s a product of a bygone era of developers trying to get a grasp on HD gaming and the gameplay feels like a shooter from 2000, not 2007. I only recommend anyone who is incredibly bored and wants to waste 6 hours of their time wondering what shooters in the mid-2000s were like.
You play as some dude in a suit that can manipulate time. Wow sounds great right? It’s not. Instead of giving you enemies that require a certain strategy or an ability to defeat or even puzzles the game haphazardly throws boring, dumb, and generic soldiers at you and you only have to use the time abilities because you die in a few hits and there’s just way too many of them at once. You will die a lot in this game so quick saving is a must. Running through the open levels seems promising enough. The game shows some great visuals on a technical level anyways, some giant robot creatures, lots of allies running around, and a cityscape you must navigate through. This seems not too bad at first until you’re dumped into the next area. It’s just the same boring gray levels with boring generic warehouses throughout the entire game. Even the weapons and shooting can’t save this one.
While the weapons look and are designed in interesting ways they all feel the same. There’s no weight, no recoil, and the enemies don’t really react to hits either in a satisfying way. There are generic assault rifles, shotguns, pistols, and rocket launchers, but the more interesting weapons shoot plasma balls, explosives darts, a machine pistol with a flamethrower as a secondary fire, and a lightning type gun. These just don’t feel good to shoot and there was no reason to even use half of them. I went through most of the game with the assault rifle, shotgun, explosive dart gun, and plasma ball gun. That’s it. I didn’t need any of the others as the game gave me no reason to need them. The enemies barely vary with some with shields and a few with time warp abilities themselves but are easy if you use yours. You just mow through enemy wave after wave flipping switches and solve what barely qualifies as puzzles.
Some situations require you to use your time abilities to solve some puzzles, but these are little more than flip this switch and use the reverse time ability to ride the elevator. Hit this switch and jump on the train and reverse time back into the depot. Stop time to walk through the fan blades. Just stupid boring stuff like that. There are a couple of missions in which you are on a turret, and you can man a turret against waves every so often, but it’s just the typical run and hide behind containers to recharge your health and time bar and jump back out and kill more baddies. It doesn’t feel fun, it doesn’t look fun, and there’s not even a cool story to make it worth playing through. The game gives you a few pre-rendered cut-scenes with a few lines of dialog going on about a scientist and a dude you must stop and it’s so spread out and so razer thin that you won’t care.
Sadly, I even remember back in the day that multiplayer doesn’t even redeem this turd. Despite a few cool guns and graphical effects, this is nothing more than a game that will waste your time. It’s a product of a bygone era of developers trying to get a grasp on HD gaming and the gameplay feels like a shooter from 2000, not 2007. I only recommend anyone who is incredibly bored and wants to waste 6 hours of their time wondering what shooters in the mid-2000s were like.