First Impressions: So the guy says to the girl, "Let's make like a banana, and split!"
The team partially behind the blockbuster Nintendo 64 title GoldenEye is back in the form of Free Radical Design, a development studio featuring ex-Rare employees. The original TimeSplitters turned heads due to an ingenious single-player experience coupled with a robust multiplayer mode, essentially the bread and butter of the first-person shooter. However, Eidos Interactive representatives widely acknowledged that the game was rushed for the PlayStation 2 launch, and was merely a testing ground for future products. Recently, we found out that meant TimeSplitters 2. This time around, Free Radical is delving into multi-platform development and perhaps this iteration will be given royal treatment because of the developer’s past.
It’s no secret that TimeSplitters 2 looks and to some extent plays like Rare’s excellent GoldenEye, but that’s not a bad thing. To jog your memory, part deux runs on an arcade-style engine, complete with excellent attention to detail and high framerates. The game’s storyline puts you in the eyes of two space marines in deadly pursuit of aliens on the run with their time-travel contraption, beginning in the year 2401. Ultimately, you’ll go from a Chicago-based 1930s to the American Old West, the Cold War, an up-to-date Siberian damn, and of course, the future. However, there’s a catch, as the protagonists inhabit the body of a being from each respective time period, and take up his or her weapons.
In the same bloodline as GoldenEye, missions are going to be objective-based and will offer up a slew of gameplay scenarios and a mandatory serving of adrenaline rush action and daily dose of laying the smackdown. Also, climatic boss battles will be a testament to the single-player focus in addition to an impressive lineup of weapons including, among others, the highly sought-after flame-thrower. In terms of multiplayer, the game adds the infamous MapMaker level editor, and it will allow you to customize your own game scenarios and arenas. Indeed, the level editor returns, and moreover, it will allow you to create single-player levels as well. For example, you will be able to put doors and corresponding keys in, add spawning areas, and most excitingly, non-playable characters and having them say lines. You’re also given stairways, and so far an eight-story level maximum. Lastly, get ready for a two-player cooperative mode. You'd better stack up on memory cards too.
Graphically speaking, the game is already running at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second and fits the bill of a next-gen shoot ‘em up. Suffice to say, the character models are funky looking and to top it off, in-game environments are interactive and ambient, complete with destructible windows, monitors, lights, and as everyone knows, melons. Otherwise, you can’t go wrong with an advanced particle system, animated cutscenes, heat shimmering effects, and of course, permanent bullet holes. Other cool effects include picture-in-picture windows to show the end product of your shenanigans and other buzzwords like inverse kinematics. Aurally, music and sound effects are allegedly courtesy of mastermind Graeme Norgate, of Blast Corps fame. All in all, the music will obviously conform to the levels and offer genuine diversity.
