TimeShift and Tomb Raider
19/02/2008 12:26 AM by [THA] Hamst3r
Thoughts on TimeShift
Ah, TimeShift. TimeShift is a First Person Shooter that was originally announced in 2005. Since then the game has gone through many revisions. It was initially going to be published by Atari. The protagonist, Albert Swift was a retired colonel turned government guinea pig. During an attack on the government research facility, Colonel Swift was transported back in time where he would fight off swarms of steampunk knights, Cyber-Nazis and bionic samurai.
In April 2006, Atari dropped the game and Sierra picked up the rights to publish TimeShift. Albert Swift was renamed to Michael Swift and was now going to be transported into the past, only to return to the present where the world had taken a change for the worst. Swift was going to be voiced by Dennis Quaid but by the end of the year they had thrown away the story of Colonel Swift along with all of the pre-rendered cinematics and voice acting.
In 2007 the protagonist became a nameless physicist with a mysterious past (translation: We suck at writing stories…). The new protagonist would be fully adorned in Ultraman-esque body armor and the steampunk style of the game would be dropped for a more futuristic military look.
By simply looking at the development history of TimeShift you can tell that the end product is nothing short of a mess. The game is overall embarrassingly derivative of other FPS games too, most notably Half-Life 2.
Similarities between TimeShift and Half-Life 2:
1. Both of the lead characters are Theoretical Physicists.
2. Both characters wear high-tech protective suits that have female voices.
3. Neither protagonist speaks the entire game.
4. Both games deal with time travel and dimensional travel.
5. Both games have a one-hit-kill crossbow weapon that shoots orange projectiles.
6. Both games have a rocket launcher with a steerable rocket.
7. Both games take place in a dystopian society under the control of an oppressive force attempting to enslave everyone.
8. The main character’s job in both games is to help the rebel faction in bringing down the antagonist and all of his police-like militant forces.
9. In both games the main antagonist holds-up in a gigantic looming fortress.
10. The antagonist is often heard over loudspeakers and often seen on large JumboTron screens all over the city.
11. Both cities are rundown locales with a lot of Eastern European influence on the designs.
12. Both games employ the use of see-saw physics puzzles.
The list of parallels could go on, but I think you get the idea. It feels like after several years of trying to figure out what TimeShift should be, the developers threw their hands up and said, “This isn’t working, let’s just make Half-Life 2!”.
The game does have it’s merits though. The plasma rifle and pulse gun are both very cool weapons. The crossbow is also neat as it’s projectiles are explosive. Later on in the game you begin to battle enemies that have their own time-shifting abilities. Some are able to run extremely fast while others are able to teleport, appearing seemingly at random. Some of the visual effects in the game, such as the rain falling in slow motion and the blue electrical blast from the pulse gun are quite appealing. The difficulty of the game is pretty good too.
That’s where the merits end for me though. The rest of the game feels sloppy. The puzzles aren’t that great and I actually got bored of crawling through air vents. All-in-all, the game is OK. It’s not even close to the worst game I’ve played. I would even call it better than mediocre as I had fun and a lot of the game held my interest, but it certainly won’t be high up on my list of suggestions when people ask for game recommendations.
Oh and here’s a short Tomb Raider: Anniversary review:
It’s Tomb Raider. If you’ve played any Tomb Raider game, Anniversary is no different. In fact, it’s actually not as good as Tomb Raider: Legend and the first two Tomb Raider games. It sounded good on paper but turned out to be a pointless Tomb Raider release. It’s almost like if they were to re-release Street Fighter 2 with updated graphics and a few new characters that don’t feel like they fit in…oh wait, they are.
