TimeShift Updated Impressions - Graphical Updates

At a recent Nvidia press event, we had a chance to take an updated look at TimeShift, the PC and Xbox shooter from publisher Atari and developer Saber Interactive. While the demonstration at the event showed more or less the same content we saw at this year's E3, we were able to take an updated look at some of the game's new graphical cards. Apparently, the game was being shown using Nvidia's new GeForce 7800 chipset, which will carry a clock speed of 430MHz with 1.2GHz 256MB DDR3 memory.

The powerful new chipset seems like it will easily handle the game's huge suite of shaders and light-mapping, which includes normal mapping, bump-mapping both for environmental areas and for "gibs" (the bloody remains of enemies you can annihilate with the game's futuristic arsenal of firearms), specular and diffuse mapping to indicate subtle lighting differences in indoor and outdoor environments, and reflective and refractive water. The game's graphics even model nuances like animated light-mapping for when characters pass under shadowy areas, as well as enhanced particle effects that model leaves that fall from trees. It also seems to make interesting use of lighting for its time-related effects. The game lets you manipulate the flow of time to pause it, slow it, or rewind it, and each time you do, your vision clouds behind a colored filter. Your entire worldview warps and distorts once you restore time to its normal flow. TimeShift continues to look good and appears to be a challenging shooter. It will test your skills with intelligent enemies that know how to make use of cover and will draw a bead on you once you trigger any nearby alarms. We'll have more updates on the game as we approach its release date for the PC and the Xbox later this year.