An average FPS that gets a bit more interesting with the Timeshift abilities.
GAMEPLAY (8.5) - Your character has a special suit that not only can control time but can even travel through time. You are chasing an evil scientist that stole one of these suits and traveled through time to create an alternate reality where he is ruling. Your job is to help the rebels overthrow the tyrant, but the story really isn't too important. Obviously the selling point of this game is the Timeshift abilities. You can pause, slow or rewind time to help you in puzzles or in combat. Most of the puzzles will be quite obvious, for instance stopping time for a few seconds to get by a pipe the periodically shoots flames. However there were a handful of occasions that did take some thought in figuring out just how to use my abilities to get past certain obstacles. Combat is the main part of the game and the timeshifting is what raises this to another level. There will be many times when you will be extremely outnumbered and the timeshifting will be your salvation. For instance you can pause time, throw a grenade into one set of enemies, launch a rocket at another then shoot the rest to pieces. Naturally you only have a short amount of time in which to timeshift so you need to plan a bit before you use it up, though it does slowly replenish after use. It is a lot of fun to stop time, basically destroy a group of enemies, and then watch what happens when it returns to real time. You even have the ability to run up to an enemy and steal his weapon while time is paused if you wish, which results in some humorous reactions when he frantically tries to figure out what just happened to his gun! There is a decent selection of weapons, some of which are quite exotic and futuristic and all have secondary attacks as well. There will also be a few occasions in which you'll operate a vehicle or man a turret on an aircraft to give a change of pace. The controls were very smooth and intuitive, as good as any FPS that I've played on a console.
GRAPHICS (8) - The game looks very nice with great lighting and water effects. Certain areas will have rain, and this looks very impressive during the timeshift moments. Cut scenes are top notch, and enemies, while repetitive, are detailed and react realistically to being shot. Certain areas will be very detailed and interesting, though unfortunately other areas fall into the warehouse-factory levels that we've seen a million times.
SOUND (6) - Nothing particularly impressive here. Background music was alright, though certainly not memorable. Same for speech. Again, it was humorous to hear surprised reactions from enemies but other than that there wasn't much effort put into this area.
VALUE (6) - A relatively short game, it probably took 6-8 hours to complete. It does offer multiplayer which takes advantage of the timeshifting abilities so there are some enjoyable experiences to be had in that realm, but based on just the SP aspect you may be disappointed in how quickly you'll reach the end.
SUMMARY (7.5) - As other reviewers have stated, it was tough for Timeshift as it came out in the same era that saw Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and The Orange Box, games with which it can't really compete. However, if you are a fan of FPS and are looking for a game that offers something a little different with decent production values this can at least be considered as a rental or a purchase if you can get it for a relatively low price.