A great First Person Shooter!
Free Radical has created a game that highlights multiplayer over the single player experience, but not because of the team's personal likes, but because it wanted to have a fun, multiplayer game ready for launch. For instance, you won't see an intro movie. The game just begins with a simple set up. Players get to grips with TimeSplitters in either single player mode or multiplayer mode, Story or Arcade. The single-player Story mode is essentially capture the flag over a period of several decades, all in which you must venture to pick and return secret items before the TimeSplitters themselves (time-traveling demons of sorts) come to take your life. Arcade is a just a free ride into any of the opened levels for a good blast fest.
Playing through the story mode is a really good idea, too. While there is no stealth, or gadgetry to be employed, just your lightning quick reactions required, each time you beat a new single-player level, new weapons, bots, characters, and other stuff opens up in all of the other modes of play. It's nice to be rewarded so often, and TimeSplitters rewards you all the time. The Story mode also will get you prepared for death-matches later on. But do yourself a favor, don't start the game on medium difficulty, begin on easy. The Free Radical guys have cranked up medium and hard for seriously hard play, and you'll have to work your way up to them.
For those who like to team up with pals, the Story mode also enables you to play through it with one other friend in split-screen co-op. It's rather unusual to have this option, and it provides a whole new cooperative look at the game. The levels are straightforward enough, but it's fun to have the helping hand, and you learn the levels better, too.
The real thrill in TimeSplitters, however, is the console-style deathmatches. It doesn't feel like playing Quake or Unreal. Instead it feels like you're playing 60 frames per second Goldeneye deathmatches. And just like in Goldeneye, half the fun is picking through all of the options and choosing all of the goodies. Since we played through the single-player mode, our bot and character selection in the death-match sections grew dramatically. Players choose from points/time, weapon selection, bot selection, two to four player matches (you can choose bots in four-player, and fill in when only two humans are playing, too), the style of decorum ¿ which effects level design and lighting -- teams or none, and lots more.
There are dozens more choices; I have really only listed a few. The point behind the point is that with this ongoing laundry list of options, the game can be played again and again, hundreds of times over with alterations and changes that provide a slightly different feel, setting, and circumstance each time. This way TimeSplitters is always renewed, totally alterable for different likings, customizable for whatever your pleasure. You want grenade launchers and rocket launchers? Handguns and shotguns? Sci-fi guns and lasers? Go get some. Oh, and how could we forget the timed, proximity, and remote mines? They are all there.
Getting to grips with TimeSplitters isn't a hassle either. The reason is because players can once again configure their controls to whatever setting they like, and then keep them that way. Upon reading your Memory Card, or even in RAM, before you switch off the PS2, the code remembers your config and saves it so that you don't have to constantly redo. Believe us, this is a nice convenience. The default config is quite useable. I didn't even switch my set up at all.
The default controls depend on the two dual shocks buttons and the shoulder buttons. With the left analog button you strafe, move forward and backward. With the right one, you look up down, or spin and turn. R1 is shoot. R2 is secondary fire, which is usually rapid fire, and with the grenade launcher it's explode-the-grenades on impact. The dpad switches weapons. The left shoulder buttons are duck and display reticule. And again, if you want to mess with this, just go right ahead, there are dozens of configs. Free Radical has made it easy to play the game any way you like.
Last but not least, and what makes TimeSplitters so different than anything else, is the Map Builder. Now, most games with mapmakers or level builders always seem like a good idea, and usually they are, but few people really actually make maps. But using this incredibly powerful tool is so engaging it's hard not to make maps and play them.
With the maps, players are given a set of hallways, L-shaped turns, rooms, and connectors to create multifaceted levels on a palette next to the open space for building the level. You're also given stairways, and you can build ¿ if you choose to ¿ an eight-story level in which you can shoot and kill a player from the eighth floor while you're on the first, or vice versa! And again, just like everything else, players can easily choose the most fun aspects of creating a level, such as weapon and character selection, and weapon and character spawn points.
Players have the enviable choice of tile setting, which means the texture set and design of the level. Each tile set, whether it be Gothic, '20s, or Sci-fi, has its own room architecture, object layout, color, and design. So, you could theoretically build two identical levels, and choose a Sci-fi tile set and a Gothic set, and the rooms would look entirely different. For example, the big room with the Sci-Fi setting has a space ship in it, while the Gothic room has stained glass windows and pulpits. The core of the levels are created in skeletal form on your Memory Card, and are filled in with the textures once you load them up, so they save sizes are miniscule, enabling you to save hundreds of levels without clogging up the card. Sweet!