I just finished playing the demo for the refurbished fps "Time Shift." I say refurbished because they were going to release it last year, but ended up doing the thing all over again because people didn't like the graphics. I had originally played the first demo of Time Shift last year, and didn't think it was much of anything special. I have an idea for a time travel game that would totally blow everyone else's out of the water but lack the programming knowledge and time to make it (though I did make a demo in Qbasic around 1998 or so using boxes and circles )

Anyway, I picked up the latest demo and here are my impressions and comparisons of this new one versus the old one.

The first thing I can say I don't like about the newest demo is the fact that it takes more than one shot to the head to kill a soldier. The first demo, you could hit time Stop, and run around the corner, pop 4 baddies in the head with 4 shots from a pistol, and hit resume, and they all fall over... This one... You hit them 3-5 times with a machine gun in the head and they still don't die. This new version is twice as hard as the old one, even on "casual" mode...

Also, though the graphics are 100% more realistic and the art design is a lot nicer, it's too dark. Half the time, I had only my aiming reticule turning red to indicate "enemy" to know whether or not I was even aiming at anyone.... Lots of Blur and smoke effects makes it hard to see anything.
The demo is heavily scripted and linear as hell, though, so was the first one.

You don't get nearly as much time to play with with your new time controls as you did in the old one, it seems. I know the developers want to make it harder for people to put it into stop mode and breeze through the levels, but for the difficulty how many bullets it takes to kill a guy, it just doesn't feel like enough...

The first demo was too easy, I admit. You could breeze through the demo in 5 minutes... The new demo would take as long, but you keep having to quickload due to constantly dying on harder difficulties... Maybe I'm just too noobish

One of the big improvements is the Time Reverse feature... The time reverse feature in the original demo was a bit buggy, especially if you shot them while in reverse mode. The new reverse mode is a lot less buggy, but as I said before, you don't get as much of it, unless it's for a Time Puzzle... Such as a bridge exploding that you need to time reverse to get past....

Which brings me to another problem... The time puzzles involving Time Reverse are either a pass or fail situation... Half-Life 2 has physics puzzles that give the player as much time as they need to figure out, and don't throw a dozen enemies at them in the mean time... The developers of Half-Life sat down and made sure that the player would never get stuck in an impossible position by destroying the solution or something... With Time Shift, if you don't have enough time left to use your Time Reverse function, you die. I can only make this assumption based on the one time reverse puzzle involving a bridge being blown up. But the first time I went through it, I hit Time Stop, and ran out of time and died because I didn't have enough time left over to use time reverse. It just seems to "on the rails" for me, and doesn't present a lot of options in terms of solving puzzles.

Another thing I hate in this game is the fact that I can't sprint. The game trailer shows the guy running around and having a "blast" but in-game, I feel like a slug... especially in "time stop" mode. I guess since air and the raindrops would be stationary, it realistically would be hard to move around, but since we don't get a lot of "time" to be in stop or reverse mode, I wish we could sprint, even if there was a fatigue meter or something.

I'll probably get the latest Time Shift game when it's released, but I will do so only after reading many reviews...


For reference, here are screenshots of the old demo (that I just found on an arabic site!) that I just took to show you how it's changed, and new demo screenshots I took:


As you can see, the old Alpha Suit was a lot uglier than the slick new Beta Suit you get in the new version:







And here are the newer screenshots.... As you can see, the physics are greatly improved, and stuff blows apart... Plaster and glass acts realistically and blow up when you shoot it. Reminds me of the old Red Faction days






Multiplayer should be a different type of experience with "time bombs" but I'm not a big multiplayer gamer, so I hope they didn't put too much into multiplayer so that the campaign sucks... Will post review when the game is released (which is October 30, 2007).

 

 

 

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PEOPLE WHO ARE HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE GAME, THE CAUSE SEEMS TO BE THE LATEST 169.04 DRIVERS!!

I installed the 169.04 driver (Released Oct 30, 2007) and when I went to load the game, the Securom mouse icon ran, but the program closed.... So I re-installed the old drivers before that, and it runs now, though I get an error saying that I need updated drivers... THE GAME RUNS FINE WITH 163.75 DRIVERS!

The framerate is smooth (though I haven't calculated what FPS it's running). Graphics are nice. Audio is nice. Text is crisp and clear. Textures are good. Overall, the year of work they did on this game really paid off!

Back to the review of the game itself:
I went out last night to buy TimeShift, only to find that the shipment hadn't arrived yet... So I went back today and got them to unpack the boxes and sell me a copy... Is it bad that they weren't in demand enough to pull them out of the boxes when they got them??

I get it home, open the box and wow, they were so nice, they gave me TWO manuals... Haha, I hope they didn't do that in every shipment, because that is going to be a lot of costs on there end... I wonder if I could ship one back and get some money for it? Yes they are identical manuals... No idea why. And it also comes with a free demo for World in Conflict, which gives you a 10 day trial serial number so you can play multiplayer online... I have no intention of trying this either, but that's just me.

Anyway, I've been playing for awhile now and I've passed both points in the game that were provided in demo-form. I got to see the new and changed version of the first demo they did a year ago, and I must say it's much cooler. They've expanded it, so you have to go a long, windy way to get to the main headquarters, unlike before where you could just freeze time and walk past the main gate...

The game itself has been pretty linear, but there are some open areas that are quite difficult because you have to utilize cover while your time gauge refills. It's really like Half-Life 2. The presentation is rather well done, as the game presents new tactics and tips as you progress, and you don't even get to time shift until a level or two in the game... to prep you for combat.

Overall it has a Halo feel to it... with the refilling health, rather than health stations. It forces you to use cover and move to avoid getting shot (hah, well duh).

The story is brought to you in third person flashbacks, which sort of breaks with the whole "You are the character" feel to it that Half-Life has... There are in-game cutscenes where you see yourself out of body as events unfold in game, though you don't see your human face in any of the FMVs. So the character you play as is truly generic, other than his cool looking suit. It would have been nice if they would have at least named the character...

I can just see it now... Timeshift 3.... they pull a Metroid on us, and we find out we've been playing as a girl this whole time

Speaking of women, I find it sad to say that there seem to be no women in this alternate timeline like there is in Half-Life. At least women in combat would make the "rebellion" in the game a bit more believable, though I think this takes place in an alternate 1930's timeline, so women didn't really do a lot of fighting yet

The thing that still irks me is the fact that Headshots don't kill... You have to pump a guy in the head 3-4 times with a shotgun to take him down.

It's too arcade-like.

You do unlock concept art and the FMVs, and soundtrack as you play through the game, but you don't have to DO anything other than go through levels.

Still playing though, so I'll post my final thoughts when I beat the game. I'll have to try out multiplayer too if I can figure that out

 

 

 

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Well, I just beat the game. I'll keep the spoilers down to a minimum.

First off, I give the game a B+ for gameplay. The levels get better after the demo level... More diverse and interesting... The game is still extremely linear though, which sucks. They didn't use enough logic puzzles in my opinion, though they did come up with some interesting puzzles using the environment. Sometimes you have to go "backwards" in order to progress haha. Really makes you think fourth dimensionally.

There were a couple spots I got stuck, but I figured them out eventually... There's a spot there is a huge fan that is sucking air down... People that played Half-Life remember a scene where you get blown up into the ceiling... Well I figured I had to use time reverse to go up, but the game turned off that option, so I got stuck in a room, spinning around on the fan, getting totally dizzy, until finally I realized the time reverse feature was back on, and I managed to progress....

Stuff like that.

When you're stuck, check to see what "recommendation" the computer is giving you in Time to use... It highlights one of the options that it recommends for any given situation, so keep an eye on that.

The time travel itself was a little loopy... I'm going to create a separate topic about it that will have story and endgame spoilers in it to discuss the way the game ended and how it works logically.

Overall, I'd say this game is only worth buying if you can get it for $30, but I haven't tried multiplayer yet. Single player, though, is rather short, and there's basically hardly any replay value since it's so linear, and you use basically every time function so you don't need to play the game again... Multiplayer is supposed to be good so I might have to try that.

Weaknesses: STORY! My God the flashbacks that occur during game play are too short and totally random... The cut scenes are sometimes only 1 sentence long before it cuts back to the game... I can see what they were trying to do, but it wasn't very effective. You are no more informed at the end of the game than you were at the beginning other than the chick you see in the first cutscene and your character are lovers... That's it. You feel bad for her getting roasted in the first cutscene, but if I knew that I was supposed to be emotionally attached to this girl from the beginning, I might have felt worse... The game would have taken on a whole new meaning, since it would have been all about me getting revenge for Krone killing my girlfriend... Like if they did that to Alyx Vance in Half-Life 2, I might have felt more anger towards Krone than I actually did.

I was watching videos online about the story they were using before they took a year to polish the game... The main character had his daughter killed on a school bus when it exploded or something... I think that would have been a bit more heartwrenching than another "oh dang they killed my girlfriend again" thing.

Just my opinion...


Anyway, gameplay A
Graphics: A+ (no lag, no problems)
Sound: A+
Voice acting: A+
Storyline: C


If it weren't for the short ending, it might have made me feel better spending the $50 on it...
But for gameplay, it's worth getting one way or another.

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