A serviceable shooter that doesn't reinvent the genre.
Timeshift is the newest thing from Saber Interactive, the studio that developed the famous Will Rock game in 2003, this is the new thing there doing, a time changing, heavily scripted shooter.
The Story is terrible, its hard to figure out whats going on, you are the "beta suit" in this lab, some crazy bald ass guy runs off with the "alpha suit" kills everyone in this building, which I don't understand at all, this pre-rendered scene is decent as best, but doesn't tell you who you are, or what is happening, it goes as the bald guy kills this female scientist, seamingly for no reason, then some guy yells "EVACUATE", then some guy goes to this skin-tight suit known as "beta suit" and then some other guy comes in says "HEY YOU, ITS NOT READY, LETS GET OUT OF HERE" then that female scientist gets incinerated in the flames, and the guy who says "HEY YOU" gets blown up, then you go into this ball of death and you end up in 1939 A.D, understand what I just explained to you? Well thats what they said, see how incohesive it is?
The Settings is in an alternate reality, now why is it in 1939 A.D they have a fully automatic rifle? That wasn't invented til' 1943, why do they have spider bots?
Why do they have grenade launchers? Did the crazy Bald Scientist with that "alpha suit" do this, invent this all? how long ago did you get there, how did you know where to go in time? Lots of little things like this don't make sense, its impossible to get into the story, if you don't know whats going on, how did you get here, how did they get the technology to do this, thats what makes this story and setting terrible.
The shooting model in the game is fantastic in this game, when shooting the Karbine Rifle, it feels very good while doing so, the gun has the right kick, the damage feels right, everything about the rifle feels good, and the sound to go with the rifle feels compliments everything about the rifle, the Shotgun also feels big and powerful, and feels like it has the right about of kick, and power, the most disappointing weapon in the game is probably the pistol, it feels to accurate, to weak, it doesn't even work as a sidearm in my opinion.
The time changing technique is sorta unique, but it just feels like Blinx the time sweeper with guns, some of the battle sequences require alot of the time changing, mainly cause if you see a bridge you got to get across, but gets blown up? You have to reverse time, it breaks up the action, and doesn't work terribly well, a couple of other powers is the stop time power, and slow down time, the most useful in the game is the stop time ability, mainly cause you can stop time to get out of the way of projectiles, and also to steal enemy weapons.
The Graphics are decent, but not very advanced compared to other engines out there, the shading within the game is rather good, the water looks great, most of the first part of the game you fight in the rain, the lighting does well for itself, the physics don't play a huge part of the game, but its nice to see boxes fly apart, debris get thrown around everywhere in the battlefield, all this comes at a reasonable price, you don't need the latest and greatest to enjoy what this game has to offer. The only thing I had a complaint agaisnt is the character models don't look like anything special, trust me, the artist direction the resistance make them look like high-tech terrorists, a balaclava with a helmet bigger then ones head doesn't help.
The sound, again does very well, guns sound nice and powerful, the voice acting sounds actually kinda forced, like the voice actors aren't taking any particular interest in there role in the game.
Multiplayer isn't much to right about at home, just a your standard array of modes like deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag and what not, so there's not much to talk about on that note.
While Timeshift is a fun shooter, against all the games it has to go against, it would have fared alot better if it were to be released in 2004, but in 2007, the shooter market is alot thicker than before.
