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TimeSplitters 2 Preview
Mark Simons
00/12/0000
We take a look at this blisteringly fast first person shooter and see how it is shaping up.
TimeSplitters was an impressive game at the launch of the PlayStation2, which has by now somewhat slipped out of collective consciousness. Despite offering fast and fun multi-player fun and an impressive level design as well as being very polished for a launch game it seems that Free Radical are itching to improve on their debut game.
TimeSplitters 2 is basically the same as the first game, as you would expect, a variety of locations over a varied time-line with plenty of weapons and characters. The aim is to kill or be killed and is played at a blistering pace and there are no major differences to the core gameplay, rather everything is being refined and tweaked to offer a great gaming experience that will last as long as the game that will haunt the employees of Free Radical for some time - itās their own fault for helping make GoldenEye so damned great. The former employees of Rare obviously want to make the game they first envisaged rather than produce something, that although very good, was rushed for the PlayStation2ās launch.
The major change for TimeSplitters 2 is the addition of a well-developed one-player mode, which should satisfy those who dislike entirely multi-player games. You assume a role as one half of a pair of time travelling heroes who have to travel though time to destroy the space aliens who are the bad guys. The time travelling aspect allows a lot of freedom in level design and will see you pass through the wild west, 30ās Chicago ā“ gangster style, cold war Russia, space and more. More than simple graphical swaps the time periods all feature their own weapons, which should offer a different gameplay dynamic for each area. The one-player missions feature multiple objectives that are far from simple and will offer a lot of great gameplay moments as well as movie and videogame homageās. For instance in the demo that has been released there is a dam level which is very similar to a certain dam level in GoldenEye, and it happens to be very good to boot offering lots of fun for the solo player, and bodes well for the rest of the game if itās up to the same standard, and there is no reason to think it wonāt be.
Multi-player will be split screen for up to four people and I-link for even more, and there will be a huge amount of options. Itās safe to assume you will probably be able to tweak everything for the ultimate multi-player experience. Weapons, characters and levels can all be chosen and modified for the style of game you want, as well as a load of different gameplay modes. No doubt traditional gameplay modes such as capture the flag and king of the hill will sit alongside more esoteric experiences, which will no doubt be revealed when we get out hands on a finished version of the game.
Free Radical have also been spending time tweaking the innards of their game engine to deliver action that is a constant 60 frames a second but packed with detail and cool effects. The new particle routines make fire and water look a lot more impressive and the draw distance and lighting has been improved quite some way. Fire and water are quite interesting as there will be flamethrowers to set people on fire, and water dotted about the levels to put out the aforementioned fire, which is a first as far as we can remember. Oh and the character models sport, as you would expect, more polygons and better animation courtesy of a refined physics engine which allows for cool stuff such as ricocheting bullets and stuff that can be blown up ā“ for instance barrels and water melons. The textures are not the highest quality but Free Radical make everything work rather nicely, the frame-rate in combination with the draw distance and special effects and a good sense of continuity in the artwork used in each time period produce a game that looks very good indeed.
