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Game: TimeShift Developer: Saber Interactive

Saber Interactive’s shooter looks suspiciously like Half-Life 2 … but without the good bits.

A glance at Saber Interactive’s contribution to PC games would suggest to the casual observer that they really like time travel. Their first creation, Will Rock, created in 2003, tossed a rather confused archaeologist into the past to battle a horde of malevolent creatures ripped straight out of Greek Mythology. It would also appear that the developers really like ripping off other more successful titles, given that the game was a bare-faced clone of Croteam’s infinitely more successful Serious Sam. Four years later and they’re at it again, this time in the form of TimeShift, their own unique homage to Valve Software’s Half-Life 2. Once again, an exceptional physicist stars as our unlikely hero but this time around he’s not wielding a crowbar!

The Basics
The game opens with an introductory cut-scene that will probably confuse players rather than enlighten them as to what the game is about. There are around a dozen similar interludes scattered throughout the game and they are all equally confusing … until you manage to complete the game. At that point, reviewing the previous narratives (some that are only several seconds long) will eventually reveal the rather mundane plot to the player. I suspect the developers were trying to leverage the “flow of time” aspects of the game within the presentation of the storyline … but all it does is leave you mildly irritated and confused until the game’s denouement.

To summarize: The quiet hum of activity at your secret research laboratory is shattered when your esteemed colleague, Dr Krone, purloins a time-suit that you’ve been working on and makes an un-authorized jump into the past. Utilising a conveniently located spare suit, you pursue the good doctor into the late 1930’s to apprehend him and return to the present. Unfortunately, it would appear that Dr Krone has made previous jumps into the past and has created an alternate timeline. In it, Krone is known as the Magistrate, a megalomaniac overlord of a large city-state who would make the usual dictators of the period look like dedicated social workers in comparison. As you’d expect some the locals aren’t too happy about this state of affairs and a dedicated resistance movement is fighting back in an effort to oust their oppressor.

In any case, the developers have done an excellent job of rendering the world of TimeShift with an extra year being spent on re-rendering most of the art assets as well as tweaking the game after it was originally ready in 2006. There’s plenty of visual chrome displayed on-screen with copious art-deco furniture adorning the interior levels and just enough neon signage to advertise the various dens of disrepute scattered around the city. It’s also apparent that the Hindenburg disaster never occurred as Zeppelins are now the primary means of moving large numbers of people around. The overall level design has been well thought out but, yet again, we’re still limited to completely linear exploration.

Despite the snug appearance of your time-suit, you can apparently carry up to 3 weapons and a belt full of grenades at any time; the mind boggles as to where you actually stash these toys. The majority of these are similar to conventional projectile weapons you’ve played with in previous shooters, however there are a handful of more futuristic ones like an EMP weapon that are obvious contributions of Dr Krone’s inspired futuristic endeavours. There is also plenty of interactive weaponry available within the game environment to help you clear out areas that are swarming with magistrate guards.

The focus of the game, unsurprisingly, is the capabilities of the time suit your alter-ego is wearing. With it, you can slow, freeze or even reverse time. It’s powered by a capacitor that recharges gradually (dare I say it) over time and is a key component to completing the game. These time control functions allow you to transit areas of the game that you normally wouldn’t be able to pass, as well as manipulate time-based puzzles that would otherwise prevent you from progressing. It also recharges your health, in a similar vein to the latest Call of Duty games. Find somewhere safe to sit (or activate the slow time function) and your health bar will quickly return to normal.

Overall, Saber Interactive has managed to craft a highly polished first-person engine. Despite the plethora of eye-candy, frame-rates are as smooth as silk, even during some of the more intense fire-fights and complex levels. The graphics and visual effects are top-notch and include destructible items in game and even projectile ricochets that can cause additional damage. The first time you see blood or rain splashing on your screen or your visor cracking when you die, you’ll realise just how much effort the developers put into the engine. The sound effects and ambient noise are also of a uniformly high quality. The soundtrack is the only sore point; it’s rather bland and repetitive.

Gameplay
While the game itself sits on an engine more than capable of providing an immersive experience for gamers, there are some major issues with the overall design that seriously impair gameplay.

Interacting with other characters in the game is as unrealistic an experience as you can imagine. When you first appear in-game, nobody questions your shiny time-suit or, indeed, your presence in the world. Instantly accepted by all and sundry you’re tossed a weapon and expected to deal with combat situations that no normal entity would be expected to deal with, even before you show off your “super human” abilities with the time-suit. You are exposed to a lot of radio chatter from various individuals but it’s often hard to tell whether its magistrate soldiers talking to each other or orders from the resistance leader that you are required to follow. At least the objective system clearly indicates what actions you are expected to take.

The artificial intelligence routines for magistrate soldiers are particularly lacking in tactical acumen. On many occasions, your foes will run directly towards your hidden location confident in the knowledge that they’re more than a match for you. Given that you also have remarkably accurate radar on your display, they’re about to receive a rude and terminal awakening. Why? Because you’re going to trigger the slow time function of your suit, run around the corner, gun them down and then return to the safety of cover without them knowing what hit them. You’ll wait a few seconds for your time capacitor to recharge and will soon be ready to repeat the same process for the next hapless foe.

The truth of the matter is, the aforementioned tactic is pretty much all you will be doing for most of the combat sequences of the game. Even on skilled difficulty, there are usually a ½ dozen or so foes facing you down. There is no means of stealthily creeping up on a foe and freezing time won’t allow you to cover much distance due to the increased power drain. Thus, combat becomes a one dimensional process of repetitive hit and run. There is way too much ammunition lying around including crates that top up every weapon magazine you have. Toss in the insta-gib crossbow and you have a recipe for a superhero without any attendant vulnerability. While the combat is fun the first dozen times you try it, after a while the aura of invincibility you engender starts to wear thin and you begin to wish there were other things you could do … like deal with the occasional puzzles present in each of the levels.

Alas, even the conundrums won’t tax you for long. There are only a handful of puzzle types and each of them is solved in exactly the same way. To top it off, the in-game tutorial (which is enabled by default) tells you how to proceed past the first instance of each puzzle type and your AI presence in your time-suit automatically selects the right time power to use. So once you know that you need to stop time to pass through an electrical field, every other environmental hazard puzzle is solved in exactly the same way. There are a couple of well conceived reverse time puzzles but not enough to hold your interest for long.

There is also an obvious comparison that can be made between TimeShift and Half-Life 2. The dark and dreary world of the Magistrate is not dissimilar to City 17, although the period visuals are reminiscent of the late 1930’s rather than contemporary Eastern Europe. The magistrate’s bespectacled visage graces the large screen displays mounted on walls around the city and a similar looping narrative of his current political views spouts persistently throughout the opening level, just like Doctor Breen’s did after the opening train sequence in Half-Life 2. Even the level design borrows heavily from Valves original game with some longish sequences where you get to drive a quad-bike through some spectacular mountain vistas. Valve’s physics based puzzles are present but with simplistic time control being the means of solving them. Unfortunately, TimeShift lacks the elegant design found in Half-Life 2’s game-play … and the less said about its character development the better, because after 15 hours of gameplay I probably know more about Jennifer Love Hewitt than I do about my in-game personae!

Conclusion
For me, playing through TimeShift was a bit of a disappointment. I was looking forward to seeing how Saber Interactive would blend time manipulation into a first person shooter. Unfortunately, this highly anticipated game has ultimately been reduced to an attractive, but uninspiring “bullet-time gun ‘n run” experience that we’ve seen and played many times before. If you want to play superhero for a dozen or so hours, it’s an ideal distraction. For the rest of us, perhaps a visit back to City 17 is in order?