I just finished playing the TimeShift demo, and I feel like I should say it's a disappointment because it holds a fair bit of potential, but I never particularly had my hopes up.It's backed by Sierra, which raised interest a little as they did create Half-Life the best game series this side of Europa, and Homeworld, arguably the greatest science fiction RTS ever conceived. And then I saw it was Developed by Saber, which dipped my expectations back to low orbit, first it lowered my optimism simply because I had never heard of them, but after some research it changed to the fact they made the smashing Will Rock, everyone's childhood hero.
The demo throws you into the game as some sort of time cop, a soldier with a suit that was designed to kick everything Isaac Newton taught us in the balls. Some narration from your suit's sexy sounding AI lets you helpfully know that it's broken and you're going to be left to fend for yourself, enjoy. The first thing you see is two soldiers beating up a couple of unarmed civilians, with no explanation as to anything regarding any story or plot I could only assume that these men had committed the gravest of crimes and completely deserved their punishment, but as I stepped out to add another boot to the face of the pleading man the soldiers began to fire at me. A quick look online revealed no negotiations option, so my only resort was to pick up a very handily discarded rifle and kill the soldiers.
The criminals thanked me and proceeded to open a gate leading to a battle between more of their cohorts and a military force. I dispatched the soldiers which I now had to consider my enemy, only for them to be replaced by a three story high mech which quickly laid waste to pretty much everything around me. I fled into some ruins and tried to cross a walkway to an adjacent building, that being the cue for one of the criminals to shout 'It's firing' and have the whole thing explode and collapse on my head. I load the last checkpoint and try pausing time long enough for me to run across the gantry, that works and I continue onwards.
Now comes my favorite bit. I see a criminal on his knees not far off with a soldier behind him, the criminal sobs 'I don't want to die' before the soldier executes him. I am appalled by this blatant insult to the Geneva Convention and decide to make good use of my time shifting powers, I load the last save and slow down time so I can shoot the soldier before he can execute the man, a cunning plan that I thought would earn me an extra ally for upcoming battles, but the soldier does not die and carries out the execution. Load again, this time I pause time, run up to the soldier and try to use the weapon remove feature I used on previous enemies, but the option does not appear and I end up with John Doe's brains splattered all over my slacks. Load again, and this time I simply pause time, run up the soldier and unload all my shotgun ammo into his face at point blank range, but still the soldier manages to execute the civvie before allowing me to kill him. So it seems the time manipulation ability only really has any affect when the game wants it to, great design.
I move on to fight through some more ruined buildings, enjoying the semi-destructible walls before finding myself at the edge of an electrified pool of water with no visible means to circumvent it. I look around for some sort of puzzle that I'm not doubt supposed to solve to progress, only to have my suit eventually tell me that I have to pause time to cross the water, as I can't be electrocuted without the passage of time. That makes sense, but after crossing the water I'm left feeling completely empty at how it took absolutely no skill whatsoever to solve the puzzle, kind of like when I got an A Level in Critical Thinking.
I move on to more combat, in which I help defend a position from enemy troops for a few moments before realizing that the enemies are being replaced as I kill them, confused I figure that the battle's for show and that I'm meant to merely be passing through the area, but a quick scout of my surroundings reveals no possible path to progress through. So I continue the drudgery of killing more respawning soldiers until a few moments later, when another mech walks past in the distance and stops just long enough to shoot down a fence allowing me to continue. I see the mech has been downgraded a little since our last encounter, as it has gone from decimating entire buildings and laying waste to the battlefield, to knocking down a fence.
I make my way through some more ruins to hear my suit's AI tell me, 'unstable surface detected.' It had been saying things earlier like 'threat detected' and 'heavy ballistics detected', which are fair enough, but unstable surface? I've spent the last 10 minutes running through a war torn city with buildings collapsing and blowing up all around me, but only now during this brief respite from battle does it decide to inform me that there is an unstable surface in close proximity. Of all dangers I am truly glad it has decided to illuminate that one for me.
I find out that this unstable surface is a large concrete pipe which I have to cross to continue, suspended in the air by a crane it becomes a seesaw puzzle, easily solved yet again by the ability to pause time. By this point the breaks in combat had become incredibly unsatisfying, and I almost found myself back on Google to make absolutely sure that there wasn't a diplomacy button I was missing.
I then made my way through a trench system merrily killing soldiers as I go, aided by the fact these unprofessional slobs seem to have zero concept of teamwork, before reaching another rebel base. Here I grab a mounted machine gun and hold ground again against what seem to be infinitely spawning enemies, until another mech plods along and decides to progress the story. At which point my suit tells me that I've achieved whatever the hell I was there to do and that's game over, leaving me to pat myself on that back at a job well done. Whatever the job was.
The whole experience reminded me of reading a typical internet fanfic written by an illiterate twelve year old, it'll have a great set up but only because it's based on an already existing story, and word for word it's going to absolutely suck. The futuristic setting with a rebel uprising trying to overthrow an oppressive regime wanted so desperately to be good, but I just felt as if I was playing a cheap sci-fi channel TV program. And the level layout and scripted events reminded me very vaguely of Half-Life 2, but again it utterly failed at any of the brilliant design that I've come to take for granted from the Half-Life series and the whole affair felt like it had been rushed through.
Collectively Saber Interactive design levels like that 12 year old, and unless you utterly love the concept of it there are better games to spend your money on.
3 comments:
You write like a 12 year old and obviously don't know enough about game tech to grasp what a technical achievement the game is. It's like Half-Life 3. If you found adding weights to a ramp from HL2 "inspired" level design, then you are just another sucker that buys the hype of the brand names hook, line and sinker. The TimeShift demo was awesome and did a great job of letting newbies jump in and use the time powers. If you play it multiple times you realize how deep the time control mechanic is. Rather than that you prefer to scribble nonsense on a blog that I am likely the only guy to have stumbled upon and insult people with a lot more talent than you are likely ever to have....
Oh noes, Anon-e-moose doesn't like me?
Maybe you'd like to enlighten me as to what a technical achievement the game is, because I really can't see it and I'd genuinely be interested to know what that might include. And why are you so ridiculously defensive of this game anyway? To go to the length of writing such a personal attack at one faceless blogger that doesn't happen to like a game quite confuses me.
Unless you're from TGN, in which case, hello! I've got my money on Koff, at best.
Onto the game. I tried to hold back on the Half-Life comparisons, but if we're going to go all out I'll say that I couldn't help but constantly think about how Half-Life did exactly the same things, but better. The propaganda droning voice had no soul or face behind it, as opposed to the brilliantly set up Dr Breen which gave you someone to hate, a target to aim for. Maybe in the full game the man behind the voice is explored more, but I was really looking for something that wasn't there.
And the sniper section was just plain pathetic. I round a corner to find myself saying, "Oh, I'm being shot." and without having to move a step I simply crossbow the enemy and clear a long path ahead of myself. I'm sure I don't need to tell you about how the snipers in HL2 have a little more depth and challenge, as you seem to be quite familiar with the title.
The enemy design was entirely forgettable too, the mech was simply a straight-from-the-box mech, and I get the feeling I've seen the enemy soldiers in half a dozen other games.
And you say the time control has more depth. I could see this in the reversal of time, but the pause and slow down just seem like I could go through the whole game pausing, killing, pausing, killing, repeat to credits.
The weapons had a nice weight to them, but again were bland and uninspired, like the rest of the game.
The thing that really gets me is how I just can't save that civvie, they give you the ability to change time and then don't even let you interfere with such an inviting scripted event like that. It certainly doesn't raise my hopes for the rest of the game being anything more than a trench crawler.
As I said, I love the idea, the concept behind it is really right up my street, but it's just simply not fun. No matter how much I might want to like it I just find myself turning every corner and wishing that they'd done something a little different. It reminds me of Fire Warrior for the PS2.
If you'd like to challenge this in a more orderly manner I'd be more than accommodating, but if you're just going to leave it at that entirely pathetic comment than you can piss off, you whiny little bitch.
Burned.
Post a Comment