Timesplitters: Future Perfect

Timesplitters Future Perfect takes off where the previous game finished, with the "tough-as-nails" (it says so on the box) hero Sergeant Cortez returning to post-apocalyptic earth with the time crystals (long story short: Timesplitters invade earth, blah, Cortez kills stuff, blah, time crystals retrieved, blah, end of). Much violence and silliness ensues and Cortez finds his bad self being thrown about time. You'll visit many different time periods, each with its own look and feel, each overflowing with style and class. The single player experience is fun while it lasts (I think it got a bit too much of a battering in the press) and you'll enjoy it the first and second times through, however it isn't particularly difficult or open-ended so you won't often come back for more, however the atmosphere is close to flawless which is a great draw.
While the single player game is quite clever in places, you'll soon find great holes in the Swiss cheese plot, but for every hole there is a great moment that more than makes up for it... not that this is an excuse...
Hint: Look at the top of the hill at the beginning of the first mission for a surreal amount of cleverness.

Which brings me quite nicely on to the other game modes in "TS: FP". Pure and total manic-genius is the best way I can describe it. Arcade mode isn't much of a rarity these days and chances are you'll know what it's all about, but for those who don’t know you are given a series of mad Deathmatch or team game challenges that you must complete to unlock new stuff. New stuff includes more multiplayer characters, new multiplayer maps, new cheats, new arcade challenges and new game modes. Each challenge requires certain conditions to be met before you receive one of the four awards (Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum) and the higher the score/whatever, the better the award, the better the prize. Usually you'll have to get at least a gold to unlock something, which is great incentive to keep playing.
Many of the challenges are fun and engaging and although you may find the majority quite easy, attaining the higher awards can be astoundingly tough and will have you coming back on several occasions, which is great news for hardcore FPS fans.

Challenge mode is also a welcome inclusion, which is a series of single player missions with often madcap objectives, which must be completed to a certain degree in order for you to unlock more stuff. Most are laughably easy, but extremely fun (behead the undead is a classic example of such) and will have you playing again and again just to top your own best score. A scoreboard would have been nice, rather than just a "top score" marker, but it works well enough as is.

Custom multiplayer is truly one of the best multiplayer experiences available today with very few drawbacks. The bots (up to 16 of them... I think...) are a little on the weak side, but do the job well enough. The Live! experience was interesting, but lacked any kind of skill matching system, so I often found myself pit against "newbs" or just really poor players and was never really challenged. However, the best part of almost all of Free Radical's titles is the social aspect of play. You really haven't experienced multiplayer gaming until you've played one of Free Radical's (or previously Rare's) split screen frag-fests. Get a few mates round, crack open the beers and play this. You wont be disappointed.
The game modes include the generic Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, a well balanced Capture the Bag (CTF equivalent) and Gladiator (only one person can score), but also includes such brilliant game modes as Virus (run about the place a bit, avoid catching the lurgie). You'll play each of the modes and enjoy them, but chances are you'll pick one or two favourites and stick with them for the most part. The same goes for the maps, all of them exceptionally well crafted, but you'll find a couple of favourites and not really touch the others. The better maps are Venice, Subway and Hotel, each and every one just oozing atmosphere, although a couple are a little ill balanced, either being too big or requiring a little tweaking to the geography, you wont really notice after you've got the hang of them.

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The inclusion of a map-making facility is very welcome and so far improved over the previous versions. You'll spend hours (as did I) crafting maps and play testing them, but, while there are dozens of options available to you, almost all your maps will look and feel very similar, due to the "jigsaw" nature of the facility. Initially you'll enjoy the building and the tweaking, but this effect won't last long, which is unfortunate really.
Should Free Radical be planning on making another Timesplitters, I'd love to see more tile sets and options when it comes to coding and triggering scripted sequences.
I'm thinking that the mapmaker is a powerful tool as is, but still find it lacking, thus it won't add to the score as much as it could have.

Visually Future Perfect is above average, but not exactly ground breaking. Both the single and multiplayer maps are extremely well detailed (even if they lack interactivity), which helps build a good degree of atmosphere. Surprisingly there is a great amount of detail that has gone into the models used for the Mapmaker tile sets, which makes them look and feel interesting and are fun to use as a result. In the end, once your map is completed you really feel like you've created something, although eventually this feeling will wither away once you come to realise the lack of options available to you in the long run.
The player models are well designed and robust enough to do the job well. They also have bag loads of personality and you wont get bored with them quickly. The animation is top notch, especially regarding the death sequences. There is something distinctly satisfying about blowing someone off their feet with a 12-gauge shotgun, and it's even more fun with grenades and other explosives.

Music and sounds aren't exactly inspiring. The music is fun, fitting well with the over all theme, but at times lacks drama. I would have also like to have seen a return of the mini game music from the previous game, but this is just a personal preference issue and not really a reason for you not to buy the TS: FP. The sound effects are also above average and some of the atmospheric sounds are lovely, especially on the Vietnam multiplayer map. The Subway map is also wonderfully detailed in terms of sound, with excellent use of reverb coupled with an annoying station announcer and an interesting background "hum" that makes the map feel like it should. Some of the weapons lack power (in terms of sound) but a special mention goes out to the Tactical 12-gauge and Vintage Rifle, which both sound perfect.

Funny and engaging, with many, many hours of gameplay involved and lots to discover, you'll probably love Timesplitters Future Perfect, and even if you only like it you will come back again and again just to see what else it has to offer. Sometimes you will wish for a more realistic or absorbing experience, and will seek out new games accordingly, but chances are you'll come back to TS: FP often.

95/100

Oh so good. Hardcore FPSers may prefer something a little more serious, but will be missing the point if they don't pit themselves against the challenges. The rest of you will also love it, but might want to rent it first, just to make sure.