The time of the PS2 was glorious. It was a time truly to be remembered. We had Ratchet and Clank, Final Fantasy (before Lighting), and FPS’s (that had bots for people who didn’t have friends). These items represent a small percentage of the happiness and glory the PS2 brought us.
Another gem brought to us by Free Radical and EA…(just threw up in my mouth a little bit) was a game called TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. It’s a little early to say it, but I loved this game from beginning to end.
“But this game isn’t realistic at all and the graphics are terrible! How do you quickscope? What’s a bot? How come….”
Jimmy, sit down and shush. I’m getting to the good part. A game like this did not have to be “realistic” or “gory,” it was a good game because it was fun.
Sometimes fun in a game is lost in the bright and pretty details of the current most popular games. But you didn’t come to me to hear me rant about how bad other games are. (Or maybe you did.) You came here to hear about TimeSplitters and hear about it you shall.
There haven’t been many games that have captured my attention and my laughter. Typically it has only been one or the other. Future Perfect is a gaming spice that I wish I had more of. It is appealing to the pallette. I haven’t played game like it in a long time but even after beating the main story, I kept going back.
Not having played the first two, I thought I would be confused as to exactly what I was doing. My only prior knowledge of the game was a demo of the first TimeSplitters when I was just a wee lad but the game wasn’t too deep (Mind out of the gutter, please) for me now to enjoy it.
You play as Sergeant Cortez, a bulky wise-cracking soldier, (who looks oddly like Riddick) whose mission it is to eliminate the TimeSplitters, these weird-ass creatures. They kinda look like some kind of health drink mixture that you had put in a blender and gave life to. Except that this blender experiment shoots lightning from its hands (I think they are hands anyway), turn invisible, and goes through time. I don’t know many blender experiments that can do that. Then again, I don’t know many blender experiments period besides that stuff my editor tries to get me to drink. Moving on…
The first mission is pretty standard; just the usual adjusting yourself to the controls. I actually had to get used to how accurately I could shoot. The gun doesn’t wobble in my hand as with COD and its “realism”. “Realism” can suck a dick. (Yeah, I went there…)
The best for me and this game wasn’t actually the gameplay. It was the dialogue. That was the grabbing point for me. As I mentioned before, the game was fun. It made me laugh so many times. The first being when I heard Cortez say his very first catchphrase: “Come on Anya, “It’s time to split.”
I literally laughed so hard, I fell off of my couch after that. I wasn’t expecting muscle-for-brains Cortez to be funny. He looked too dark to be funny but was I wrong on all counts. The game just kept going with it. It wasn’t Kevin Hart funny and it didn’t need to be. It was Cortez funny and that was all I needed.
Another important feature of the game is that Cortez is the main character, and he is human. I mean that to say that he isn’t just a bot with a chip in his brain to kill. He is witty, he makes mistakes, he is an all around character. He drives the story, he keeps you engaged. He never breaks the fourth wall and speaks to you directly but the interactions he has with the other people (plus one robot) keep the engagement high. Even by PS2 standards, when Cortez was feeling a certain way, you could tell. I didn’t need 1080p to notice that.
What can I say? It is a really good game that I am still playing to unlock all of the monkeys!
If you can, please play this game. It is a wonderful game that I know you will enjoy, even you Jimmy.
Now, with that being done, Its….Time To Split!