Price: £39.99

Players: 1-4

Fast, fun and frenetic. That's the three Fs that make up Timesplitters, one of the first games to be released for the PS2 and bordering on one of the most visually impressive to begin with. It's a first-person shooter like Quake, with an Arcade mode that plays as a multiplayer game and a Story mode which makes things last a little longer for the pre-Quake III fans like myself who think that a multiplayer-only engagement is rather a cop-out.

The Story mode has you simply trying to get from A to B, or to fulfil a mission of sorts, in three different time zones. Firstly, it's 1935 in Egypt and you must explore an ancient Tomb, find the Cultist's ankh and return it to the shine. Then, in 1970's China, don your sideburns and seize a gang's files as evidence before getting back to the alley, toting your Uzi along the way. Finally, the first port of call in Cyberden in year 2005 is to get the cyborg's plans and return to the ventilation ducts. I preferred these missions to the straight-forward Arcade deathmatch modes which have you tagging the bag, capturing the flag... hell, you probably have to spin the bottle too. Such adventures are of little interest to me because there's no direction to them.

Just like Time Crisis, the graphics move with great fluidity. If you want to run, you can run, the game never lets up the pace for a second. The colour is well used to aid the atmosphere, gunfire lights up the dark corridors and shooting glass looks fantastic. An epic-a-like soundtrack thunders along with bullets ricocheting in surround sound. Brilliant, if a well-worn idea. The vibration can be set to kick in when you're either hit or are shooting someone else or, for the ultimate in thrill-seeking, during both times. The control method takes a fair bit of getting used to with the analogue joysticks either strafing left/right and moving backwards and forwards, while the other helps you look around and aim. Why I can't use the D-pad to do some of this is in the hands of the game's creators, but such is life.

Overall, great graphics and sound, but the control aspect and almost complete lack of originality let the game down on the whole, not to mention the ease of dying before you complete a level, so it's back to the start you go (!)

GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.