Four Fat Chicks -- Timesplitters: Future Perfect Review

Timesplitters: Future Perfect

Review by Davo
August 2005

Making the Quantum Leap into Gaming Fun

If you've seen the first Spiderman movie with Toby Maguire, you might recall the scene where he first realizes he has spider powers after webs begin shooting out of his wrists and he develops super speed and strength. Maguire, as Peter Parker, Spiderman's alter ego, slowly begins scaling a vertical wall. Clinging to the wall about 20 feet off the ground, he looks down, breaks into a wild grin and exuberantly screams "woohoo" as he scales the rest of the building and begins leaping over rooftops. He's clearly having a grand time. Timesplitters: Future Perfect is like that moment when Parker realizes he has spider powers. This game is grand fun in a big way.

Now, admittedly, fun is a vague term. What makes a game fun? I can't provide a universal definition. In this case, it's solid gameplay combined with an interesting story, unusual environments, surprising variety and generous helpings of humor. At a time when most FPS games are striving for dark, moody and atmospheric, Timesplitters: Future Perfect focuses on laugh-out-loud fun in both single and multiplayer modes. If you require dystopian environs, hell on Mars or futuristic ring worlds in your FPS games, then you should look elsewhere. You won't find anything like that in Timesplitters: Future Perfect. If, however, you're intrigued by the idea of a game that flings you through time into environments that range from an eerie underwater city straight out of a Jules Verne novel to a zombie-filled mansion reminiscent of Resident Evil, then read on. Much fun lies ahead.

Back to the Future

You play Timesplitters: Future Perfect as Cortez, a deliberately bald, muscular, slightly oblivious, can-do hero. The story focuses on Cortez's efforts to thwart an evil alien-like race called the Timesplitters that is determined to destroy humanity. Events in the game span a 500-year stretch of time. As Cortez, you zip back and forth through time trying to decipher the Timesplitters' next move and preserve the future of humanity.

Timesplitters: Future Perfect is the third game in the series, and the first to provide a decent storyline. The first Timesplitters game had virtually no story. The game plunked you into the middle of one of many playable time periods and grabbed your attention with gorgeous graphics, diverse level design and tight gameplay. Noting the trend toward story in FPS games, the developer wrapped a thin storyline around Timesplitters 2. While the game was excellent, the story was little more than an idea that connected the time periods together.

With Timesplitters: Future Perfect, the developers have finally gotten the story right. Originality is not this tale's strength. Rather, it grabs hold of you with a time travel story that conceals a few intriguing mysteries and provides much humor. If you've followed the series, the story is a bit of a treat because you'll learn the surprising origins of the Timesplitters. Following the series from the beginning is not, however, a prerequisite to enjoying this game's story. Even if you don't enjoy the mysteries or you find the unoriginality grating, you'll likely enjoy the humor.

Most levels allow you to play the story as future and past versions of yourself. You're future self will run into your past self and dole out vague hints about what's going on. Halfway through the level you'll play as your future self, complete with the opportunity to gloat at your past self's incomprehension of what's about to happen.

Much of the story is conveyed through outstanding cutscenes. The Timesplitters games have a very distinctive cartoon-like graphical style. All of the characters have a rubbery appearance, with slightly exaggerated facial features and body movements. The developers have mastered the ability to animate the characters in the cutscenes. The characters display a range of emotions that you rarely see done well outside of Square/Enix games or lavish Hollywood CGI movies like Toy Story or The Incredibles. No effort is made at photorealism, and thank goodness. The animation is done so well that you'll rarely wish anything looked more realistic.

The cutscene animators have done an outstanding job capturing subtle human emotions through facial expressions. My favorite moment occurred during a scene in which Cortez, accompanied by a pretty, young female punk rocker, looks down a deep pit behind a zombie-filled mansion and hears the growl of something big. The punk rock girl looks at Cortez, and, with an expression that is partly sly, partly scared and partly daring, says to him, "You go first." It's over in about two seconds, but the emotional impact of the moment is conveyed entirely through the expression on the punk rock girl's face, the expertly animated lip-syncing and the tense tone of her voice.

Weak voice acting has become less of a problem over the past couple of years as developers have turned to professionals to bring life to their characters. Following this trend, Timesplitters: Future Perfect has outstanding voice acting throughout the game. Every voice is unique and appropriate for the character speaking.

Where the game really distinguishes itself in terms of story is in its approach to humor. Like a Naked Gun movie, the game throws one gag after another at you. Some of the humor is verbal, as when Cortez tries to use a catch phrase throughout the game with mixed results. Much of the humor, however, is visual and easy to miss if you're not alert.

The game has an excellent co-op mode that lets two players play at the same time on a split screen. Be warned, however, that playing in co-op mode detracts a bit from the humor. Although the cinemas remain unchanged, the secondary characters, which the computer controls in single-player mode, do some hilarious things during gameplay in the one-player game. There's the malfunctioning robot, for example, that charges ahead of you in single-player mode, crowing in its mechanical voice about the superiority of machines and the certain death awaiting flesh-bag humans at its hands. In co-op mode, player two will control the robot without the benefit of its humorous comments.

Seven Days

Timesplitters: Future Perfect's single-player mode takes about 10 hours to complete and represents only about 7% of the game (at least, that's what the game indicated when I finished the single-player mode). I completed the single-player game in 90-minute sessions over seven days.

The game's controls don't take seven days to master. You can pick them up easily in a few minutes. The controls are as good as can be expected from an FPS on a console. As usual, if you've played Halo, you'll master the controls instantly. I played the Xbox version of the game, which generally provides better FPS controls than other consoles, although the Gamecube does okay with shooters. Still, you should keep this in mind if you're planning to play on the PS2.

Gameplay is fast-paced and exciting. You'll race through each level looking over your weapon in typical FPS style and killing everything that moves. The game has a nice variety of weapons, and the firearms are appropriate to whatever time period you're visiting. If you're in 1924, you'll use revolvers and single-action bolt rifles. In 2400, you'll use ray guns and plasma weapons.

The music and sound effects are fitting and well done, although nothing really stands out as exceptional. The music created the right mood at the right time, but I can't say I remember any of it from the single-player game. There is one challenge level (more on these later), however, involving monkeys dancing in a discotheque that just wouldn't work without the music chosen by the developer. The end-game cinema also features a real treat, both musically and visually. Sound effects are excellent throughout.

The in-game graphics don't fare quite as well as the previously mentioned cutscenes. The Timesplitters graphics engine is aging gracefully, but it's getting a bit long in the tooth, especially in terms of character detail. The environments were well animated and expertly drawn, but Cortez's hands, for example, looked chunky and flat, like four Twinkies mashed together. In addition, characters' lips don't move when they're speaking during gameplay. The aging in-game engine never bothered me, but graphics aren't my first priority. If top-of-the-line graphics are truly important to you, take notice.

The 4400 Things to Do with 12 Monkeys

After you've completed the single-player game, extensive multiplayer maps, challenge modes, unlockable characters, a mapmaker toolset and online capabilities round out the package.

The Xbox multiplayer maps are variants of the single-player levels. You can play them on- or offline. Online, you play over Xbox Live against other players. Finding an online game was easy and painless. Create a character, pick a game mode and map and off you go. I hit a few snags when I tried to find online games for modes that no one was playing at the time. I'm not sure whether this is an occasional problem or something endemic to certain types of multiplayer modes. I found plenty of people playing the virus mode, for example, which has you trying to avoid an infectious disease. If you become infected, your role is reversed and you have to spread the infection. I could not, however, find anyone playing vampire mode, which has you draining other players' energy to stay alive. You get to continue playing only so long as you kill other players to absorb their energy and keep your life bar from depleting.

The multiplayer modes are insidious little exercises in clever game design. Virus and Vampire mode were a lot of fun. My favorite has to be "Monkey Assistant" mode, which grants five killer monkeys to the player in last place. If you slip into last place, you suddenly have five murderous monkeys assisting you.

Once you pick a mode, you choose from about a dozen maps. One of the most clever maps takes place on an airborne dirigible. You can fight inside the blimp or on top of it. At all times, you have to be careful not to fall off the top of the blimp or through numerous holes in its floor that appear as the airship takes damage from the combat.

If you don't have an Xbox or an Xbox Live account, or you plan on playing the Playstation 2 or Gamecube versions, not to worry. All of the multiplayer maps are available offline for single-player action against bots or split-screen play against other players.

More than 150 unlockable characters are available for multiplayer use. Multiplayer characters range from the pedestrian to the novel to the bizarre. Pedestrian choices include the main characters from the single-player game, scantily clad women (and men) and generic soldiers. Novel choices include mummies, dinosaurs, zombie monkeys and enemies from the game. Bizarre choices are incredibly weird. You can play as "The Shoals," a tophat-wearing whale surrounded by an uncontained bowl of goldfish circling a central axis. Other characters include a giant white glove with a face on the back of its palm, Mr. Giggles, a freaky clown who laughs uncontrollably, and the Deerhaunter, a skinless zombie deer that walks upright and runs as fast the skinned undead Doberman pinschers in Resident Evil. The character selection screen extends the weirdness by presenting some characters in action-figure packaging, on pedestals or as flattened cardboard cutouts.

A whole series of strange and wonderful challenge modes are also available. If you're pressed for time, the challenge modes offer you several dozen unlockable experiences that you can complete in a couple of minutes. Try the "Behead the Undead" monkey zombie challenge levels. You're in a locked room with only a shotgun as zombie monkeys spawn in and lumber after you. Survive as long as you can. The "Avec la Brique" level requires you to break every glass item in a Japanese pagoda in three minutes and thirty seconds using only bricks. Finally, there is the pinnacle of Timesplitters: Future Perfect's challenge modes: "Electro Chimp Discomatic." Four monkeys kept alive with batteries are dancing in a discotheque. Your job? Keep their batteries charged with an electro-tool. If their power level reaches zero, they die. Every 45 seconds or so, four more monkeys hit the dance floor, which, by the way, occupies two floors. Now you have to race around like a lunatic keeping your monkeys charged up. By the time you hit 12 monkeys, it's an exercise in futility just finding them on the huge dual-level dance floor.

Then there's the mapmaker mode. Making a map is easy. Pick from a selection of tiles taken from the game's levels, snap them together, add in some enemies, weapons and items and start playing. The game also provides you with half a dozen multiplayer maps made by the developers using the toolkit to give you an idea of what is possible. I built a very basic but workable multiplayer map in 10 minutes.

If you have an Xbox Live connection, you can also upload your maps for other people to enjoy and download maps that other players have made. I downloaded two maps. There was an extremely difficult map that was supposed to be modeled after Halo. It didn't look anything like Halo and was way too hard for me. On the other hand, a map modeled after Doom was very impressive. Although it didn't look like Doom, it had the feel of the game, complete with colored key pickups and a rudimentary single-player story line (conveyed through text).

"Get Your Filthy Hands off Me, You Damn Dirty Ape"

Timesplitters: Future Perfect has a lot of monkeys. It's safe to say this game has more monkeys than any game other than Ape Escape. These aren't just any monkeys, either. There are zombie monkeys, robot monkeys, mutant monkeys, lab monkeys, disco monkeys, ninja monkeys and plain old throw-feces-at-you monkeys. If you love monkeys, this game is for you.

Lost Somewhere in Time

Aside from the aging graphics engine, Timesplitters: Future Perfect contains a few additional imperfections. The game uses a checkpoint save system in single-player mode. The checkpoints are numerous and well placed; I never had to replay more than a couple minutes of a level after dying and returning to my last checkpoint. I only mention it because the ability to save anywhere is a make-or-break feature for some FPS players. Also, the controls, while as good as can be expected on the Xbox controller, aren't as good as a mouse and keyboard. And with no PC version planned, it seems my computer-loving comrades won't get a chance to experience the game. That's a shame, because it would be interesting to see what kind of content PC modders could add to the mapmaker tools. Finally, my analog control stick stopped working on three occasions. I don't know whether that was a problem with my controller or the game code, but I was able to go back to my last checkpoint each time and continue playing.

The Future Is Perfect

Well, not really. Timesplitters: Future Perfect doesn't quite reach perfection with its aging graphics engine, imperfect console FPS controls, lack of a save-anywhere feature and small number of glitches. Its negatives, however, are vastly overshadowed by its positives and certainly not significant enough to keep it from getting a stellar rating. I never noticed the imperfections for more than a passing second or two, and that's mostly because I was looking closely while wearing my reviewer hat.

I've put in nearly 25 hours of game time with Timesplitters: Future Perfect and have completed only about 12 percent of the game, according to the statistics screen. Boredom has yet to set in, and I still get a kick out of watching the unlocked cinema scenes to experience the story again. Timesplitters: Future Perfect is one of my favorite console FPS games of 2005, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Now I have to go back and unlock some more challenge levels. As Cortez says, "It's time to split!"

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