by Erik Pearsall - April 4, 2005

Sgt. Cortez is back with the latest installment of the TimeSplitters adventure. Our elite space marine joins familiar characters from the first two TimeSplitters games as he time travels back and forward from the 20th to the 25th century. Humanity has been pushed to the brink during the wars with the Timesplitter aliens, and Sgt. Cortez must fight across time to combat another time-traveling threat to save the present and guarantee that there will be a future.

Play with Yourself

Ah yes, the First Person Shooter. TimeSplitters: Future Perfect has a Goldeneye/Perfect Dark-esque feel to it, possibly in tribute to Rare�s contribution to the world of First Person Shooters. It might also have to do with the fact that many Free Radical staff are ex-Rares who contributed to the production of those two games. Future Perfect even has a level where you are fighting through a train, a throwback to Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64.

The storyline is intriguing and involved, and plays out more as an adventure game than a straight shoot-em-up game. The game opens with Sgt. Cortez in possession of an important package: nine time crystals, which you gathered from each of the levels in TimeSplitters 2. These crystals make for the ability to send Cortez to different periods in history in an attempt to find out where the Timesplitter aliens originate from, who created them, and how to stop the war before it occurs. Throughout story mode you continually have a teammate accompanying you on your journey through time, and usually, it is yourself from another time. I had some difficulty accepting some of the instances where Sgt. Cortez meets himself by going back in time. It is a must for the gamer to have an open mind while playing however�as is demanded in all time travel tales. Its best to just leave the paradoxes alone, and focus on attaching the silencer to drop that guard who is making advances on his buddy in the next room!

The game controls are fully customizable in the game options, to suit whatever setup the gamer is used to for his FPS needs. I as a gamer loathe having to adopt a whole new controller method for each different game, and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect saves me from that.

The score in the category of gameplay is a seven for one reason: the AI. The AI is very simple for a game of such brilliance as Future Perfect. The gamer can avoid being hit if he wobbles from side to side, as the AI does not �lead� with their weapons. Furthermore, the enemies do not take cover while being shot at, instead the gamer can run circles around them. The verdict is that while this would have been the acceptable norm for games several years ago, the bar has been raised by other FPS since then.

Oooo, Shiny.

Graphics on the PlayStation 2 have always been, at least in the writer�s mind, plagued with difficulties as compared to the other systems available on the market. A blurred sprite stretched over an enclosed polygon makes for a hand, and many of the games have visible problems with masking, leaving pixilated edges around a figure. TimeSplitters: Future Perfect however seems to have shattered that prejudice in my mind. The graphics of the game are amazing. The facial expressions during cut scene animatics do well to produce the attitude for our quizzically humorous Sgt. Cortez. The characters fit together well, and aren�t a mishmash of polygons placed together with anchor points�instead, the figures appear to flow with a natural, liquid movement.

It�s Time to Split!

The sounds of Future Perfect was another of its strong points. The voice acting all-over was superb, with Tom Clarke Hill voicing the part of Sgt. Cortez. The spoken word ties in well with the animatics, forging each character into his or her role in the game. Nothing is overdone in the game, sound effects exist to support the scene and do not take over or control the gamers� attention. Music playing in the background plays through the whole spectrum from upbeat to creepy depending on the setting, and it meshes really well with the game�its an ambiance in the background that doesn�t detract from game play, and that is good in my book.

Fun and Humorous

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect is an incredibly fun game. The game is very humorous, almost to the point of spoofy with its comical jokes. I beat the story mode in one day, and to my surprise, my player progress was only at 20 percent complete. The game returns with familiar Arcade and Challenge modes, where the player will replay again and again, attempting to earn bronze, silver, gold, and the elusive platinum rewards which unlock up to 150 playable characters, new weapons, and cheats. The writer would have given Timesplitters: Future Perfect an 9 in the category of funfactor, had it not have been for the lackluster AI, which governs the enemies, and your team mates in story mode, arcade mode, and challenge mode if you are limited to playing single player.

In Mother Russia, Time Splits You!

Half Life 2�s �Gravity Gun� makes an appearance in the form of the �Temporal Uplink,� a nifty little arm-mounted device that displays the map, and lets an Anya character give you advice through time. You can pick up boxes, power-ups, and enemies� heads, making them into launchable projectiles to smite mine enemies. I had to resist the urge to quote Darth Vader each time a box landed home on some hapless guard. The familiar mapmaker feature returns in this latest TimeSplitters game as well. It takes a bit of time to learn how to do it well, but the results are rewarding when you waste your best friend with your monkey gun on the new level you constructed. I am a stickler for games that function with the multi-tap, because this means more people that I can hunt. Up to four players can join with me in glorious battle on one screen. There is also the online connection for those who like their whole screen for themselves, as they play up to 16 rivals online.

Future Perfect Tense

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect yields an appealing game for die hard fans of the types of first person shooters which forged and molded the genre. And it has character�The game kept me smiling the whole way through with its spoof-like humor. If you�ve played a TimeSplitters game before, or you loved Goldeneye, go get this game. The pros of this game overtake the AI problem, and make this game more than a worthwhile buy for First Person Shooter lovers of the Playstation 2. And the game has cyber chimps�Robot monkeys. You cannot go wrong with robot monkeys.