by Zac - July 8, 2004

Time Splitter 2's plethora of multiplayer options and Goldeneye-esque objective based missions greatly outweigh its mediocre visuals and make the game well worth your time.

In the future, there will be a war between humans and aliens, or so says Time Splitters 2. In an attempt to win the war via fairly unorthodox means, the aliens decide to travel back in time to various points in history and alter humanity's time-line. Consequently, most of the story takes place in the past and involves fixing what the aliens have changed. As the actual war takes place in the 2400s, the 'past' isn't just the Wild West or 1930s Chicago, but also includes some futuristic locales, on Earth and off.

The story-missions, especially the first one, seem like throwbacks to Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. The structure and gameplay is nearly identical. For those who haven't played Rare's classic Nintendo 64 shooters, missions are objective-driven, with a blend of outright run-and-gun gameplay and some more stealthy (though not to the degree of Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell), slower-paced, and thought-requiring moments. Typically, the storyline serves as a device to place you in various locations and settings or give you access to certain weapons, rather than actually driving the game. Most notably, the time travel makes everything from crossbows and 19th century revolvers to futuristic laser rifles available over the course of the game. The changes in scenery and weaponry provides a lot of variety typically unavailable in other shooters.

The story-missions will probably only take 5-10 hours to complete, given that there are only 10 of them. However, there are quite a few singleplayer challenges which probably double or triple the length of the singleplayer experience. The challenges generally pit you against multiplayer bots and give you an objective, such as killing a certain number of them without dying or surviving for a certain amount of time. Completing these missions will unlock multiplayer maps, modes, and characters. Once unlocked, these maps, modes, and characters help to provide arguably the most fully customizable multiplayer shooter on Gamecube.

One to four players can compete in over a dozen gametypes, including Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, in addition to more unconventional modes involving everything from flames to teleporting monkeys. Pretty much every aspect of multiplayer can be modified and with the map-maker tool, which lets you create some fairly detailed multplayer maps, Time Splitters 2 delivers some of the best multiplayer FPS action on any console.

The game developers must have gone back in time, just like the aliens

As previously mentioned, Time Splitter's visuals are lacking. While not so bad that they are distracting, there is a serious lack of polygons and detail. To be perfectly clear, the game looks like it was released for the Dreamcast. As the game was released on all three consoles, one must assume it was built with Playstation 2's limited hardware in mind, but even for Playstation 2, the game isn't pretty.

Fortunately, the audio is better. The music reflects your location quite well, and since there are tons of varying locales, there is plenty of variety in the music. In addition, the guns sound good and the voice acting is solid.

The Verdict

Ultimately, Time Splitters 2 is easily recommended to fans of Rare's classics and those just looking for good multiplayer FPS action. While not ground-breaking like the games it takes inspiration from, Time Splitters provides an enjoyable experience that makes it easy to look past the lacking visuals.