Pros: Gampelay can be interesting.
Cons: Linear, "been there done that", graphics could be better
The bottom line: Time Shift offers a slightly new twist on the FPS concept ,but, doesn't capitalize on it enough to offer anything more than familiar gameplay.
If someone were to fire a bullet at you and you had technology that could increase the time of the impact from a fraction of a second to -lets say -30 years, the bullet would not be able to kill you because you would be able to dodge it. If you did not dodge the bullet and instead just stood there patiently for 30 years, the bullet would not be able to enter your body because it would not have the energy dissipation to tear through your clothes and flesh.

If you were to take something soft -lets say - a tennis ball, and fire it at someone at 30,000 feet per second, it would hit with a force that would not only kill the person but it would blow their body cavity inside out.

TIME SHIFT a new game from Sierra Entertainment, doesn't quite understand the theoretical mechanics behind time shifting, but, in this game, they aim to present you, the player, with a first person shooter that allows you to seemingly control time and use it to kill enemies in new, exciting and creative ways.


STORY ...what Story?

Time Shift takes place in a distopian, fascist state future where an evil dictator named Dr. Krone
(chronos - get it?) has stolen a time shifting suit, gone back in time and used his abilities to make himself powerful in the past - to be powerful in the future.
You, the protagonist, don a second suit of this type, and set off after his time tracks to find out how he got where he got and kill him long before he gets there.

Similar to Half Life 2, the movie Equilibrium and most distopian works, much of the story's tone is delivered as you walk around watching the bad guy broadcast his threats through large monitors:

"further attempts to ____________ will not be tolerated".


If you are the slightest bit confused, don't worry because the game makes no real attempt to bother reinforcing its storyline. What little shred of plot there is is nothing more than a hook to get you interested in killing look-a-like bad guys with creative weapons of death.

Crosbows fire a bolt which detonates inside the target, shredding their bodies to pieces.
Scatter guns are fully automatic shotguns that eviscerate foes at close range.
Karbines are fully automatic sub-machine guns which present your enemies with a hail of bullets. - combined with time freezing, the Karbine is a solid weapon choice throughout the game.
There are also rocket launchers, grenade launchers and more powerful machine guns.

Like most other FPS games out there, you simply move forward in a linear fashion killing anyone pointing a gun at you - just so you can move to the next area to kill even more guys with guns pointed at you. Yes, similar to most other FPS games there are vehicle sequences and turret sequences where you man a weapon but you are always limited in your approach to each situation. It is time this genre recieves the "open choice" freedom similar to Grand Theft Auto because when you are given weapons that are enjoyable to use, you resent being limited simply because you don't have any options but to move forward.

GAMEPLAY

The game is your typical First Person Shooter that snatches small amounts of HALO 2 gameplay (recharging health and sticky grenades to name a few) but infuses a time control mechanic to make it all work.

Your controller makes use of the face action buttons (X, B,A, Y) to control time pausing, time slow down and time reversing. Lets say you are spotted by an enemy guard. All you need to do is tap the Left Bumper & Y button to stop time, at which you can unleash a hail of bullets on him. When time is restored he is hit several times by flying lead and dies before he realizes he's been killed.
The time mechanic also allows for some creativity. You can pause time, run up to him, and then butt him in the face with your shotgun.

If you opt to snatch an enemy's weapon from him while time is paused, the developers of the game are sure to have him utterly confused when time is restored.
"What the hell? where is my gun?"
BOOM ! You've killed him.

THE ENEMY A.I. is pretty good (better than Halo 3's) and feels formidable. If you run and seek cover, the enemy will pursue you and he won't hesitate for a second to open fire on you. Enemy units will actually jump down from higher places (like fences), or attempt to outflank you - which are actions you rarely see in games like this - Half Life being one of the few.
The major problem however is that your ability to stop time severely handicaps the enemy because even if he does get a bead on you, he'll be killed in a flash. The enemy has very good accuracy from a distance but even if he manages to peg you a few times, all you have to do is duck out of the way and rest.
Your health recharges and his does not. You can take more bullets than he can. Just what do you expect him to do about that?

Another interesting sound byte comes when the enemies are amazed you seem to move so quickly:
"Hey, did you see that !?!"
"There is that guy with the suit I told you about !"

To balance things, your time powers are severely limited by a meter. The game gives you a longer amount of Time slowdown than it gives you of freezing or reversing.

The time control mechanic is the bread&butter of the game (hence the name) but aside from just killing bad guys before they know what hit them, many of the game's areas feature puzzles that you typically need to use the time control to solve.

Can't get past an electrified pool of water? Pause time and run through it.

Can't navigate a collapsing building? Pause time and run through it.

A door you need to get through closes too quickly? Pause time and run through it.

Unfortunately, the game's puzzles are fairly easy.
Because of puzzles found in games like Half Life and Portal you might expect a developer to think up clever time-based puzzles. I suppose in the interest of making the game accessible, none of the puzzles are very difficult and anyone from Teen - Adult can solve them. Ramping up the difficulty level only decreases the amount of bullets it takes to kill you - or increases the time required to recharge yourself.

Unfortunately your body is surrounded by a node that keeps you from reversing your own actions.
You can't reverse your own death, but, if you are quick enough, you can reverse time just in time to stop that last shot fired at you from killing you, or you can pause time giving yourself enough seconds to regenerate health. Your ability to manipulate time takes marginally longer to regenerate than your health. Regardless the situation, patience and mastery of time shifting can allow you to cruise through the game.

I was surprised by the number of bullets it takes to bring an enemy soldier down. You have to shoot them like you are the NYPD to kill them even though you'll probably be going for headshots 99% of the time. Granted, it appears as if there was a closeout sale on full protection, LEVEL III, body armor - since every enemy in the game dresses as if they are working for a bomb disposal unit - but, even when you get a clear shot at their faces it still takes too many rounds to kill.

In reality, if you could pause time or slow it down...firing a bullet at a time frozen target with the bullet's velocity and energy unaffected would hit them with the kinetic energy of a small bomb.
E still equals MC squared from what I remember.


GRAPHICAL GORE

Time Shift on the Xbox 360 in no way offers the graphical goodies of HALO 3, Gears of War or Rainbow 6 Vegas. The draw distances in Time Shift are shorter than those other titles and if you didn't know what system you were playing, you might think you were looking at Killzone or Soldier of Fortune on the PS2 or an older computer graphics accelerator.

Enemies as I have mentioned look like twins; friendly characters have skin as glossy and as plastic-looking as one of those cheap Bratz dolls; and many textures in the game look grainy or just plain dull. The weapons for example don't look anywhere near as good as they do in Halo 3 or Vegas.

What I do like about the game is the gore level. The weapons are satisfying to shoot and the enemy characters display ragdoll physics which makes many of their animations realistic. When you shoot them up, they die and lay in a pool of realistic blood with bloodied faces.
If you hit them with high powered explosives, you gibb their bodies - legs, arms, heads or body cavities are left littering the battlefield.

Especially nice is the blood spatters on your screen which occur when you shoot someone closer than 5 feet.

The gore level is not over the top but it does make plenty of sense considering the explosions are so boisterous. I am actually waiting for Soldier of Fortune: Payback to see some real gore but for the next few days of waiting, Time Shift will satisfy even the most insatiable FPS gamer blood lusts. Halo 3 should have had this level of gore considering how grenade happy players tend to be.


MULTIPLAY
Speaking of "grenade happy" the game's multiplay component is designed specifically around them. Rather than just having a Time Shift capable suit, you now mustPause, Rewind or Slow time down using chrono grenades.

This means that the multiplay basically comes down to someone tossing a Pause grenade at you and then doing their best to blow you away.
That is not all-bad however.
There are some new game modes featured such as "King of Time" (similar to Oddball of Halo) where you attempt to gain control of the Time Sphere, a device that makes you immune to chrono grenades while you go on a kill spree.
There are also the typical Deathmatch game elements: Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and tourney one vs. one.

Hosts may set up special mutators which allow them to control the weapon types, ammo amounts - or player abilities such as running speed or jumping height. This can make games more interesting, but, you may end up in an annoying match where everyone begins with a Rocket Launcher with unlimited ammo
(just as bad as the bad-ole days in Halo2).



OVERALL

Time Shift delivers on time shifting but it doesn't feel like much more than most FPS games we've already been playing. I do enjoy playing it more than HALO 3 I must say. Unlike Master Chief and his zero durability, snail paced, unremarkable abilities - Time Shift allows you to *whup* enemies in ways which justify your supposed super suit's offerings.

SOLDIER OF FORTUNE: PAYBACK where art thou ?