TimeSplitters: Future Perfect
It's always a sad thing when a series that has consisted of such perfect games as what constitutes the TimeSplitters series meets and early end. While working on the latest title, TimeSplitters 4, Free Radical Design in the UK shut down due to financial reasons, leaving what we can only imagine would have been the best TimeSplitters game yet, lost in the ether.
Before everything did go out with the bathwater though, Free Radical did make three TimeSplitters games, each of increasing quality. The third title, Future Perfect, was pretty close to it. Following all the trends of the previous title this game contains fantastic animation, a great soundtrack, super solid local multiplayer and is generally one of the better FPS games of all time.
Free Radical of course had quite the head start. Composed of ex-Rare employees who worked on GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64, Free Radical had an already ample handle on how to make a great First Person Shooter. All they had to do was refine what they already knew and with that, Future Perfect ended up quite polished.
Moreso than TimeSplitters 2, Future Perfect contained a much better story with much better characters. Where in 2, you were a different character in each time period and so there was little time to build them up. But in Future Perfect, the story follows a Sergeant Cortez, who jumps around time, bumping into other interesting protagonists who help him in his journey to stop the TimeSplitters from being created.
Although I ended up buying Future Perfect for the original Xbox and didn't get a chance to enjoy the local multiplayer as much as I did the previous title on the GameCube, I did play it enough to be reminded of just how fantastic a job FRD did on this game. It contains a huge list of playable characters, each with their own animations and in some cases, special advantages during combat. The multiplayer contains a nice selection of different game variations and some fantastic level designs. When you can't just keep playing GoldenEye forever, having a game like this pop up a decade later really solves that problem.
In conclusion, TimeSplitters = Good.
But seriously, if you've ever seriously enjoyed GoldenEye or Perfect Dark in the past and somehow missed out on the TimeSplitters series, you owe it to yourself to see where it has been succeeded. Future Perfect is simply FPS gaming refined and we can only hope that one day someone will pay the right people to sit down and complete TimeSplitters 4 so we can all continue our lives as they were intended.
That or at least re-release the series in HD. That would be just perfect.
Before everything did go out with the bathwater though, Free Radical did make three TimeSplitters games, each of increasing quality. The third title, Future Perfect, was pretty close to it. Following all the trends of the previous title this game contains fantastic animation, a great soundtrack, super solid local multiplayer and is generally one of the better FPS games of all time.
Free Radical of course had quite the head start. Composed of ex-Rare employees who worked on GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64, Free Radical had an already ample handle on how to make a great First Person Shooter. All they had to do was refine what they already knew and with that, Future Perfect ended up quite polished.Moreso than TimeSplitters 2, Future Perfect contained a much better story with much better characters. Where in 2, you were a different character in each time period and so there was little time to build them up. But in Future Perfect, the story follows a Sergeant Cortez, who jumps around time, bumping into other interesting protagonists who help him in his journey to stop the TimeSplitters from being created.
In conclusion, TimeSplitters = Good.
But seriously, if you've ever seriously enjoyed GoldenEye or Perfect Dark in the past and somehow missed out on the TimeSplitters series, you owe it to yourself to see where it has been succeeded. Future Perfect is simply FPS gaming refined and we can only hope that one day someone will pay the right people to sit down and complete TimeSplitters 4 so we can all continue our lives as they were intended.
That or at least re-release the series in HD. That would be just perfect.
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