TimeSplitters 2 Review (PS2) | Push Square

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The first-person shooter has gone through many changes over the years. It took a long time to perfect the formula on consoles; we didn’t receive Call of Duty right out of the gate, oh no. There were fundamental experiences that shaped the course of history for the genre, be it Wolfenstein 3D, GoldenEye, Halo, or beyond. Smack dab in that tumultuous period, developer Free Radical Design deployed a trio of titles, between 2000 to 2005. The TimeSplitters series saw three releases before quietly disappearing into the night, never to be heard from again. Despite a concerted fan effort, and many people calling for its return, nothing ever materialized.

Thanks to PS Plus Premium emulation, the entire franchise is playable once again on modern hardware, including what was back in the day a formative title for this writer: Timesplitters 2. But is the game up to snuff in a modern setting, or does it belong in the past whence it came? The answer is a bit of both

You play as Sgt. Cortez, a soldier of the future tasked with stopping the TimeSplitters, an alien race trying to eradicate humanity at any cost. You, along with your compatriot Cpl. Hart, must retrieve many time crystals that the TimeSplitters have strewn across, well, time. Cortez will inhabit the bodies of a variety of people to accomplish this mission, not dissimilar to Quantum Leap.

This is used brilliantly as a framework to deliver a series of disjointed missions that have fun with a wacky setting or trope. You’ll encounter the Wild West, visit Notre Dame, see an Aztec Temple, and witness an alien conflict on Mars — the game goes all out. While the ten campaign levels are fun and silly, they serve as a jumping-off point. Most of the levels are quite short, and implement many dated mechanics, such as obtuse objectives, cascading fail states that you won’t notice until after you mess up, and even mandatory stealth sections.

The level design isn’t all that’s dated, though, as the actual act of aiming is atrocious.