Truth be told, I didn’t quite finish Timeshift. I fought all the way to the final boss battle and after trying it about a dozen times gave up in disgust and read a gamefaqs.com summary of what happens at the end. Up until that point I had by and large had a pretty good time with Timeshift though, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an inexpensive first person shooter. It’s a bit gimmicky and the plot is disposable nonsense about a stolen time travel suit, but the core run and gun gameplay is solid, the level design is ok, the graphics and sound are decent, and the gimmicky time powers are actually kind of fun.

There’s a ~10 minute video of the gameplay below to give you a sense of it. I played the game on the Xbox360 but it’s available for other platforms as well including the PC. I never tried the multiplayer so I can’t comment on that. Its main distinction from other FPS is the time power suit you have, which gives you 3 powers you can activate (slow, reverse, stop) which are tied to a power bar which recharges over time. Many of the game’s levels require the use of one of the powers to progress, but it dumbs things down by helpfully auto-selecting the appropriate power so long as you hit the activate button at the right time. At first this annoyed me but I pretty quickly figured out the game was going for full on non-stop action and this design choice fit in with that pretty well – why stop to think, just keep shooting son and it will all work out. That plus the fact that firing off your slo-mo or stop time power and laying a beatdown on the enemies never got old  and was a blast slowly raised my opinion of the game as I played through it. I’d give it a 4 out of 5. You can score the console version for $10-20 used and I’ve seen the PC version for under $10 in bargain racks. At that price the game’s definitely worth checking out if it sounds like it’s up your alley. Make me an offer an you can have my copy for the 360 – I paid $20 for it. Here’s the video:

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/Oy5PJ449coA&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999