After playing the TimeShift demo quite a while back I finally got around to trying out the full game. I did not bother playing the multiplayer since I’ve got plenty of other multiplayer games I’m already playing, but I did really enjoy playing through the single player campaign. The ability to pause, stop, or rewind time for a limited period makes for some great tactics. Sure, pausing time, shooting a few guys and then restarting time to watch them all fall down is fun. But, more fun than that is pausing time, steeling the enemies weapon, restarting time and taking them out with their own gun. For longer range fights, like against a sniper or rocket launcher guy, slowing down time use their slow movement to your advantage to get a headshot. Get stuck by a grenade? Rewind time and have it fly back toward the person who throw it at you. I think you get the point…the time control abilities make for some really fun things to do. The plot of the single player campaign actually would make for a pretty cool movie. Here is the plot basics. There are two suits that allow for time travel. Bad guy takes one and goes back to rewrite history with himself in charge. You go back to stop him. In going back your suit has some issues so it can only temporarily control time, and you can’t go back home until you stop the bad guy. You join the rebellion against bad guy and work to take him down. Once you finally get him you can use his suit’s components to go back to your time. No, not very original , but it could be done well.

There are a few driving sequences thrown into the game, but they were not as bas as a lot of the driving sequences in other shooters. You get to drive a quad while using your time control abilities. I had a lot of fun pausing time and then running over enemies who stood in the middle of the road. Really, though, most of the driving parts were short and far between. There are also a few time based puzzles you have to get through to progress through the game. Most of them involve pausing time to get past lasers or rewinding time to ride conveyor belts backwards into deep parts of the base. These few little annoyances were not enough to deter me from enjoying the game.

The single player campaign just about the right length. The weapons all have a good damage amounts and nice secondary functions. This was one of the few shooters that gives you a flame-thrower that is fun to use. The few other games that give you a flame-thrower all seem to make the flames only go about 4 feet in from of you, but the one in TimeShift has a good range. Combine that with the ability to pause time and you can set all the enemies in a room on fire pretty quickly.

The one thing I did do that was multiplayer related was to host a dedicate server. There is an achievement for hosting a total time of 48 hours of dedicate server. I basically left my 360 hosting a room over night for a couple nights to get it. I get why the developers would put this in there. It encourages people to host rooms for their game, but in reality it would have been better if the achievement was for hosting a dedicated server or a regular room. Then I could have played part of that time as well. Instead I had to have my 360 running but was not able to play on it. Plus, given the Xbox 360’s chances for overheating and causing a Red Ring of Death trying for this achievement is just asking for trouble. Fortunately, my Xbox 360 survived the ordeal (knock on wood) but if an Xbox 360 were already having trouble this achievement would probably put it over the edge.

I’d recommend TimeShift be played through by anyone who is a fan of first person shooters. It is not the best shooter around or anything, but the time controls and weapons make for a fun game. Plus, the achievements for beating levels are stackable (like every game should be) so every level you finished can give multiple achievements.