Reviewed: May 15, 2005
Reviewed by: Mat Houghton

Publisher
Electronic Arts

Developer
Free Radical Design

Released: March 21, 2005
Genre: FPS
Players: 2 / 8
ESRB: Mature

9
10
10
10
9.5

Supported Features:

Sgt. Cortez is just such a guy.

He’s the main character in TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. He’s not your typical hardened space marine. Cortez can handle foul zombies, robots, enemy soldiers, and horrible genetic mutations all with the aplomb of your typical space marine. What makes Cortez stand out from the crowd is not that he’s faster, smarter, or can shoot better. He stands out because he can boogie.

So get ready to jump through time – sometimes to give yourself a leg up, make new friends, and perhaps place the entire human race at the edge of extinction just so you can finally save it.

“It’s time to split!”

We’ll start slowly here, so you can get a good picture of what’s going on. The story mode for Future Perfect picks up pretty much where TS2 left off, with one conspicuous exception (listen closely to what the soldiers say near the beginning). If you didn’t play TS2, go buy it, and then you’ll get the gag. There are thirteen stages to work your way through in story mode. Please note I haven’t said single player mode, this is because all of the story mode missions can be played through cooperatively just like in the last game. Missions in story mode last from 6-8 minutes for the really short ones, to about a half an hour for the long ones, so you’re looking at a fairly quick run through as far as this mode goes, though there are three difficulty settings to play which give you some further challenges (or shooting sprees, depending on where you started).

This doesn’t sound impressive to start with, but we haven’t gotten to the time traveling parts yet. Every couple of missions Cortez jumps through time in a continuing search for the source of the time crystals, and every time he jumps he inhabits a new… no wait, that was the last game. This game every “leap” means a new era and a new story, so you go from helping secret agent Harry Tipper rescue his girl from an evil mastermind in the 60’s to helping Jo-Beth Casey investigate a zombie infested mansion in the 90’s to fighting off our robot oppressors in the future. Every time jump isn’t just a change of venue, it is a complete change in both the look and feel of the game.

Ok, so yeah, you can hop through time from era to era blowing up things as you go along, but that isn’t why everyone wants to travel through time. People want time travel, so they can go back a week and tell themselves not to eat that ham sandwich, or to not call that girl back. All that distant past and far future stuff is great for vacations, but if it won’t help me get my taxes done on time what good is it? Future Perfect comes through with just the right solution, because Cortez hops through worm holes again and again in order to help himself out, be that just handing over a key, or manning the turret on a tank while the other is driving.

So that’s story mode in a nutshell, but don’t walk away thinking its all fun and roses. There are a couple of things to be aware of. First, while you can replay the story missions on different difficulty settings, unlike the last game you don’t get any extra mission objectives on the harder modes. Fortunately the missions are a blast so it’s not that big a deal to run through them again, but I would have liked to have seen them keep the added depth that was there in the last game.

Second, co-op mode for the story missions is put together a little awkwardly. Playing through solo you get a lot more story, basically because you have a sidekick with their own little routes through the levels, etc. Co-op just plays flatter, though it is still fun because it’s two of you against the masses.

The other problem is that it becomes a little awkward when one of you reaches a checkpoint, because the other is instantly teleported to the checkpoint as well. Not only that, but if you backtrack and go through again, it teleports again, so you can easily see the chaos and disorientation this will foment.

The game isn’t done though; you still have 21 challenges and 27 arcade league rampages to get through. Now by challenges I don’t mean kill all the enemies, or finish stage three in under a minute. The challenges are grouped in sets of three, all with a similar kind of theme, Behead the Undead being a fairly straightforward example. What makes the challenges fun is that it isn’t all just run and gun, yeah there are missions where that will come in handy, but the fun comes in during the challenges that are just wacky, like making sure all the Cyber Monkeys keep dancing without making them explode, or Cat Driving (don’t ask, it’s weirder than you think).

The arcade league is more a test of your combat prowess, as you are put through a test of your multiplayer skills against bots in every different multiplayer mode the game has to offer. You do have certain minimum scores to meet in order to move on, so strap on a side arm, or a rocket launcher, and start shooting.

Now, the reason you’re going to all the trouble to play through the story mode, arcade league and complete all the challenges is to unlock the cool stuff to show off to your friends in versus mode. That’s right, when all is said and done, you still can frag your friends to your heart’s content. Not only that, but you can customize the kind of weapons that will appear, the number and what kind of bots are available, and even a couple of unique cheats. Also, you have all the different modes available, such as Capture the Bag, Assault, and Monkey Assistant (where in the player in last place gets some help from monkeys with rocket launchers).

Faces aren’t the only things worth looking at around here. If the Splitter mother ship blowing up doesn’t win you over (though technically I think it should atomize you at that range) then there aren’t too many explosions that will. Toss in some nice heat shimmers, electrical discharges, swelling heads, and ghost gun vision and you have an effects package worth talking about.

Also, while the level designs are fairly simple in content, they are very rich in context, with just the right hints here and there to make you feel at home in whatever era you may be in. In keeping with this new look and feel on each level there aren’t stock bad guys who appear in every level. Each one has enemies very much in keeping with the theme (oh and be sure to read their bios, Robot Lewis Stevenson is perhaps my favorite), so you aren’t just slogging through Mars fighting the same demons over and over again for no apparent reason.

This sort of attention is paid to all the voice work in the game, down to the little rants that drunken guards go on, and conversations you over hear while in disguise. Perhaps the best example is the robot sidekick you pick up for the last few missions of the game. He starts off the typical robot straight man, but then picks up a virus and goes completely gung-ho robot marine. It’s hysterical, how can you listen to a robot yelling “Eat my laser! Eat it!” and not laugh.

Music is fairly localized, but that’s ok because most often you can’t hear it over the rattle of machine gun fire anyway. It is good when you can hear it, and again very fitting for whatever era that they have put you in. Also, the title music – the stuff playing when you’re on the main menu – is simple but never fails to make me anticipate the insanity that will soon ensue.