Reviewed: January 22, 2003
Reviewed by: Mat Houghton and
Dave Larson
Publisher
Eidos Interactive
Developer
Free Radical Design
Released: October 8, 2002
Genre: FPS
Players: 4/16
ESRB: Mature
10
10
10
10
10.0
Supported Features:
So you think you’re tough. So you think you’re bad. You think that you’re the fastest gun in the West, and you’ve proven it in games like Halo, Tribes and, in olden times, James Bond: Goldeneye. Well, you’ve now entered the ranks of the Galactically Stupid, because you couldn’t be more wrong. Welcome to Time Splitters 2 (TS2) — here’s your KY Jelly because you’re going to need it.
Brought to you by Free Radical and Eidos Interactive, TS2 is a multiplayer, first-person shooter (FPS) that places your characters in a space station in the future, trying to stop the malignant Time Splitters from destroying humanity’s past. To accomplish your heroic deed, you’ll utilize their own time portals to go to the relevant time periods, shoot the baddies down like the dogs they are (“Die Old Yeller!”), and retrieve the time crystals, which will stop these aliens from messing around in our history.
And, in Scott Bakulish fashion, you’ll assume different identities in each time period. Mat has fallen for Viola, a jester chick with more flash than sense from the chapel of Notre Dame, and Dave has come to appreciate the splendor of Harry Tipper, a mutant cross between Leisure Suit Larry and James Bond that is on a mission in a nuclear power plant during the 1970s.
In addition to the Story Mode, which you can play with two players cooperatively, there is the single or multiplayer Arcade Mode of pure evil, and the eternally aggravating Challenge Mode. The challenges are actually interesting; they involve completing certain tasks within a time limit. For example, you need to shoot X many cardboard targets in 1 minute, or hit enough clay monkeys (no pigeons in this game, sorry) to get 1,000 pts.
The arcade mode in single player has you trying to obtain certain goals, such as shooting 60 ducks (big Donald-duck nightmares armed with shotguns) in three minutes. The purpose in playing these arcades and challenges is simple; success allows you to unlock new characters, modes of play and multiplayer maps. TS2 also allows you to utilize the PS2 modem to hook up with Polish Mine Detectors (affectionately referred to as PMD’s), otherwise known as other human players. The final icing on the cake is that TS2 has a mapmaker function that allows you to create your own levels. While neither reviewer spent a great deal of time with the mapmaker, it was easy to use and fairly complete.
Time Splitters 2 Features:
- Two player cooperative story mode.
- Fast-paced multiplayer mode with up to 16 players (with I-link), or 4 players and 10 CPU Bots.
- 10 huge multiplayer environments.
- 16 different multiplayer games, such as Capture the Bag and Assault.
- 100 playable characters, including the infamous Handyman, Badass Cyborg and the Gingerbread Man!
- Over 20 different weapons, with customizable weapon choices.
The first thing that struck the reviewers was the smoothness of play. Unseen since the days of Goldeneye, movement, weapon tracking and the loading screens are all effortless. Utilizing both sticks on the controller, it took about an hour to become truly proficient with the controls, but even Dave, a die-hard d-pad fan grudgingly concedes that this system just kicks ass. It first seems counter-intuitive, but after a few beat-down sessions and misfires, both reviewers have come to love, even depend on those precious, precious buttons…yes, my precious….gollum!
Before you get too excited, like us, keep one very important fact in mind: this game is hard. I’m not talking about hitting a womp rat in a T-16 in Beggar’s Canyon, but more like surviving a night on Hoth without a warm, cuddly, squishy, smelly Tauntaun handy. After logging a minimum of 40 hours on the Story Mode alone, we have yet to beat the first mission on Hard difficulty. We have also still to beat about 15 percent of the Challenges and 30 percent of the Arcade missions, which will unlock all of the playable characters and boards.
Listen up boys and girls; if you doubt our talents, let us just say that the two of us were the Purdue University Champ-eens of Goldeneye in our day, and that’s no easy statement. Just think of all of those dorm rats spending hours and hours on that game, and we proved to be the biggest losers of them all! In short, bring it on, cupcake. Anytime, anywhere. And if we’re nice, we won’t even tattoo women’s breasts on your back.
For those of you who are getting tired of the same ol’, same ol’ in FPS titles, there are 16 different game modes in the multiplayer Arcade setting, from your typical Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch to more esoteric choices such as Vampire mode (kill to live), Shrink mode (every time you die your character shrinks as, does your voice), and Mat’s personal favorite, Monkey Assistant (the player in last gets up to five helper monkeys so they can catch up).
The Arcade sessions also have a veritable cornucopia of awards to hand out. From “Brain Surgeon” to “Hypochondriac”, there are over 20 awards and booby prizes (“Pathetic Shot”) to be had. TS2 earns it’s first boo of the night in the fact that it doesn’t show the individual kill counts for any team game. It’s all about the pride, folks!
The Challenges, too, are fun. They are polished scenarios that test and improve your skill, without the direct combat that multiplayer and arcade offer. While Dave has always been the marksman, and Mat the assaulter, we had difficulty with the challenges that were our specialty. Dave especially despises the board where he had to shoot the melons off of the monkey’s head without hitting the monkeys, and Mat has developed a recurring nightmare of flaming (no, NOT gay) zombies chasing him in the jungles of the ancient Aztecs.
This is the only point where Mat and Dave couldn’t agree. Things like scenery and background effects are well done. Also, the zoom function is quite excellent in this game as well. Mat, though, gives TS2 a perfect ten on graphics. He particularly admired the facial expressions on the intro movies for the Story mode. The movements were smooth, and the artists did a fantastic job of showing real emotions on the characters’ faces. He also expressed an unwholesome interest in the playable character Cyberfairy, but he says he really does like women. Hmph.
Dave gives the graphics a shoddy nine out of ten because the characters look a little “cartoony.” While the point can be made that this was their intent, it’s sometimes difficult to shoot Venus Starr, whose breasts are bigger than the minigun I’m currently emptying into her magnificent rack. Surprisingly, there is a decided lack of blood. This is both a blessing and a curse. For parents concerned about violence in games, I’ll say while this is a game based on violence, in many ways it is the same type of violence one finds in Road Runner cartoons. Heck, Wiley Coyote ought to be a subatomic puddle of goo by now.
However, considering the many FPS games on the shelf, and the realism they convey, this game falls a little short. This game also has a rain effect in some boards. This effect is done too well—the rain splatters on the “camera” that you’re looking through, but that sometimes makes it tough to dodge that large mobster named Braces pointing double Tommy Guns at your face. Also, a few boards have a combo of weird lighting and lines that make seeing individuals tough. One, in particular, requires that the player(s) tail a girl through the board, and there were a number of times we couldn’t see her, even close up. Regardless, the graphics are phenomenal in this game.
Well, every first person shooter needs a good variety of screams and bangs, and TS2 certainly doesn’t disappoint in this area, either. First off, the weapon sounds are great. From the heavy bangs of the Tommy Guns to the ear-beating blasts of the boomsticks, er shotguns, from the explosions of grenades and rockets and the whisper-ping that brings the realization that someone is pointing a sniper rifle at you, the sounds are dead-on for the weapons.
Each character also has individual sounds. Dave admires the death scream of the Ringmistress, and Mat always cheers for the malicious Monkey-giggle. Even more amusing, if the character shrinks, their pitch increases accordingly.
This game also has a huge array of background music for the various boards. Each board has it’s own music for the game, and in multiplayer modes you can actually choose which music you have in your background, regardless of the board your are playing on. They have even tailored the music to the time period the board is based on; the Chicago board has Jazz music, the 1970’s reactor board has disco, the Aztec board has jungle music, and the futuristic boards have some pretty cool rock tunes. The movie sounds are complete with dialogue, clear, resonant and credible as human voices, and the accessory sounds are clear, so it’s easy to tell if you picked up a new weapon.
Are you kidding? We feel that TS2, retailing at $49.99 is without a doubt the best bang for the buck you can get for anything produced in the last three years. First of all, the story mode has 10 long levels, which at higher difficulties are no walk in the park. Also, each difficulty level changes the boards enough that it worth at least investigating them.
The Arcades and Challenges that unlock the characters are immensely interesting, and range from laughably easy to demonically hard and have something for all tastes. Of course, if you are at all like the reviewers, you may get disgusted with the difficulty and put the game away, but give it a day and you’ll be frantically pushing buttons in front of your TV in a furious attempt to unlock one…more…character! TS2 does a great job of rewarding your efforts. Almost everything you accomplish will unlock something, so you rarely complete a challenge and feel that your time is wasted.
Lastly, the multiplayer mode has literally endless potential. Pending your work and familial requirements, you will soon find yourself with a whole plethora of NSTIW (“No shoot, there I was…”) stories that you will take chagrin and pride in. For example, Mat is still particularly proud of his “High Priest Bomb”, where he placed a remote mine on his own teammate, the High Priest, and detonated him in the midst of three enemies. Dave recalls with fondness catching Chastity in a back flip with the grenade. Watching her literally fly off the screen to his right, upside down still give him the giggles. Not only can you have four-player murder-death-kill fun at home, if you don’t have any friends, or they have jobs, you can play online to get your homicidal impulses curbed.
There are far too many good things to say about Time Splitters 2 than can be written here. It has simply achieved everything an FPS can shoot for. Get it..."Shoot for"...Eh? Okay, okay, puns aside, sure, you could have some more levels, guns, or characters, but the creators of TS2 have included more than enough to keep the long-term interest of this game.
Finally, an FPS game that has a fun and effective two-player cooperative mode in the story, and a multiplayer mode that is the tops of anything on the market for console games, TS2 is the pinnacle for which FPS’s of the future will try to attain. Enough reading. If you don’t have TS2, get it. If you already own it, shouldn’t you be trying to get that next character unlocked?