Current Events > Timesplitters 2 hasn't aged great

(+) Yeah! (+)

I look back on the game fondly and it's not bad or anything but yeah it certainly feels like an old game now.

It's funny the stuff that I look back fondly on I just struggle to care about now. The story mode? It's just okay. Just feels a bit flat. Aiming is wonky and pulling off a stealth headshot feels awkward but spraying and praying feels good enough. I remember thinking that the increased objectives on harder difficulties were really cool. Wow extra challenging content? Awesome! But most of it isn't. It's just randomly destroying shit as you go past them. Missed one? Oh better walk your ass back through the now empty level and get on that. It's funny how you can appreciate how games lock your progress if you miss an objective now but that isn't here. Then you've got some moments where it's just sort of unclear what you're supposed to do. Which is annoying considering most missions ony have one checkpoint but for the most part they're pretty short.

From memory the story is improved with Future Perfect by making Cortez more of a character. Here I'm not entirely sure how time travel works. Each story mission you play as a new character who doesn't seem to be aware of time travel at all but hey it's just an afterthought.

But it's the arcade mode that really makes me feel more jaded. I had a lot of fun with the arcade challenges back as a teen. You see the basic feedback loop of the game is to unlock new characters and stages to play in the story mode, arcade leagues or challenge modes. Which fed into the local multiplayer. But man the arcade league nowdays is mostly boring. I did one yesterday where the goal was to kill 25 bots with rocket launchers in 5 minutes. I killed 43. Just 5 minutes of mindlessly killing robots. No way to make that quicker. Nothing really to work towards. This is the easy league and I know from memory it gets harder but then the randomness of it all would probably make those frustrating. The lack of jump button makes it feel incredibly sluggish now too.

It still has its moments and I'll always have a soft spot for it but damn. Halo in comparison I can go back to and still have an awesome time.

Any game with Goldeneye-esque controls did not age great tbh. I tried playing the co-op campaign of TS2 a while back and it was really unenjoyable.

Punished_Blinx posted...

Here I'm not entirely sure how time travel works. Each story mission you play as a new character who doesn't seem to be aware of time travel at all but hey it's just an afterthought.

It's just like Quantum Leap in which he is placed into the body of a person who belongs in that particular place in time, so he has to fulfill that person's objectives alongside his own. Fitting since they drew pretty heavily from movies and television elsewhere in the game.

Pretty sure that the assumption is that he is placed into the character's body shortly after the opening cutscene in levels 2-9, but I could be wrong.

Shadowplay posted...

It's just like Quantum Leap in which he is placed into the body of a person who belongs in that particular place in time, so he has to fulfill that person's objectives alongside his own. Fitting since they drew pretty heavily from movies and television elsewhere in the game.

Pretty sure that the assumption is that he is placed into the character's body shortly after the opening cutscene in levels 2-9, but I could be wrong.

It's weird because the first cutscene clearly shows Cortez jumping out the portal and turning into that woman. Even says "It's all down to me now" indicating a continuation of him jumping through time.

But none of the other cutscenes are like this. They're all clearly pre-defined characters and even the objectives match the characters living in that time period. Talking about investigating power sources or whatever (that leads to time crystals).

Maybe Cortez has actually been stuck as these characters for years before the cutscenes lol

But yeah I doubt there's much thought given to it.

The music is still great at least.

Timesplitters Rewind will probably make it a lot more palatable if/when it eventually gets released.

Lol I completely forgot about the Aztec level where you play as an Indiana Jones wannabe shooting up guys that look like this;
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/8/7/AACT2jAAD8Pj.jpg

With a gun and crossbow.

Now that hasn't aged well.

Punished_Blinx posted...

It's weird because the first cutscene clearly shows Cortez jumping out the portal and turning into that woman. Even says "It's all down to me now" indicating a continuation of him jumping through time.

But none of the other cutscenes are like this. They're all clearly pre-defined characters and even the objectives match the characters living in that time period. Talking about investigating power sources or whatever (that leads to time crystals).

Maybe Cortez has actually been stuck as these characters for years before the cutscenes lol

But yeah I doubt there's much thought given to it.

Yeah, they probably didn't worry too much about it, but that cutscene was obviously structured differently to make it clear to the player that it was Cortez in the body. I guess we're to assume that when Cortez exits the portal is the exact moment when he is "synced" with the person in that time period. I guess, again, drawing from Quantum Leap, he has to accomplish that person's objectives in addition to his own to stop history from being changed too much.

And I second the notion that Rewind will likely make it better, if only because of mouse aiming. Last update they gave I think they were nearly done remaking the Timesplitters 1 content.

Shadowplay posted...

Yeah, they probably didn't worry too much about it, but that cutscene was obviously structured differently to make it clear to the player that it was Cortez in the body. I guess we're to assume that when Cortez exits the portal is the exact moment when he is "synced" with the person in that time period. I guess, again, drawing from Quantum Leap, he has to accomplish that person's objectives in addition to his own to stop history from being changed too much.

And I second the notion that Rewind will likely make it better, if only because of mouse aiming. Last update they gave I think they were nearly done remaking the Timesplitters 1 content.

Yeah their last video update was almost a year ago I think. But I recall from that video that the Timesplitters 1 content looked to be in a pretty good spot.

You can play as a monkey. Nuff said.

Idk. I still love playing that and Future Perfect every so often. It still entertains me and my kids love playing splitscreen.

if you think thats bad try the first one

The controls are difficult to get used to. The rest of the game is fun.