TimeSplitters 2 (Xbox) - Part 1

Developer:

Free Radical

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Release Date:

2002

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Systems:

PS2, Xbox, GameCube

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the second TimeSplitters game! Which, by pure coincidence, is also the second TimeSplitters game to never get a PC port. 

The PlayStation 2 release was joined by Xbox and GameCube versions this time, but it still never made it to mice and keyboards. There should be some kind of law against releasing a first-person shooter on everything but PC, because that just doesn't make any sense. Plus it's cruel, to me personally.

I'm going to be playing the Xbox version on an Xbox One through the miracle of backwards compatibility, as they started selling it again a few years back. Perhaps they saw all the people buying Homefront: The Revolution after we learned that the game is hidden inside as a bonus feature, and realised they were leaving money on the table.

The original TimeSplitters game was a bit of a unknown to me when I wrote about it a couple of years back, but this one I'm already familiar with. I played a lot of TimeSplitters 2 back in the day, mostly the deathmatch actually. See, I do play multiplayer sometimes! But this time around my plan is to try the first few single-player levels, about an hour of gameplay. Then I'll show a picture of the multiplayer menu, say I'm very impressed by all the modes it has, and then skip to the part where I wrap things up.

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This is the Main Menu, featuring a background of undulating hexagons with some binary down the side to make it more techy. It's always nice to see a game developer put some effort into a menu screen, and try to do something different. Though it's not too different. I remember Metal Gear Solid 2 showed off its own high-tech hexagon-based menu the previous year, so I guess they were in fashion.

Hey, this has a 'Challenge' mode! I've heard rumours that TimeSplitters 1 has one too, but it makes you finish the whole game first before you can play it, so I've never seen it. The other modes are very familiar though. 'Story' is single player, 'Arcade' is multiplayer, 'MapMaker' makes maps and 'Options' is options.

I had a peek inside the options menu and found that the game lets you properly configure the controls. Which is a good thing, especially when you're playing it on a modern Xbox with shoulder buttons instead of black and white buttons. There's also an option to replay cutscenes, which is going to be way more useful to me later on after I've watched any of them. Still, it's a good feature, I approve.

Okay I'm going to check out the story mode first, even though I get the feeling that the multiplayer may have been the selling point for this one. I want to see these cutscenes it's supposed to have!

Out of the darkness they came with a hateful will to destroy humanity. Travelling through time, they have sown corruption, unravelling the fabric of our history. At least, that's what the game says.

Hang on, I recognise that time machine! That's the stargate, from Stargate (Sci-Fi Adventures link). It even has the symbols around the ring, with matching symbols on a console that you press to dial-in the wormhole destination. I expect that it also sends people across space as well as time, as travelling back to the 1930s or the Wild West era isn't as fun if you're still stuck where this space station is. Especially if the space station hasn't been built yet at that point.
 

Fortunately a pair of heroes are on their way to the time machine to save humanity. Which makes sense, as you need two characters for co-op. The Fight for Survival has begun.

I'm not sure what I think about that ship design, but it's distinctive.

Hey the ship's got a LCARS touchscreen interface right out of Star Trek! Now all they need is a blatantly obvious Star Wars reference and they've got a hat-trick. 

Man, remember when Star Trek, Star Wars and Stargate all had new TV series in production? I suppose Star Wars still has more Ahsoka to film, but otherwise it seems pretty bleak right now for fans of space opera.

Anyway, the heroes bring their ship down into the space station hanger and use the turret to shoot a lot of enemies, before getting out and then shooting a lot more enemies. It's okay, the creatures are all just subhuman monsters. I can tell because they don't even wear pants.

Though Corporal Hart is also showing an unusual amount of skin. I guess there must be a fabric shortage on Earth.

This art style was established in the first game (including the shamelessly sexualised female characters), but this time the protagonists are actually doing things and saying stuff! TimeSplitters 1 didn't have any cutscenes... or any story in the game at all. Even Quake III Arena had more of a plot. Even the Donkey Kong arcade game from 1981 had more cinematic storytelling.

The bad news is that the aliens were able to grab the time crystals and leap through the portal into the past. The good news is that the time machine doesn't need time crystals to work, so Hart is able to send Sergeant Cortez after the aliens to recover them. I'm a bit surprised they're not both going to be honest, I mean isn't this a co-op game?

Oh, here's some bonus good news: the cutscenes are skippable!

Hey this fake stargate even has the whoosh spraying out! Plus it has a nice 3D wibble effect on it like the portals in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.

TimeSplitters 2 was made by people who'd previously worked on GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, and I like that it continues the tradition of having a level select. There are 10 levels this time, compared to TimeSplitters' 9, but I'm seeing a lot of locks on them. TimeSplitters gave me a choice of three levels to begin with but this is adamant that I experience them in the correct order the first time around. So I guess I'm going to Siberia then!

Another thing it has in common with GoldenEye and Perfect Dark is that playing on higher difficulties adds more objectives and makes the levels longer. That's not something that really caught on outside of this shooter lineage. I'll be sticking with medium, like usual.

Okay, I was not expecting to get a wall of text before the mission and I definitely wasn't expecting it to be entirely unrelated to time crystals. I mean, I've played the game before, I already know what the first level's about, but I figured that the briefing would throw in something to link it to the plot set up in the intro.

So this starts with a dam level, in Siberia, taking place 10 years before the year the game came out. If every level has its own theme, this level's theme is basically 'GoldenEye'. (I don't think anyone's ever complained though).

1990 - SIBERIA

The level starts off with a cutscene featuring more rubbery cartoon people. This time it's a pair of Russian soldiers who go investigating the forbidden caves and run into... a zombie! Not a lot of zombies in GoldenEye.

Then it's time for Cortez to enter the story, as he leaps out of a time portal that's appeared near the dam.

But time repeats and this time it's a woman leaping through instead. It's nice to see that the game's got some variety in its character designs, as she's dressed for the harsh Siberian weather rather than an early 2000s video game magazine ad. That's a cosy looking coat.

Reality flickers between the two for a bit, before settling on the mysterious woman, who looks at her hands like she's surprised. The impression I'm getting is that Cortez has quantum-leaped into her body, but then we also get to hear her speak with a Russian accent, so I don't even know. Her name's Ilsa Nadir by the way, not that they've mentioned that.

The camera goes out to do a GoldenEye fly-through of the level, before finding the player character in a tunnel and swooping inside her head from the back, GoldenEye-style.

Somehow I get this impression this is Cortez's sci-fi future scanner she's holding, not a gadget from the '90s, but who even knows? Man, this is a confusing version of time travel. At least the scanner features a map! Not a very good one, but it's still better than the absolutely nothing most first-person shooters give you.

There's a silenced pistol and a sniper rifle lying on the ground in front of me for some reason, so I'm going to grab the rifle and then snipe that guy I can see on the right. He hasn't seen me yet, so I have all the time I need to get my aim right.

Man, the aiming in this is so uncomfortable. It's very sensitive, to an absurd degree, and the crosshair snaps back if you let go. You can try making tiny separate adjustments, but you'll still find yourself straining to tilt the analogue stick at the exact precise angle. I tried the GameCube version to compare and its maybe a little better there, but not ideal. 

(I can zoom in a bit more than this though, I just thought this would give me a better screenshot.)

Speaking of crosshairs, they only appears while you're aiming. So that's another way that that the game reminds me of GoldenEye. Or Doom I suppose. The difference is that Doom puts the gun in the centre of the screen, so you can just line enemies up with the barrel.

What am I meant to be doing here anyway? There's no voice in my ear telling me my objectives or radar to point me in the right direction. I guess I'll have to bring up the menu screen and have a look there.

Eww, what the hell is that thing in the background? It's like a creepy tentacle creature has infected my pause screen. Also. I've got a lot of objectives to do here, and I'm only playing on normal difficulty!

Hey I just realised that the GoldenEye health and armour bars are back on either side of the screen. TimeSplitters replaced them with cheap-looking bars at the top, but this is a lot better.

GoldenEye 007 (N64)

They're similar, but a little different. Just like everything else.

For example, GoldenEye's first level starts at the top of a dam, while this is at the bottom.

The flyby at the start showed me that there are just five small buildings here and three guards patrolling them, so I figured I'd be able to take them all out without being noticed. Especially as dead bodies vanish too fast to be spotted.

Unfortunately the bloody security camera on the right saw me while I was wrestling with my aim-mode crosshair. A very GoldenEye-sounding alarm went off for a bit and suddenly a bunch more dudes appeared from around the corner.

Killing them wasn't a problem, I just stood there and put bullets into each of them. Enemies only take three rounds to go down, if the auto-aim is cooperating, but this is an unusually slow-firing pistol so they had time to flinch and recover between each shot.

Alright, now that the enemies are neutralised I can get on with my secondary objective: burning evidence in filing cabinets. It took me a bit of work to find the timed mines (the door to their storeroom was locked so I needed to find a way up onto a roof with a convenient hole), but now I'm equipped to obliterate some paperwork. Hah, I just noticed that the mine's counter says 0:07.

The bomb went off and now I know that explosions don't absolutely tank the frame rate in this one. I guess this isn't exactly like the N64 games after all.

Objective 1 is 'Deactivate the communications dish', but I can't find a button to do it here so I'm going to continue onwards, into the dam itself.

Not much going on inside the dam. I had to walk up ten sets of stairs, turn off some steam valves to unblock the corridor running across the inside of it, then walk down ten more sets of stairs on the other side. I also shot a few people along the way.

The trouble is that they shot me as well. In fact they shot me a lot, so I'm currently at next to zero health and the game doesn't seem to have health pickups. It does have body armour at least, which basically counts as a health extension, and I just picked one up. Then I found another one a little further on, so I can go back for that next time I get into trouble.

I'm in trouble!

The first thing that happened when I walked out at the other side of the dam was some sniper went and sniped me. I ran to use this building as cover and it turns out that there's a bloody camera here! Fortunately it didn't see me... until I tried lining up a perfect shot right into the lens, got shot in the ass while I was aiming, and dodged right into its view cone.

So the alarm went off, and when I was finally done taking out all the guards it had summoned all the armour I'd picked up had been worn away. Well, at least I've got a nice pile of guns to pick up now. Ammo shouldn't be a problem for a while.

Plus it's nice to be outside again with the weather effects. It's just a shame there aren't any lighting effects on my rifle. The first game's weapons were lit by the level but here all the shine is painted on. Also the player character holds rifles one-handed and reloads by dipping them off-screen for a moment. It's all very retro.

Hey, I can see the start of the level over there on the other side of the river. Also that son of a bitch is sniping me again! Man, I wish I had mouse aiming right now; I'd put a bullet through his eyes from right here. I mean I'm going to do that anyway, I'm just going to be bitching the whole time as I struggle to get the crosshair to cooperate.

You know what else would've been nice? A checkpoint. Or a save option, either one, I'm not picky. Alright, there's only one building on this side of the dam, so I'm heading inside.

Oh shit, is this UNATCO HQ from Deus Ex? That's a very familiar potted plant. Now I want to put the game on to compare, it wouldn't take that long...

I spotted that dude on the right running away, so I put a few rounds into his back. Turns out that he was running to hit the alarm, so it's lucky that I got him in the nick of time before he summoned his mates. I've got enough ammo already and I definitely don't need any more bullet holes.

The shelves in here aren't very exciting, but I did pick up something interesting...

GameCube

A Snake minigame called Anaconda that plugs into the scanner device! What are the chances it'd be a compatible format?

I love stuff like this in games. I mean this particular game is pretty tedious, all I'm doing is rotating the snake head around and trying to collect red Xs without colliding into the increasingly huge tail, but the concept is great. (I didn't beat Cortez's high score).

After clearing out the next floor and wasting a timed mine trying to blow open a conspicuous grate, I proceeded into the depths of the base and saw something amazing I wasn't expecting: the words "Checkpoint reached".

It's a miracle!

This cheeky bloody game put a pair of ceiling-mounted auto turrets outside the window to ensure I'd get a faceful of bullets the instant I stepped inside this computer room!

The glass shattering effect was nice, but I didn't really get a chance to appreciate it with how I had to back out again in a panic.

The really annoying part is that I'd spotted the turrets and then left them alone, because I assumed we were playing by Deus Ex rules and they wouldn't be activated unless I set off an alarm. Plus I had a vague memory of being able to use them myself later.

Okay, I disabled the guns by shooting them, then headed back inside to use the computers. Unfortunately the game's telling me that I need a system disk before I can use this equipment so I'll have to continue further into the base and start checking the doors. The level's pretty linear so it'll be easy to find my way back even without studying the map.

Hah, there you go! I knew I could control a turret eventually.

I also found a Time Crystal down here, which is definitely high up on my list of goals. In fact it was the only reason that Cortez came here, so I don't even know why I'm doing all this other stuff. I guess we're repairing the damage the TimeSplitters did to history? Well the level hasn't ended yet so I should check my list of objectives again.

Huh, it says I've only burned 1/5 filing cabinets! I'm sure I planted mines on all five of them, what the hell happened? I'm going to need to check a walkthrough because I have no idea what this wants me to do.

Okay, it turns out that you need to open the filing cabinets first and then blow them up. I guess doing it like this confirms that the player actually did find them and didn't just blow them up accidentally with indiscriminate explosions, but it sure feels like a waste of my time to me. Now I need to go back across the dam to the other buildings at the start and plant some more timed mines.

20 seconds to climb up the stairs, 15 seconds to jog down the tunnel, then 20 seconds to go back down the stairs on the other side. They could've just put the tunnel on the ground floor!

I'd be more annoyed about having to do this for the filing cabinets if I hadn't also missed the 'Deactivate the communications dish' objective.

I've been looking around for a switch, but now I'm thinking that I just need to throw a mine up onto the dish and blow it up. I'm solving all my problems with explosives today.

Alright, I'm going back through the other building so can I activate that same checkpoint again? No? Well I guess I'm redoing this every time I lose then.

A BUNCH OF GAMEPLAY LATER

 

Alright I got the computer disk, I've restored power, I've accidentally released a horde of zombies into the base, and now I need to back into the depths to destroy a bio-hazard container. It's times like this that I'm glad I've got a grenade button... not that the things do much. I'm aware that the correct way to deal with zombies is to get out a gun and aim at the head, but aiming is hard.

Also, it'd be nice if switching weapons didn't take forever. It's actually quicker to bring up the menu and then select a weapon from there instead. This might be an Xbox (or Xbox One) issue though as the GameCube version feels a little faster to me maybe.

Soon more soldiers turned up to sterilise the base with flamethrowers and the zombies went after them instead, so it's turned into proper chaos. Well, as much chaos as you can have with only four or five enemies on screen at any time.

I had just enough health and ammo left to make sure that no one from either side survived, and once I was done I used the lift I'd powered up to travel up to the very top of the dam.

SOON,  AT THE TOP OF THE DAM

I probably should've remembered that I had to fight a Hind helicopter gunship up here. So we're doing Metal Gear Solid now I guess.

I've got to be honest with you, this gameplay does not spark joy. I'm not a fan of boss fights and turret sequences at the best of times, but they haven't even given me a checkpoint! In fact, the level's only had the one checkpoint and that was 20 minutes ago.

There's not much dodging I can do when I'm stuck to a turret so this is mostly about switching focus between the helicopter and the dudes running over to shoot me as efficiently as possible. I guess hitting the four missile pods on its wings would also help. I'm doing what I can!

The game threw another fun surprise at me at the end of the fight when my turret's ammo ran out and I had to sprint across the dam to reach the other turret. And by 'fun' I mean 'holy crap why does this game hate me?'

GAME OVER. Retry?

Well, fuck. I gave it my best shot, but I knew this was coming. I had next to zero health and I wasn't aiming at the soldiers on the dam fast enough. Trouble is I had next to zero health when I hit the checkpoint as well and I'm not looking forward to playing the zombie half of the level again.

Hang on, look at the bottom right of the screen, they've put the (A) button icon upside down. That's weird.

Hang on, the screen says 'success'.

I actually did it! I beat the level on my first attempt with half a hitpoint left in the health tank. I even got a Hybrid Mutant for my trouble.

There's no cutscene at the end though weirdly, it just ends. Total playtime: about 40 minutes, with a single checkpoint at the 20 minute mark. That's ridiculously stingy. It's also way longer than TimeSplitters' first level, which I beat in just over 8 minutes. Though not on my first try admittedly.

Well, I could go straight into the next level and keep this momentum going, but I think I need a rest after that. Also I've written too many words, so this is going to have to continue in part two.

TO BE CONTINUED

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I'm always reluctant to split a game across multiple posts, I guess because it feels weird to go to a part 2 (or worse a part 3) when I've got no plan to finish the game. I'm just going to pick an arbitrary point to stop playing and there will be no more parts after that.

Anyway, leave a comment if you feel like it!