It’s been many years since ScienceFiction.com started Throwback Thursday, it’s ongoing column dedicated to the great science fiction of the past. We’ve covered everything from short stories to comics and movies. While trying to rack my brains for yet another thrilling installment, my eyes happened to trail over to my shelf of prominently displayed, yet rarely played, PlayStation 2 games. On it, I saw the gem that I had so loved playing nearly twenty years ago: Timesplitters.
I’m sure that anyone who played that game is now asking themselves, “Yeah, geez, what ever happened to that game?” I can’t answer that question. All I know is that it has stalled out a few times in making the fourth game. While other shooters like Resident Evil and Halo continue to get new installments, sadly, “TimeSplitters” stopped at only the third game, with the fourth being rumored as nothing more than smoke and shadows.
For everyone else, I’ll give a quick overview of the game. “TimeSplitters” is a first person shooter that takes place in different time periods. In it, an alien race (or are they?) has invaded, and the humans have to go through time to remove the alien threat. I’ll be quite honest though. It’s more of an FPS in an interesting world than a shining example of a sci-fi game… but who cares? It had an interesting cartoon-like style, with a sense of humor that was definitely a precursor to what everyone loves in Borderlands, and the mechanics were just as good as any other FPS on the market. In short, it was just good fun.
The story gets a little more advanced as you continue on to “TimeSplitters 2” (creative title, huh?), and “TimeSplitters: Future Perfect”, where you learn who created the alien race and understand a bit more about their motivations. But that is more like the cherry on top to a truly fun game that lets you shoot aliens in different time periods.
