Future Perfect

Halo 2 has been out for nearly 5 months. Inspite of the announcement of the expansion pack and the continued online obsession, I thought it was time to try another shooter. Being a fan of Timesplitters 2, featuring a good deal of the old N64 GoldenEye team, I figured the third installment of the series Timesplitters: Future Perfect was the obvious choice.

Halo's hero is Master Chief

He's an unstoppable war machine.

Timesplitters has Cortez

He's a fucking idiot even when there are two of them.

The story is contrived and ridiculous in purpose. Cortez is part of a future military force and is sent back in time to nab some time travelers and stop an alien menace. Along the way, he'll meet an array of oddball characters he'll have to assist and be assisted by in order to get the job done. Cortez will also frequently run into himself via some wormholes so you enjoy all his one-liners twice! Its goofy fun, and aside from being an excellent shooter on its own, TS:FP also functions as a satire game, taking shots at Indiana Jones, Resident Evil, Jurassic Park, etc...

Timesplitters doesn't offer the graphical brilliance of many other xbox games. In fact, I doubt it looks much different from the Playstation 2 edition. But, its got fantastic character designs and magnificent animation.

Multiplayer is available as well with mountains of options, gametypes, weapons, maps and probably variables I never thought of. The kitchen sink approach might actually be a negative here because it creates so many options that it makes it nearly impossible to play a pickup game. On the other hand, having some friends together online or off and a couple hours to kill and you'll be able to explore and chip away at the options at your ease. If you've got the time and patience, you could pretty much play any kind of FPS variant there is, with more odd weapons than just Halo's Brute Shot and Sentinel Beam.