TimeShift comes out at the most inopportune time. It’s a decent game that is sandwiched between Halo 3, The Orange Box and Call of Duty 4. The sad fact is it will not sell as well as those three games, but it is certainly worthy of any extra money you have this holiday season. The game consists of six rather lengthy stages, and will run you around 15 to 20 hours of game time, and while award worthy, it’s better than your average shooter.

The graphics are excellent despite some slight tearing problem with the graphics that pop up from time to time when you move the camera slowly horizontally. The graphics refresh must not like the slow movement and it ends up in a slight tear on the screen. For the size of the sections within the six stages this can be forgiven since it is pumping out nice level graphics, huge explosions and time power coolness without any loading until you hit the next level.

The hook to TimeShift is the time powers you unleash and the weapons you use. The time powers could be seen as a crutch, but honestly they are a great addition to what would be a run of the mill shooter. You can pause, speed forward or reverse time using the left button and a face button (X=speed forward, Y=pause and B=reverse). For most of the game you will be using the forward and pause abilities. There are certain times where reverse must be used, but it is not used at the extent of the other two.

The pause ability will probably get the most use since it allows you to stop time and go up to an enemy and either kill them before time resumes or steal their weapon and run back to cover. When time comes back the enemy will say something like, "where did my weapon go?" The pause ability is really useful when you are facing a wave of enemies, although you have to know where they are at because you only have a certain amount of time to take them out before time resumes and you have to wait for the bar to refill. The pause ability also allows you to get past lethal hazards such as electrified water and fire. In the case of water you actually freeze time and walk on the water.

The combination of the machine gun from the beginning (for last ditch stuff), the shotgun (to take out enemies in one or two shots) and the awesome exploding crossbow (to take out enemies from afar) came in quite useful throughout the game. The sniper rifle was useful when it first showed up, but the crossbow essentially replaces it once you get it. You will have to pick up a rocket launcher to take on the bigger vehicles toward the end of the game, but they are readily available when needed.

Now for the bad parts: the enemy AI, the overall story and the seemingly endless "pull the lever then stop time to hit another level to continue on" objectives that creep in a lot toward the later levels. The enemy AI is not that smart, even on the toughest difficulty. Granted, if you just run into situations where you are greatly outnumbered you will probably not make it out alive. The AI is easily duped into following you behind cover in small grounds or a singularity, making it easy for you to take them out one at a time. Once you get used to taking out multiple enemies while using the pause power it will help greatly when outnumbered. The crossbow or sniper rifle will also be very useful as you get deep into the game simply because they are a one shot kill. The AI itself is a pretty good shot; it’s just not that smart when trying to find cover and will often just stand in the middle waiting for death.

The overall story is also not very good. Before Vivendi/Sierra bought this game the main character actually had a name and was going to be voiced by Randy Quaid. Now you are an unnamed physicist who is banging the hot second-in-command at the time suit project. The director of the project, a Dr. Krone steals the Alpha suit and goes back in time to change the future. The problem is that it is never really explained why he wanted to do such a thing other than he is a mad scientist, which is as cliché as it comes. You take the more experimental Beta suit, with more abilities (but very unstable) and follow him into the past to change the future. Throughout the game you see some flashbacks of the project and how exactly everything went down. The problem with the story is that it doesn't really grab you and it makes the game into an FPS game where you just continue on and kill everyone in your way without really caring about the story.