When most shooters were starting to embrace their love of glum protagonists and desaturated browns, TimeSplitters' third entry went in the opposite direction.

TimeSplitters was already wacky. TimeSplitters 2 got decidedly weirder, but mainly felt like a fleshed-out version of the first game. Future Perfect added a complete story filled with way more voice acting, making it the first legitimately hilarious game in the series.

Mechanically, it functions like TS2 with some welcome additions. The previous game already ruled, the only way to improve on it was to cram more stuff in. As Yngwie Malmsteem once said, "How can less be more? It's impossible. More is more!"

Future Perfect's campaign introduces loads of great new improvements, but these are the standouts for me:
- Voice acting for returning characters like Cortez, Harry Tipper, and Jo-Beth Casey
- A straight-up horror level
- Cortez running into himself
- Cortez's desperate attempts at coining a catchphrase
- A compelling and engaging villain in Jacob Crow
- The greatest multiplayer character of all time, The Shoal
- Hilarious new weapons like the Monkey Gun and the Injector

As far as I'm concerned, in terms of local co-op or 4-player madness, TimeSplitters is the only series to ever give Halo a run for its money. And Future Perfect is absolutely the best game in the series.

I can NOT wait to see what comes next now that Steve Ellis has a team working on a new TimeSplitters project. TimeSplitters 4 has been my most-desired game for 15 years, and I'm 150% hyped.

EDIT: I WILL HATE EMBRACER UNTIL THE DAY I DIE

I love media which features many different periods of time, especially if they're brave enough to include future time periods. Timesplitters 2 is always a title I use as an example of this, and while I love that game, I never played any of the others in the series. The original Timesplitters (apparently) doesn't have much of a story, the second has an overarching plot with some flavor text, but the third has an actual story campaign with voice acting and cutscenes. The story takes place directly after the events of the second game, and while the humor can be a little... dated, it does have its moments. Rather than playing as native people to each time period, you play the entire game as Sgt. Cortez as he travels through time to stop the creator of the Timesplitters. There are more levels set in each time period than the second game, which means there's fewer periods overall, but the selection they've created is really great. A 1960s train level, a 1990s haunted mansion, a 1920s underwater city, and even the speculative future examples I mentioned -- a near future office complex and far future war zone. The combat is really fun, although it's slightly ruined by being a twin stick shooter on the Gamecube. The accuracy you have with the second stick isn't as tight as you would hope. They definitely fudge the enemy hitboxes to help, but it's still rough. There's only one part that this really becomes a problem, and I would say it's the only bad level in the game. An infamous escort sniper mission, where your enemies are all invisible. It's horrible. That level aside though, this is a really fun game with loads of extra content. The series has been promised a sequel for nearly two decades now, and while I doubt it'll happen, I'll eagerly play it if it does.

Future Perfect successfully captured some of the qualities in Goldeneye 007's campaign levels, levels that are relatively small but feature a lot of replayability with meaningful rewards.

It got a lot of charm to it, and both the single-player and multiplayer are rich and full of content. The story in the campaign takes you everywhere, across time and space, and the story is well-made and fun to follow.

Back in those days, a lot of people didn't have the ability to play online, and this game might just be the best offline "multiplayer" game, with tons of things to do and try and the option to use bots to play against.

It got eclipsed by Halo 2 and the growth of PC multiplayer, but it's a real classic and worth playing, it's a great game.

so full, OVERFLOWING, with personality, character, and charisma. still the only timesplitters title I've played but I'm happy to say Cortez is one of my favourite protagonists ever. just amazing, hilarious delivery with every single line. I've been ultimately more fascinated with this game for the supplementary features, arcade modes (with my favourite variation on infected modes), challenge modes (incl cat driving, basketball, time trials), custom map makers, all on top of a... pretty GOOD... campaign.
the time travel elements keep things feeling largely fresh and exciting the whole way through, swapping locations, characters, and weapons at the drop of a hat, but this game's fatal flaw is just in a sort of dated gameplay style; operating much like older James Bond titles like Goldeneye with many lazy and linear corridor sections and a pretty similar aiming style -- but that's pretty much it. definitely dated, imperfect, but impossible to hate, let alone dislike.

A really great game, but i can't help feel it's the weakest TS game.

While i enjoy the writing, characters and voice acting introduced for the storymode, the variety and time travelling element feels lesser than the other 2 games. While i love the mansion, most of the levels have some war/military style to them. 1/2 gave you a mix of wild west bounty hunting, gangster private investigation, tomb raiding.

The arcade league also feels emptier, I'm certain it has less than 2.

The characters/weapons are fun, but so many feel more obnoxious than before. Gingerbread's little 'HEY!' from 1 is replaced with this annoying af one liner.

The levitating glove thing feels tacked on and pointless, and only one multiplayer level uses a vehicle.

Otherwise the game is still loads of fun, and easy to return to.

I bought this game on the Xbox store for £1.67, and it's probably one of the best purchases I've ever made. I was, up until this point, completely unaware of the TimeSplitters franchise. Less still, that it was so highly regarded. While I have started with the third and final entry in the trilogy, I intend on going back and playing the second game as well. This game worked well enough as a self-contained narrative so I didn't feel like I was missing context.

The gimmick of the game is that across the game's 13 levels you travel to 6 distinct timelines, all with their own "period accurate" weaponry. This leads to great gameplay and visual variety across the different levels - it's that constant flow of creative and unique ideas that elevates this game to such heights.

The problem with the game is that it's too short, but that is just because there is absolutely no filler. Every level is a string of all the good ideas and set pieces back-to-back, and then the level ends. That's the trade-off for the short runtime. I would, however, be inclined to replay this game on its higher difficulties for fun, because it really is about 4 hours of exceptionally paced creativity.

The story is also surprisingly enjoyable. All the characters are great and distinct, while all being charmingly funny, and the cutscenes are very well animated - especially considering the game came out in 2005. And while I won't spoil anything, the use of time in the narrative has a very satisfying moment towards the endgame that really took me by surprise, and I loved it.

Play this game, if you have the ability to do so. There is nothing to hate here. Nothing to even dislike. It's pure fun that this industry simply cannot produce anymore.