So to start off, there’s a handful of ways to actually play this game on modern systems. If you have an xbox one this game is actually backwards compatible and still being sold on that platform digitally. Alternatively, people have gotten mouse injection via dolphin to play, but the project seems to have been abandoned. It’s been recently discovered that Homefront the Revolution contains a completely functioning hd port of timesplitters 2 via an easter egg, this is probably the most accessible version. The following is a link to a mod for the PC version of homefront that allows you to launch Timesplitters 2 directly and deletes homefront files: https://github.com/HFTSRedux/TS2Redux/releases
Timesplitters 2 makes me think a lot about content and how I perceive value in games. I used to play a lot of timesplitters 2 and future perfect on the gamecube. As a child, timesplitters felt like a toybox of parameters and encounters to play endlessly. Timesplitters 2 and Future Perfect each offer a decently long co-op campaign, 20+ challenges, 30+ arcade league challenges, robust multiplayer options, and a mapmaker. Halo aside, I don't believe any fps on consoles comes even close to how much content is on offer in any of the timesplitters games. But is any of it good or worth playing today?
A bit of history: During the last stages of Goldeneye's development, Steve Ellis implemented multiplayer without management or nintendo knowing. Despite its legacy, multiplayer was never a priority during Goldeneye's development. Rare was unable to secure the bond license which led to the conceptualization of perfect Dark. It’s around this point that Ellis and a few others left Rare to form Free Radical.
I bring this up because I feel it’s the reason timesplitters is beloved so much in the sense that it WAS an improved version of goldeneye in terms of multiplayer. Sixth gen console controllers that have 2 analog sticks each and the game itself running at 60fps go a long way to make timesplitters seem like a much more refined version of goldeneye. However, when comparing timesplitters to rare’s 2 previous fps games, you begin to notice just what was lost in this shift in priorities. What stuck out most to me is just how ‘gamey’ the levels were. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark’s levels were all imagined as actual places first and then the team thought of fun objectives to do in said levels with an emphasis on intractability and multiple objectives akin to something like an immersive sim. Completing a level in Perfect Dark feels satisfying and makes me want to immediately replay the level to get a better time, clear on a higher difficulty, or just attempt a new strategy. Completing a mission or challenge in timesplitters makes me think “great, now i'm never doing that again”, due to increased enemy vision coupled with a gross lack of options for stealth. I’d say this is a quality vs content situation but it’s more like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark had BOTH but timesplitters has so much content that its only redeeming qualities were its framerate and more modern control scheme. Timesplitters made sense as an expanded port of Goldeneye's multiplayer to modern systems of its time, but when you consider that many of its improvements were eventually brought to Perfect Dark and Goldeneye via emulation, official ports, and even fan projects like Goldeneye source, there stands little reason to revisit timesplitters.
Timesplitters 2 makes me think a lot about content and how I perceive value in games. I used to play a lot of timesplitters 2 and future perfect on the gamecube. As a child, timesplitters felt like a toybox of parameters and encounters to play endlessly. Timesplitters 2 and Future Perfect each offer a decently long co-op campaign, 20+ challenges, 30+ arcade league challenges, robust multiplayer options, and a mapmaker. Halo aside, I don't believe any fps on consoles comes even close to how much content is on offer in any of the timesplitters games. But is any of it good or worth playing today?
A bit of history: During the last stages of Goldeneye's development, Steve Ellis implemented multiplayer without management or nintendo knowing. Despite its legacy, multiplayer was never a priority during Goldeneye's development. Rare was unable to secure the bond license which led to the conceptualization of perfect Dark. It’s around this point that Ellis and a few others left Rare to form Free Radical.
I bring this up because I feel it’s the reason timesplitters is beloved so much in the sense that it WAS an improved version of goldeneye in terms of multiplayer. Sixth gen console controllers that have 2 analog sticks each and the game itself running at 60fps go a long way to make timesplitters seem like a much more refined version of goldeneye. However, when comparing timesplitters to rare’s 2 previous fps games, you begin to notice just what was lost in this shift in priorities. What stuck out most to me is just how ‘gamey’ the levels were. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark’s levels were all imagined as actual places first and then the team thought of fun objectives to do in said levels with an emphasis on intractability and multiple objectives akin to something like an immersive sim. Completing a level in Perfect Dark feels satisfying and makes me want to immediately replay the level to get a better time, clear on a higher difficulty, or just attempt a new strategy. Completing a mission or challenge in timesplitters makes me think “great, now i'm never doing that again”, due to increased enemy vision coupled with a gross lack of options for stealth. I’d say this is a quality vs content situation but it’s more like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark had BOTH but timesplitters has so much content that its only redeeming qualities were its framerate and more modern control scheme. Timesplitters made sense as an expanded port of Goldeneye's multiplayer to modern systems of its time, but when you consider that many of its improvements were eventually brought to Perfect Dark and Goldeneye via emulation, official ports, and even fan projects like Goldeneye source, there stands little reason to revisit timesplitters.
letshugbro
2 years ago