threevue

Sometimes, there’s nothing worse than a mediocre game. I mean, some games are so laughably bad that the experience of playing them isn’t wholly unpleasant. For example TMNT and Jumper: Griffin’s Story were both playable, and had one merit that TimeShift lacks: brevity. I spent seven months of my life playing this hunk of garbage (off and on, mind you), relentless in my stubborn need to finish this awful tale of mediocrity.

You play as a nameless, faceless futuristic soldier (real ingenious, guys) who is actually a scientist but he can somehow wield weapons with ease. I’m pretty sure Gordon Freeman is the only scientist on the planet that can get away with that, by the way. You’re fitted in the second of two prototype suits that can alter time; the first was nabbed by some guy who went back in time and made a dystopian, blasé alternate reality where everyone has futuristic weapons and are as shallow as the mirror pool outside of the Lincoln Memorial. It is your quest (and I say “quest” because this freaking game is about 10 hours longer than it should be) to go through all these stupid levels in order to face off against him. And by “him” I mean some big walking robot dog thing that he’s supposedly controlling that takes ten minutes to take down, not because it’s challenging, but because it’s unfair. Oh, spoilers. Sorry about that.

What irks me the most about TimeShit (see that?) is that it just makes me realize how good of a game Half-Life 2 really is. This game came out three years after Half-Life 2 but doesn’t improve upon it, or match it, in any way. The only thing that sets it apart, the time traveling, is totally lame. You can only use it for a few seconds to slow down, freeze, or rewind time to give you an edge over the enemies. But instead of making the enemies worth fighting, they just made them tough to kill to balance out your time advantages. And even on the easiest difficulty, a couple shots from any enemy will kill you like you’re going out of style. It’s really frustrating.

There’s multiplayer, but I didn’t touch it. I was so relieved to be done with this game that I didn’t even want to bother with the extras. This game has taught me one thing, though: I’m a busy guy, and I don’t have the time to waste on shitty games like this. From now on, I’m only going to play games that actually interest me a little bit. I have no problem playing a mediocre game if it’s something that I want to spend time with like Kane & Lynch or Blacksite: Area 51. No more trudging through crap like TimeShift for a lousy 160 achievement points.