Coming out from the golden age of console first-person shooters, the original Timesplitters took many by surprise. With a hand in development by many of the same folks that crafted the excellent N64 hits Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark, the trilogy refined the excellent and arcade-like fast-paced shooting with increased visual oomph of the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. It’s been a long time since players have gotten their hands on a new Timesplitters entry, but that’s set to change.
With last year’s news that Timesplitters development team Free Radical Designs is back together, speculation has run wild about what the fourth entry could play like. The series carved its own path, giving players unique environments based on different parts of history while always including an excellent multiplayer mode that could rival other console FPS titans like Halo. The series excelled in competitive combat, and the campaigns had a co-op mode that lit couches abuzz back during the series’ heyday. With so much time passing between Timesplitters games, it is even more important that the franchise doesn’t lose its identity by clinging to the bandwagon.
How Timesplitters 4 Can Honor Its Legacy
The world of first-person shooters has changed a lot since the release of 2005s Timesplitters: Future Perfect, but that doesn’t mean that interest in the series has waned. The second and third Timesplitters games recently went on sale on the Xbox store, and fans were delighted when they got added to Xbox backward compatibility. In a world of hard-boiled, more realistic games like Call of Duty taking center stage, there’s never been a better time for Timesplitters to double down on what makes the series so unique.
Timesplitters 4 doesn’t need to lose its comedic chops and sense of ridiculousness; it needs to invest in them heavily. Fans love these games because they have a sense of thrill that few other series can match. Audiences have no idea which time period the next level will take place in, but the curiosity to find out lends to gamers being glued to their TV screens. The breakneck pace and feedback of single-player challenges rewarding the multiplayer component with new characters and maps still gives the Timesplitters games high rankings when examined next to other PS2-era first-person shooters. There is always a place for fast-paced and addictive reflex-based shooting, and not every game has to have a starkly severe tone.
The fusion of a compelling single-player campaign with rich and rewarding competitive and cooperative modes is also in the Timesplitters series DNA. The newest entry can’t just tack on an online deathmatch mode or a phoned-in co-op campaign and call it a day. Fans are still reeling after Halo Infinite canceled its local co-op mode, and games like It Takes Two show that some players still want to share their games with others. Timesplitters 4 can save the day by coming in strong with an advanced cooperative campaign that refines everything audiences loved about the series in the first place. This, in turn, gives Free Radical Design a chance to set the trend instead of following it.
The Timesplitters series is so beloved that when the news broke that early parts of Timesplitters 2 were playable in Homefront: The Revolution, gamers cracked a code that allowed them to play the entire game. Audiences have been waiting a long time to get their hands on a new Timesplitters entry, and with the series development studio reformed, the stakes are high. It would be easy for the highly anticipated fourth entry to lose itself in the sea of current FPS trends, but it would also be easy for the game to avoid such pitfalls entirely. If Timesplitters 4 can double down on the breakneck speed and time-traveling whimsy that the series is known for, while also giving players local and online multiplayer modes that feed into the campaign, then the future looks bright for the franchise.
Timesplitters 4 is currently in pre-development.
Source From: (gamerant.com) More news /#News Otaku Pages Web
