There are games out there that people always call hidden gems. We feel  hidden gems are more rare than what people say. TimeShift is one of those hidden gems.

It came out in 2007, a few days before Call of Duty 4 and no one payed it any attention. A lot of people played the multiplayer demo which was interesting but had a steep learning curve. A lot of people were also still playing Halo 3 too.

The other day, I finally got to play the full game. There was a story but it’s a bunch of random flashbacks that make no sense. Someone created a time suit that you used to go back in time to an alternate 1939 before the facility you were at blew up. Some guy has gone back in time to become a world dictator and you join a resistance group.

Gameplay wise the game is fairly good and the devs really were into shooters. The AI has an old school shooter feel where when you step out of cover your getting shot from everywhere. This makes you use the suits time controls because if you don’t you get killed easily. You can slow, pause, or rewind time. Pausing time drains the suits energy fast and rewinding is mostly used for puzzles. There’s some issues with the time mechanic though. To use the rewind correctly for puzzles, you have to be aiming at a specific place at a specific time and it can get frustrating. You also can only engage it correctly but pressing the time button not the manual control. The other issue is the suit defaults to slow, pause, and rewind depending on the part of the level. All you then have to do is press the time button. The issue in several situations is it makes things harder and you have to go to manual control. There are several crazy fights were your getting shot from everywhere and  the suit defaults to pause. You can pause and shoot a few people but since your energy drains very fast, you end up dying from everyone you didn’t shoot in time.

Gunplay wise it takes a lot from early 2000s shooters. It has the generic weapons with SMG, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, and Rocket Launcher.  Then it has a pistol with a weird alt function, a crossbow with exploding bows and an electric arc gun. The SMG shoots grenades but I don’t like the spread on it at range. Up close it feels fine and so do the other guns. They don’t blow you away, but they serve their purpose well.

Enemy variety isn’t as much as other games but does the job. You have regular enemies, low level workers, snipers, jet pack enemies, electrical teleporting enemies, and enemies with high speed suits. They keep the variety fresh by introducing enemies like high speed suits and electrical ones later in the game. Them and the ones on jet packs can be difficult to fight when they’re with other enemies.

Level design is also competent. There’s a good variety of levels from war torn cities and snowy mountains to airships. It’s typical in it has on foot sections with vehicles sections mixed in. The vehicle section are meh, but they don’t take too long. The handling on the ATVs isn’t good but you’re able to get off and shoot some stuff. Levels when you’re manning a turret on a plane are challenging, and the time mechanic is used well. Enemy planes and mines are moving fast and your plane can get blown up easily. One thing I didn’t like was with the helicopter boss fights. They can be a little glitchy sometimes, your shots don’t always hit even though you just shot directly at it. After a few hits, the helicopter will smoke but it’s like it goes away. There was one fight where you don’t get that many rockets, and I ended up running out of ammo and had to restart that part.

There’s people who call TimeShift a Half Life shooter. I only see it partially, to me it’s a low budget FEAR with some parts from Resistance and Wolfenstein TNO, with the alternate history and a giant mech monitoring a whole city. It doesn’t reinvent anything but it does everything it wants to do well. It’s backwards compatible on Xbox, go give it a try.