TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

Blast your way through time!

NA release: 21st March 2005
EU release: 24th March 2005
JP release: N/A
Developer: Free Radical Design
Publisher: EA Games
NGC Magazine Score: 88%
Mods Used: None

The third (and final) TimeSplitters game, and the style of the singleplayer campaign is different again. The first had some simple missions set in multiplayer levels, the second had GoldenEye and Perfect Dark style objective-based open levels. The third game, Future Perfect, has much more linear and story-based levels.

The story is silly and a ton of fun. Cortez has to travel through time to find out the origin of TimeSplitters and try to stop them from inventing time travel in the first place. Instead of changing into a character from the time period, he works alongside someone else (including returning 60s spy Harry Tipper), with a lot of enjoyable dialogue along the way. This gets even crazier when Cortez encounters himself from the future, and later on you’ll use time portals to see this from the other side.

This results in some fun and memorable gameplay moments where Cortez has to complete multiple objectives in the same room, with you playing through the same part from multiple angles. In terms of paradoxes – the game just goes for fun. In the first level, you get a key to a door from a future Cortez, then later give the key to your past self. It’s a ton of bootstrap paradoxes – even when dealing with the game’s mad scientist villain.

The gameplay itself, though, feels like a step down. The levels are more straightforward and the majority of objectives are more things you need to do to travel down the corridor based levels. There are also some turret and vehicle sections that don’t feel great. It results in a campaign which is a ton of fun the first time round, but doesn’t hold up to replays as well.

Of course, with this being a TimeSplitters game, there’s a ton of stuff outside of the campaign. There’s more challenges to work your way though (including a robot cat racer where the engine noise is a purr), which gives you new ways to play the game and cheats to mess around with.

And the multiplayer mode is as incredible as ever, with plenty of levels and modes. For Xbox and PlayStation 2, this also supported online play, but GameCube just had split-screen – although that didn’t stop me playing it for hundreds of hours when I was younger, especially with bots. It’s a wonderful package with a fun campaign and a ton to do.

Great

But even if the game does occasionally feel a little familiar, it’s incontestably polished, immense and most importantly, a rude amount of fun. And look! We didn’t even mention GoldenEye once! Oh.
Jes Bickham, NGC Magazine #105

Remake or remaster?

A spruced up remaster would be brilliant.

Official Ways to get the game

TimeSplitters Future Perfect is available on PlayStation and Xbox.