GC 2005: TimeShift - Hands On

[Nick]

Kyle Peschel is a man with a mission. That mission is to bring true innovation to the FPS genre and his baby for this is TimeShift, a new shooter with a twist bringing a real difference to the gameplay.

This is the question Kyle posed himself before setting out with Time Shift, and although Time Shift follows many of the FPS tenets, it has a new kick to it that hasn’t been seen or done before and the name of the game gives it away… it’s time control. Yes, yes, I know you’re all screaming ‘Prince of Persia: Sands of Time’ but just hang on a second and we’ll let Kyle explain

Check the full story in our three page First Look on HEXUS.gaming.

[iMc]

Looks really intriguing, any chance of some nice hi-res pics ?

You mention an Xbox version... is that X360 or Xbox1?

[Dougal]

That main weapon looks like something from one of those Futuristic Anarchy type films.

Too many bits on it.

Looks good though, same questions as iMc

[herulach]

Looks very impressive. Dont suppose theres any gameplay vids?

[Nick]

The idea behind the weapon looking like that is that its cobbled together out of scavenged bits. Krone has oppressed any sort of creativity purely through having done it all first... theres a very cool flame thrower, which as a secondary fire, becuase it's coupled with an Uzi fire flaming bullets... you can set blokes on fire from a much greater distance!

There's no vids other than an E3 promo which is pretty much CGI stuff and not any gameplay.

I'll see what I can do on the hi-res issue, its more a question of bandwidth than the technical aspect.

ANd sorry, it's X-Box, not X360.

For future reference, I always call X-Box 'X-Box' and Microsoft's next gen X-Box I call 'X360'.... It's pretty much how the rest of the industry call it.

[Dougal]

Will it be one of the games which is X360 (taking your lead there) compatible? or is there no news yet?

[Nick]

Depending on which X360 you buy, most X-Box games will be compatible. But they won;t take advantage of any of the X360's hardware as the game won't be written for it. Just like the original Tomb Raider won;t take advantage of Shader Model 3.0 on a 7800GTX, the game needs to be written to take advantage of the hardware.

[Dougal]

So the full X360 with HDD should let me play the XBOX games right?

Soz for the slight deviation, but this doesn't seem to have been covered ANYWHERE

[Nick]

X360 will be available in two flavours, the 'Core System', which is basically minus everything removable, will not be backwards compatible out of the box.

To be able to play current X-Box titles, you'll need to buy the detachable hard drive for roughly £60 or go for the X360 full pack which already has the hard drive in there.

[beanbandit]

To be able to play current X-Box titles, you'll need to buy the detachable hard drive for roughly £60 or go for the X360 full pack which already has the hard drive in there.

Thats not confirmed. The current thinking is that MS will enable certain AAA games to be backward compatable (which you would then need the Hdd to play). This is due to having to pay royalties to Nvidia, which MS don't want to do.

Timeshift has been announced for X360 as well. IGN has all the info including gameplay movies.

[Nick]

MS have confirmed that the 'Core System' X360 will not be backward compatible... They've also said that you'll need the hard dirve to enable backwards compatiblity, but, as you say, on which titles this will be is sketchy.

As for Timeshift, I was told about the X360 version at the smae time as I was playing it, but I was asked to keep quiet about it until the 22nd... but it's real hard to post when you're flying back to the UK!

[Dougal]

[Mattlab]

Hey all,

You can find out more info about TimeShift on http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums...s=&forumid=360 just in case you were wondering that is the official Atari TimeShift board.

Oh and to confirm what was said earlier yes TimeShift will be on XBOX 360!

[Nick]

Oh and to confirm what was said earlier yes TimeShift will be on XBOX 360!

heh, I know, Kyle Peshcel, the game's producer told me!

[Mattlab]

Hey what did you think of TimeShift? What did you think about it all. Yes I read the article....I am just curious on your personal thoughts and such. How was the demo Kyle gave you?

[Nick]

Kyle didnt let anyone walk out of the private booth with any code as far as I'm aware.

We were playing the very latest build, though I don't know which version it was. That said, the gameplay was looking pretty much completed, though it needed tweaking and polishing here and there which is wholly understandable as this is still 'in development' code.

The time control aspect is one people will find intriguing, I think. They have to get their heads around the fact that your character is still separate from time and damage taken will still be there whilst enemies will come back to life if you rewind etc.

Getting shot by the same bullet six times is a laugh and would probably confuse the hell out of some people, especially if they're used to Prince Of Persia's 'rewind time for everything' style of time of time control.

I'm looking forward to the how the time control will be used in multiplayer, and I;ve been having a good think about this. I reckon that rewind time won't be enabled, but slow and stop will as that is relative to the player. So if I slowed time for me, everyone else would see me moving really fast with a massivley fast rate of fire... and if I stopped time, it would be like I was warping around the level... But the same would go for me if others were slowing or stopping time.

All in all, and especially from a multi-player aspect, the time control adds a new dimension to the gameplay and is far more than Prince of Persia's 'quick save without the load' function that the sands of time dagger provides.