Update: Never mind. Free Radical is dead once again. It is not, after all, time to split. Perhaps it never will be. This essay is still interesting reading though. Well worth a read-through. RIP Free Radical, one of the most abused great game development studios in the industry.
TimeSplitters is a cult classic and for good reason. For many who played it in the glory days of the PlayStation 2, memories of TimeSplitters stir them with nostalgia. In the years since Free Radical went bankrupt, there hasn’t been anything quite like it.
Over a decade later, Deep Silver has reassembled Free Radical Design and set them to work on a reboot of this beloved franchise. This is exciting news for fans of the series, but there is also an air of trepidation.
It remains to be seen what form this reboot will take. Will it retain the spirit of the original games? Or will it attempt to fundamentally reinvent itself in some way? If so, what form will those reinventions take? What even is the ‘spirit’ of TimeSplitters anyway?
To answer these questions, we must learn what distinguishes TimeSplitters from other FPS. What are its fundamental characteristics?
With these answers in hand, we must consider whether such characteristics would help or hinder the reboot if it stayed true to the original games’ spirit. The upcoming reboot may be unrecognisable as a TimeSplitters game. Conversely, it may fulfil every fan’s desires yet fail to find broad appeal in the modern gaming market and die a second, ignoble death.
Considering how much the gaming industry has changed over the past ten-plus years, it will be interesting to see how TimeSplitters is adapted to suit the market and whether there is any hope for a true revival of the classic franchise. So let’s take a look.
Art Style
There was a time when TimeSplitters’ art style would have disqualified it from succeeding in the modern shooter market. For many years, the market was dominated by gritty grey and brown modern military shooters, with the colourful sci-fi Halo being one of the few exceptions.
Shooters are now presented in a much wider variety of art styles. Colourful, cartoonish, and unserious shooters are plentiful.
Most importantly, they sell. Games like Overwatch, Valorant, Fortnite, Destiny, and Apex Legends are popular. Formerly dark and gritty series like Call of Duty, Rainbow Six, and Battlefield have lightened up quite a bit, injecting healthy doses of colour into their newer entries.
Timesplitters, with its vibrant colours, comic book character designs, and comedic tone, would not be out of place in modern gaming. The real concern, ironically enough, is whether it can stand out from a crowd of colourful, character-heavy hero shooters.
TimeSplitters isn’t just colourful. Its distinctive visual appeal derives from its comic book aesthetic combined with a clash of various periods and pop culture memes. Whereas colourful shooters today tend to feature a colourful cast of characters sourced from a single setting within a limited timeframe, TimeSplitters features zombies, space cops, monkeys, robots, soldiers, gingerbread men, ninjas, dinosaurs, mutants, and all sorts of other character designs within the same levels. Despite the absurd amount of diversity on display, every character is unified by a shared comic book aesthetic and a light-hearted tone which permeates every aspect of the series.
TimeSplitters 4 should therefore be able to stand out even from today’s offering of colourful character-focused shooters by leveraging its unique ability to defy the conventions of time and space. Most other AAA games are limited by a need to keep their character designs within a particular time and setting. TimeSplitters 4 will have no such limitation.
No fundamental changes to the Timesplitters art style should therefore be necessary. Based on the concept art we’ve seen so far, this seems to be the opinion of the developers, too. By all accounts, Free Radical is going all-in on the wacky cartoon aesthetic of the originals.
We’ve come a long way from when AAA devs were terrified of putting colour in their games, fearing audiences would reject them for being too childish.
Aiming
The TimeSplitters series has gone through two different aiming systems, both of which would likely be considered outdated if reproduced in TS4. Whether this criticism would be fair or not is hard to say. To know what sort of aiming system is best, we must determine what kind of shooter TimeSplitters 4 should ideally be. If TimeSplitters 4’s best shot at success is to boldly stand out from the crowd, it may not be wise to copy the aiming mechanics from most other shooters.
The first two games borrowed their aiming mechanics from GoldenEye. Players aimed their weapons within a small circle rather than at a fixed point in the centre of the screen, as in most shooters. Future Perfect modernised the series’ controls by adopting this fixed-point aiming style and adding permanent crosshairs.
This change was and still is controversial among TimeSplitters fans. Some don’t mind the change, viewing it as a necessary modernisation of an outdated control scheme. Others consider GoldenEye’s controls an essential component of the series’ character and that to remove them was to betray what made TimeSplitters 1 and 2 special.
Whatever you think, the next game probably won’t bring back GoldenEye controls. Future Perfect may have an FPS control scheme closer to the modern standard, but it is rare to see anyone declare it is ‘not a true TimeSplitters game’. It is a series favourite among many fans, including myself—though Timesplitters 2 probably has it beat in popularity.
The best fans can hope for is an option between the two. Ideally, TimeSplitters 4 would ask players whether they want to play with standard controls (whatever form that might take) or old-school GoldenEye controls. This would work well for single-player, but it may cause issues in multiplayer. Would GoldenEye control users be at an advantage or disadvantage in competitive multiplayer? Either way, Free Radical may see it as justification not to include an aiming control option.
On the subject of aiming, another important factor is ADS (Aim Down Sights). Every game in the series has a feature that enables more precise aiming. TimeSplitters 1 and 2 allowed players to activate a crosshair and increase the size of the circle in which they could aim their weapon. This enabled more precise aiming but often required players to slow down to use it properly. Only with scoped weapons could players actually zoom in.
Future Perfect allowed players to zoom in with any weapon. This was not represented by any centring animation, nor did it slow the player down. Once again, interactions with the weapons themselves to aim were reserved for scoped weapons only.
Neither of these zoom options classifies as ADS. For a shooter to have ADS, it must allow players to centre their weapons on the screen and aim down their sights. This action is typically accompanied by more accurate projectile spread and slower movement speed.
Among today’s shooters, ADS is standard. It is rare to see a game where players cannot centre their unscoped weapon and peer down the sights. This action is invariably accompanied by a slowing of the player’s movement and increased accuracy.
ADS is so prevalent that it has become a default feature within the shooter genre. Outside boomer shooters and CS:GO-inspired shooters such as Valorant, its exclusion is unthinkable for many gamers.
It is therefore likely that TimeSplitters 4 will have ADS. But will this be a good fit?
Considering Future Perfect’s zoom feature already stands as a mid-way point between hip-fire and ADS, adding an aim-down sights feature may not be hard to swallow. It does, however, bring us even further away from the GoldenEye system, and, in the process, TimeSplitters may lose a notable chunk of its distinctive personality.
ADS is the most iconic feature of the standard modern shooter control system. After the success of Call of Duty 4, practically every shooter adopted it. It is a distinctively modern mechanic born out of the contemporary concern with games being as authentic and immersive as possible.
TimeSplitters, however, has never been concerned with immersion or authenticity. It is a fundamentally silly series, putting humour and fun above all else. An ADS feature could harm that charm by dragging the series too far toward the immersive side of the spectrum. A zoom-in function, sure. But ADS might be going too far.
Free Radical thus has a difficult decision to make. ADS may make their game more palatable to the average modern gamer, but it may also render their game more visually and mechanically generic.
In the spirit of being bold, I believe keeping ADS out would be the right choice. To explain why, we must also talk about movement.
Movement (and a little more on aiming)
Movement mechanics in shooters have undergone many changes since the PS2 days. Back then, it was perfectly acceptable for TimeSplitters to have no jump, sprint, crouch, climb, prone, slide, or wall running. These days, almost every shooter has at least the first three of these.
TimeSplitters 4 without any of these features would undoubtedly divide popular opinion. Some would praise the game for its brave refusal to follow popular trends. Others would complain of a perceived lack of features; they’d say the player is too limited, the gameplay too simple.
TimeSplitters didn’t need any of these mechanics for players to enjoy it on the PS2. Would gamers accept a reboot without these features if it were released today?
TimeSplitters occupies a subgenre of shooters commonly called ‘arcade shooters’. ‘Party shooter’ also fits, though I just made that name up.
A party shooter is a party game like Mario Party or Wii Sports, except with shooting instead of sports and funfair games.
Like other party games, the core mechanics of a party shooter are simple and intuitive. The fun of party games comes not from mechanical complexity or high skill ceilings but from the myriad objectives they throw at you, each of which varies the pace and focus and keeps things interesting.
TimeSplitters is mechanically casual; the gameplay is run-and-gun without any of the features mentioned earlier. There’s no jumping, cover system, parkour, or anything that would appeal to an e-sports crowd or those looking for a realistic simulation. Respawns are instant, the maps are relatively small, and the weapons are not so accurate or damaging that those with better aim will dominate too much.
TimeSplitters’ mechanical complexity comes from its objective variety, weapon variety, and maps. Apex Legends may have enough mechanical complexity to facilitate high-skill gameplay within the confines of a simple room, but in TimeSplitters, any fighting within a simple space is as simple as pointing at each other and shooting until someone wins.
TimeSplitters makes combat engaging by relying on map variation, providing a range of weapons that fire unique and unusual projectiles (bullets, bouncing lasers, harpoons, crossbow bolts, etc.) so that players can enjoy shooting at each other in different ways, and challenging the player with a variety of objectives ranging from grabbing an item to running from flaming enemies to activating switches and doing all manner of tasks.
TimeSplitters’ party-bag variety keeps it interesting. The comedic tone, cartoonish characters, mix ‘n match of time periods, and catchy music accentuate the carnivalesque atmosphere and complete the aesthetic of an excellent series of casual arcade shooters.
As an arcade shooter, adding new movement mechanics should be considered cautiously. Even adding a crouch mechanic could make the combat too competitive and spoil the game’s carefree party atmosphere. Any mechanic that emphasises aiming and movement skill could favour player skill too strongly and detract from the casual competition that should be the game’s focus. This brings me back to ADS and why it may not be a good idea to include a mechanic which slows down TimeSplitters’ characteristic run-and-gun gameplay in favour of camping and careful aiming.
Whether TimeSplitters includes the ability to sprint or crouch or jump should depend on how it affects the skill ceiling. A jump feature would make shooting enemies more difficult, but probably not by much, especially if the jumping was floaty and the aiming easy. A crouch mechanic, however, would encourage camping and bolster the natural advantage of defensive players. It would also slow the game down and promote more cautious, tactical gameplay in players conditioned to expect their enemies to hide behind cover and aim with precision.
This would be anathema to the party shooter atmosphere TimeSplitters is known for. It wouldn’t matter how good the disco music was if the mechanics encouraged sweaty, try-hard gameplay. Complex mechanics with high-skill ceilings should be kept out. The game should focus on fun objectives, creative map layouts, and a diverse weapon selection, all wrapped in a visual style that exudes unserious fun.
Story
In keeping with the idea that objective variety is essential to TimeSplitters’ ability to stand out from the competition, the series’ story modes have put players through a variety of scenarios: shooting arenas, item collections, vehicle sections, turret sections, puzzles, camera operations, escort missions, tailing missions, stealth infiltrations, boss fights, and more. Players fight soldiers, zombies, robots, monsters, ghosts, turrets, and of course, the leaping, teleporting, electricity-tossing TimeSplitters themselves.
The TimeSplitters series contains an insane amount of gameplay variety; any reboot that does not would risk reducing itself to a standard arena shooter with little to break up the monotony of constant combat.
The first two games in the series were light on story. The first game had no cutscenes or dialogue. The second game had one cutscene at the start of each level to establish the scenario and a tiny bit of dialogue in some of the missions. The third game expanded the cinematic quality of the story mode by adding more cutscenes and ramping up the production quality with more dialogue, wittier writing, and expressive character animation.
Most significantly, each level paired Cortez with a sidekick who would fight alongside him and provide amusing and/or helpful commentary. Cortez was also given a radio guide called Anya, a more level-headed voice to keep the player focused on the objective and emphasise certain moments with a bit of exclamation, which was particularly useful when Cortez’s sidekick wasn’t present.
This increase in production value has been beneficial to the series’ charm. The addition of sidekicks and a disembodied radio voice removed the aspect of loneliness that occasionally crept into the first two games. Sidekicks also opened up opportunities for collaborative objective types and more visual gags. The increased complexity of the story and cutscenes gave the game a more cinematic feel which helps keep players engaged with what is happening. Rather than simply collecting crystals, as in the first game, plus doing a side objective, as in the second, Future Perfect finds many narrative and character-based reasons to motivate and amuse the player. Future Perfect encourages you to become attached to your sidekicks and to invest in the story of whatever setting they drop you into.
Practically every other AAA series has adopted this stronger emphasis on production value in their story modes. This emphasis has gone too far in many cases, and now many games, including many shooters, have become glorified movies that are reluctant to allow players to actually play them. TimeSplitters may have benefitted from a greater emphasis on story, but there is a danger the next game will go too far. Timesplitters 4 will suffer if it insists on restricting player freedom for cinematic value. This is not a series where control should be replaced with forced animations, set-piece sequences, and quick time events. In the spirit of games such as Half Life, players should never have to surrender control of their character.
Challenge Mode
Challenge mode offered more random objectives than the more narrative-based story mode would allow, enabling the developers to task the player with pretty much anything. It charged players with fending off waves of zombies, smashing panes of glass under time pressure, evading flaming gangsters, and playing multiplayer modes with various limitations.
Challenge modes are a rare thing in modern shooters. Call of Duty is notable for including extra modes besides story and multiplayer–most famously their zombies and spec-ops modes. Most games, though, rarely offer anything but campaign and multiplayer. As the focus these days is on production value, side modes get axed, budgets are poured into those two main offerings, and sometimes single-player is excluded entirely.
This could be the fate of TimeSplitters 4. Just because the series included challenge modes with a smaller team and budget in the past doesn’t mean it will be included now. Graphical standards have gone up. Levels are expected to be more detailed. The roughness of the classic TimeSplitters trilogy may not be acceptable anymore (ironic considering how many games now release in broken states). All these demands could make including a challenge mode impossible as the developers struggle to find the time to work on it.
Nowadays, people seem sick of the industry’s fixation on graphics. The rise of indie games may be a symptom of the desire to return to a simpler time, a time when games were primarily made to be fun and style was valued over graphical detail. TimeSplitters 4 does not need to look stunning or dazzle us with technical brilliance. It just needs a consistent aesthetic and solid gameplay.
A challenge mode should offer creative and unusual gameplay scenarios that no other game does. It should allow the developers to stretch their creativity and experiment. It should challenge people to play the game at their best to win the top rewards. That would be much more entertaining than shiny graphics.
Multiplayer/Arcade
Few people played online multiplayer back when Timesplitters was around. Most multiplayer gaming happened at friends’ houses. TimeSplitters split screen was limited to 4 players, though it thankfully had bots to fill out the matches.
As heretical as this may sound, TimeSplitters won’t have split screen, and that’s no big deal. Given the choice—and most people do have the choice—most people will play online anyway. It is simply more convenient to play online from anywhere than in the corner of a friend’s TV screen at a specific time and place.
The shift from in-person split screen to online will undoubtedly affect how multiplayer matches are played. Many fans fondly remember playing with friends: chasing each other in virus, running each other over with buggies, or whacking each other in baseball bat-only deathmatches. I associate TimeSplitters so strongly with my friends and brother that it’s hard to imagine playing with anyone else.
Playing with randoms online will be a lesser experience, as it always is with multiplayer games. We who remember TimeSplitters with nostalgia should be wary of that and temper our expectations.
That being said, all the weirdos you’ll meet online should fit right in with the wackiness of TimeSplitters’ modes, characters, and weapons. As long as the modes are kept casual and there are lots of them, the reboot will have a chance to recapture some of the old magic.
To achieve this, the reboot should bring back the series’ stable modes: Zones, Elimination, Virus, Flame Tag, Monkey Assistant, Vampire, Assault, Shrink, and others. Limiting TimeSplitters to a handful of the same basic modes every other FPS has would risk TimeSplitters 4’s ability to stand out from the crowd. TimeSplitters’ best bet is to focus on what it does differently; the series has always distinguished itself by offering modes no self-respecting game would dare include.
Unfortunately, including more modes will dilute the playerbase. This wasn’t an issue when most people played offline, but it is now. Free Radical may therefore feel pressured to limit players to the basics: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Bag Tag, etc., and maybe a quirky mode like Flame Tag. It will be hard for them to justify including any more unless the playerbase is expected to be huge and long-lasting.
Their best option may be to cycle game modes according to a weekly schedule. This way, there’s always something new to play. This solution isn’t ideal as it would prevent people from playing whatever they want whenever they want. But it would solve the issue of the playerbase being spread too thin.
Another solution is bots. In the past, if you didn’t have friends, your bot-bros would be there to keep you company. Bots don’t have a good reputation these days, though. In the past, it was bots or nothing. These days, if bots are in a match with you, the server doesn’t have enough players.
We’ve become so accustomed to playing with real people that playing with bots just doesn’t do it anymore. Don’t get me wrong, bots should be included for people who want them. But ultimately, the issue of playerbase dilution isn’t solvable without compromise, and compromise is what Timesplitters 4 may need to do with its game mode offerings.
Progression and Monetisation
Another concern, perhaps even greater than the threat of losing game modes, is the prospect of a progression system.
TimeSplitters has always awarded characters and cheats for achieving trophies. But an award system and a progression system are two different things. A progression system does not reward the player for achieving something. It rewards them for griding. Regular gameplay activities yield experience points; as long as you keep playing, you’ll inevitably unlock the next thing, and the next, and the next. Progression systems thus reward playing longer, not better.
Time is finite; we should not endorse developers’ trying to hack the dopamine receptors of their customers’ brains. Instead, they should make games people want to play without locking content behind time-wasting progress bars. TimeSplitters 4 should stand fast by the old-school method of rewarding players for achieving challenging goals like getting first place in challenge modes and completing story missions on Hard.
As in the originals, awards should only be limited to cosmetics and cheats. The reboot could build upon the rewards of the previous games (characters and cheats) by awarding alternative skins for characters and weapons and assets for the map maker. Nothing of regular gameplay utility should be held back. TimeSplitters’ causal multiplayer atmosphere would be harmed if only the best players had access to certain weapons.
As an arcade shooter, TimeSplitters should be fair. Locking weapons behind a progression system or difficult challenge would ruin that. The focus should be on fun, not on the grind for better gear or the dispiriting fact that enemy players have better weapons than you.
Unfortunately, considering how ubiquitous progression systems are in modern gaming, Deep Silver will likely force Free Radical to include a progression system in their game. Progression systems are seen as a way to keep people playing. They also enable developers to prey on players’ impatience by offering microtransactions to skip the grind.
TimeSplitters is worryingly suited to the microtransaction monetisation model. The series features hundreds of characters that could be sold. Each of these characters could have endless amounts of skins made for them. Weapon skins could be sold too. And on top of all this, there could be the usual loot boxes, battle passes, and other ruinous things that plague full-priced games nowadays.
The reason Timesplitters is being revived after over a decade’s hiatus may be that someone with authority realised the series’ potential for shameless monetisation. If true, the upcoming reboot could be a depressing representation of how deeply greed has corrupted the gaming industry.
Map Maker
Further emphasising TimeSplitters’ commitment to variety and creativity, every game in the series has featured a map maker. This option enabled players to connect prefabricated tilesets and fill them with objectives, spawn points, weapon drops, powerups, lights, and objects. They also let players choose the theme and music of each level.
This enabled a level of player creativity that few games even today bother to strive for. Halo is one of the few examples of a popular series allowing players to make their own levels. The TimeSplitters trilogy map maker was admittedly limited—it was not possible to create truly outdoor environments, for instance—but the fact that you could create your own levels at all opitimized TimeSplitters’ commitment to the party game concepts of variety and player choice.
Once again, there is cause to worry. Since many games don’t have map makers, Free Radical may decide not to bother with one. There is also the ever-recurring issue of diluting the playerbase. If Timesplitters 4 struggles to keep official servers populated, introducing countless unofficial servers based on custom maps will worsen the situation.
The bright side is that some custom maps could be really fun. If players can program their own game modes, some of these servers could even become as popular and unique as some Garry’s Mod servers. TimeSplitters would be perfect for TTT (trouble in terrorist town), for example.
A map maker would be a huge benefit to any TimeSplitters reboot. It would help the game stand out and increase player engagement and longevity. Not including a map maker would be a mistake as it would go against TimeSplitters’ defining strengths: variety and unbound creativity.
Music
Music is such an iconic part of TimeSplitters that it would be a crime if it was neglected. It is a key ingredient in making the games feel like true arcade experiences. The tracks imbue each level with atmosphere, dictating the tempo of the action and the mood of the setting.
Games these days don’t tend to play music over the action; when they do, it is quiet and fades into the ambience. TimeSplitters would be notable among contemporary shooters for holding to the series’ tradition of playing awesome music tracks over each level, especially during multiplayer.
Each level of the trilogy is forever associated in my mind with the music that plays over them. It just wouldn’t feel right for a TimeSplitters game to not have awesome music people can bop to.
The developer’s main concern would probably be the competitive nature of anonymous online multiplayer. When playing with friends, it’s just about having fun. When playing with randoms online, people will alter the settings for every advantage they can get. Many will turn the music off, complaining that it is distracting. Those that don’t will be at a disadvantage.
Even if this is the case, loud, catchy musical scores should be available. It just wouldn’t be TimeSplitters without it.
Conclusion
After much thinking and too much writing, I am cautiously optimistic TimeSplitters can be successful in the modern gaming market. I am afraid, however, that the quality of the next game may be harmed by an insecure effort to imitate other shooters to the detriment of the series’ arcade shooter charm and the inclusion of an ill-advised monetisation model.
I believe TimeSplitters’ best chance at success is to embrace the qualities of a party shooter. TimeSplitters is a relatively low-skill grab bag of FPS scenarios. Ideally, the next game will target both nostalgic fans and people who want some light-hearted arcade shooter fun. A wide range of game modes, colourful characters, unusual weapons, and an upbeat tone and musical score would be ideal. Even better if a map maker is included, allowing the community to let their imaginations run wild and create their own maps and modes.
Such a game would likely attract streamers and Youtubers looking for a fun and original party game with a low skill requirement and a decent amount of gameplay variety to keep themselves and their viewers entertained. Whether you like them or not, when streamers play a game, attention is garnered and sales go up. When a game facilitates several streamers playing together, the free publicity can be massive.
These are my predictions for TimeSplitters 4 if it stays true to the spirit of the series, as I have defined it. Free Radical’s best chance at success is leaning into what makes TimeSplitters unique. Following the crowd will only doom their game to being lost in the crowd. With such fierce competition, TimeSplitters must bravely stand as the representative of the long-forgotten arcade shooter genre and show the world why this genre deserves to stay.
Whatever they do, let’s hope they’ll give it their best effort and not sabotage this classic franchise’s return with cynical decision-making and a buggy launch.
We’ve already had one Haze. Please, let’s not have another!