TimeShift demo

Heh, knew I shouldn't have bothered with this one. It starts out pretty well; a video sequence introduces you to the game's rather beautiful graphics and serves as teaser for the time-altering capabilities you'll fiddle around with later. You play as Samus from Metroid. You do cool things that you just know aren't going be anywhere near as cool in actual gameplay. Then the level begins and, while the graphics are still beautiful, you find yourself launched into the unexciting and rather cliched location of a derelict warehouse.. in the rain. And after disposing of the first few bad guys you know pretty much what to expect from the full game. Time travel is accompanied by some pretty sweet on-screen effects, but isn't really all that noteworthy as a gameplay mechanic - i'm sure it gets implemented in some interesting ways as the game goes on but, quite honestly, I got bored of using it a little way into the demo, and for the game's titular element to be so banal can only be a bad sign. So, with too many other meh-ish looking FPS games releasing this year as well, TimeShift doesn't do anything spectacular to set itself apart, aside from looking reasonably pretty.