TimeShift delayed - and so are innovations to shooters
Aug 31, 2006
Vivendi released a terse little statement today about "TimeShift," the first-person shooter that has bounced between publish dates for a year now:
Vivendi Games acquired TimeShift with the view that it would become a stand out FPS franchise. Our commitment to that vision remains, and so the decision has been taken to move the title into 2007 to give it the time and resources needed to fulfill its potential.
This is at least the second time that TS has gotten the "we're delaying for a better game" treatment, and it's a shame. I got the chance to catch a demo of TS a year ago in Atari's offices in New York, and while there wasn't much to see - it was mostly a walkthrough of the tech - what there was, was intriguing.
The core concept of the game is that you could use abilities to slow down or shift your perception of time in order to gain an advantage over your opponents. By changing how quickly or slowly they moved through time in relation to you, you opened the door to a whole arsenal of moves you could do that appeared nearly supernatural. If this immediately makes you think of the "Prince of Persia" series for consoles, there are some similarities - but this was a lot more sophisticated and a lot more brutal.
Imagine those abilities in use in online multiplayer.
Alas, you're not going to get the chance to see it until at least 2007, and probably in much-changed form. The game was originally delayed from April, and has now been kicked again. That's not a bad thing - from all reports, while the tech was interesting, the game blew. But in a genre as calcified and moldy as first-person shooters (and yes, I like them, they're just depressingly similar), it would have been nice to have a game trying to break out of the box, even if it was a little rough around the edges.
What do you think?
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