Marty McFly doesn’t ride dragons

Finished up typing out my impressions of Sierra’s Timeshift, the FPS game that adds in time powers to make things more interesting which is a good since the action is bland stuff. It’s cool reversing time and everything, snatching weapons out of soldiers’ hands, and generally using it as a weapon against your foes, but even with that in your corner, much of the action is pretty boring stuff.

One other thing I thought I’d mention: WTF did they do with the story? Not that many FPS players pay attention to the story anyway, but they made a huge deal of it in this case. Sierra gave this project an extra year and from the interviews that the team has done, it would seem that the time traveling storyline would have blown our socks off. The potential was certainly there…evil time traveling scientist, alternate reality…not history. I guess that’s where part of the problem is to start with. But what we end up with is something that barely scrapes by as a reason to pay attention to the CG when it finally comes up.

One other change was in removing any identity that the main character had, so that the player could more identify with the suit which didn’t really work. I get it. I have time powers. But Gordon Freeman had a crowbar, and he at least had his own name. In fact, a lot of FPS characters have some kind of name they go by whether it’s Stalker, Freeman, Private Jimmy, etc.. It felt like the title was trying to be too different and it really didn’t need to be. This isn’t an existential experience.

On the other side of the coin, I broke down and tried out Lair and should have a writeup of that one later on. I can say this much about it that you may have already read about elsewhere: I hated the Sixaxis controls, and it wasn’t from a lack of trying. I can honestly say this now that I’ve sat down with the title and suffered through the main campaign. But I’m not going to completely blame the controls here. There’s a lot of gameplay blame to go around as well. This is another title that could have been great…it has a lot of stuff going or it, like the epic soundtrack…but fails on a lot of little things.

Who you gonna call?

Sierra has their new Ghostbusters site up for the multiplatform game that they’re working on getting out for next Fall. I’m excited about this one, if only because it’s bringing back most of the original crew to do the voices and script duties. One thing I’m curious about is if they’re reviving the old “Hell in NYC” script that was rumored to be the next film for the game instead. The last Ghostbusters game I played was on the Genesis and I thought it wasn’t bad. I still have fond memories of the old one on the Apple //c, starting out in a VW Ecto 1 and crossing the streams to save the world. They must have been working on it for awhile…coming out a year later doesn’t seem like enough time, but here’s hoping that they do good with this.

It also looks like that the game isn’t being developed by Zootfly, who’re working on their own IP right now called TimeO. A snag with the Ghostbusters IP killed their hopes in building a game for it, despite showing off a trailer that got everyone excited for Ghostbusters as a game all over again, but they’re using the tech on TimeO instead. Another outfit called Red Fly Studio appear to be the ones working on it.

Live withdrawal

Looks like Xbox Live! is down for some maintenance, or it’s having some major issues. Even the homepage for Live! is in and out with a “server error” page. I can’t log in and when it tries, it freezes the box. At first I thought it was another problem that I’d have to send for a cardboard coffin, but it looks like everyone else is getting the same thing from what I’ve picked up from the boards. It would have been nice to get some kind of indicator that there’s a problem with the network instead of freezing the system…an e-mail or something. At least the PS3 lets you know if there’s a network/maintenance problem when you try to connect.

That said, I did give COD4 and Timeshift a whirl and have to say that COD4’s multiplayer is a lot of fun. I’ve had Halo 3 since it was released, but I’ve only touched the multiplayer on it a few times in the past. It’s fun, but it didn’t really grab me the way that COD4’s did. I have to admit, I bought it more for the story than for the multiplayer, but I enjoyed the co-op immensely. COD4 is just the opposite: the story was pretty thin, but the single player had plenty of great action that made up for it. And the multiplayer is the icing on the cake. It’s pretty deep stuff and it’s a lot of fun online. I just wish that there was a medic class, I kind of miss it in this one. The modern setting also feels like a restart of the series which is great. I love a good WW2 shooter, but Infinity Ward’s newest update is just as exciting.

As for Timeshift, I’m glad I rented it instead of bought it. There’s not much of a story, just a string of action sequences strung together by cutscenes that try and tell one but don’t do much good. The multiplayer was interesting, though. Using time powers online was a nice twist and made for some crazy stunts and last minute saves that you wouldn’t see anywhere else. It’s hyper fast, though, and there weren’t that many servers out there the last time I checked. Everyone’s probably playing either Halo 3 or COD4.