Imagine yourself positioned on the first floor of a highly devastated building. Your trapped and you need to get out of there because in a couple of seconds this place will be blown to dust. So you take a grenade and blow a whole in the floor and you jump through it. But now the place starts falling apart because of the damage you created! So you start rewinding time until the whole vanishes and the floor is back to its safe state. Now you see a door in front of you, and the shotgun you have equipped is not strong enough to brake it. So you stop time, and shoot the door 5 times in a row. When you let time continue, the power of all those bullets you fired accumulates and the door gets shattered. Finally you get out of the building, into the open, but you have only a couple of seconds left before the building explodes. So you slow down the time to get to a safe position. And so the impossible occurred, you watch the building getting destroyed while you were just in there a couple of seconds ago!
I think this little example demonstrates what Timeshift wanted to do. However the game actually focuses more on the use of time powers in shootouts, and not that much in the environment. You will not encounter a situation like described above in Timeshift. And that's just a shame, because some more original use of the time powers could have made Timeshift an instant classic. Now it just stays "a good game with time powers".
Still, this game is very good and deserves your attention. The atmosphere and graphics are excellent: indoor environments in a post apocalyptic scene, outdoor in the snow, in a big factory where the army gets assembled, or a dropship or... Especially the beautiful shadows in some levels are remarkable. The sound effects are also great and they get altered when for example time slows down.
Like i said the only minor thing about Timeshift is a lack of good situations where you need your time powers both to kill your enemies and to manipulate your environment at the same time. Now the game serves us good shooting gameplay and occasionally a more or less original "time" puzzle.
I hope a sequel will come, because this game has still a lot more potential to be discovered. Until then, if you enjoyed the Timeshift demo, or you want a more original shooter, go out and try this game!
