TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

Plot

The game begins in 2401 when the space marine, Sergeant Cortez, is leaving the space station that he destroyed at the end of TimeSplitters 2. His ship crash lands on the future Earth and two fellow marines greet him. Sergeant Cortez follows his squad of marines through the valley and battles unknown masked figures and TimeSplitters. Cortez is then tasked with following signatures in the past that were created by time travel and thought to be caused by the TimeSplitters. He then goes on a mission to go back in time to find a way to stop the TimeSplitters race from being created, with the help of Anya, The General's personal assistant.

Using his Temporal Uplink, a device connected to the Time Machine, (both of which Anya has invented), Cortez travels to the year 1924. There he meets a man named Captain Ash, who seeks Cortez's help. After raiding a Castle with Captain Ash, Cortez confronts an unknown man with a high concentration of Time Crystals, who then escapes with his own time machine. Cortez then travels to 1969 to stop Khallos (whom Cortez thinks is the time traveler) with the help of hippie secret agent Harry Tipper, to rescue his girlfriend, Kitten Celeste. After killing Khallos, Anya reveals to Cortez that a mansion burned down in the 90's.

In 1994, he is (painfully) greeted by a striking teenager named Jo Beth Casey. She tells Cortez that the house is haunted, and the two battle zombies and ghosts inside the abandoned mansion. After discovering that the creator of the TimeSplitters is a mad scientist named Dr. Jacob Crow, Cortez embarks on a new mission to foil the scientist's plans by destroying his labs throughout all of the time periods Crow had visited. He travels sixty years into the future, where Crow has advanced his gene splitting experiments. Cortez and Amy (a highly trained spy sent to defeat Crow as well) fight through his lab facility to find Crow, who escapes again.

Cortez then travels 200 years into the future where machines now rule the planet, and have waged war on each other. Cortez hacks into one of the machines, identified as R-110, and allies with him. He also teams up with a small group of rebels fighting against the machines to make his way to Crow's now extremely large and powerful lab, filled with thousands of TimeSplitter embryos. Cortez manages to destroy what he can of the lab, but is not strong enough to defeat Crow, who himself has combined with the TimeSplitter race and a war machine. Anya sends Cortez and R-110 back to 1924 to stop Crow before he can further his lab experiments in the first place.

Now in 1924 again, he and R-110 make their way to Crow. Cortez finds Dr. Crow fused with a large bipedal robot. Crow destroys Cortez's ally R-110, leaving him and Cortez face to face. Knowing he can't defeat the scientist alone, Anya sends Cortez back in time a few minutes to when he first arrived in hopes of being able to double-team Crow with two Cortezes (and R-110, who was never destroyed as a result of the time loop).

After Crow is defeated, Cortez puts a raw crystal into a device that causes a chain reaction that destroys the entire compound. Anya quickly warps the two Cortezes and R-110 back to HQ, leaving Crow and the Time Crystals to be destroyed. Cortez and Anya then observe the barren desert land restored to its former form; a lush, green forest filled with life. Anya labels Cortez as her hero to which he replies, "I know, it's what I do."

Gameplay

The Arcade and Challenge modes both allow the player to unlock new characters, weapons, and new locations for Arcade (excluding league) that the player can then use in the game's mapmaker feature. The player can complete various missions and league challenges to receive awards, new characters and medals. Once the player completes a mission the game automatically saves progress. In challenges and Arcade Leagues the player earns awards. Bronze, silver, gold, and platinum medals can be acquired.

Mapmaker

After the original TimeSplitters, Free Radical Design decided to include a level creator in the TimeSplitters series. It includes tiles, character spawns, items for specific game-modes (such as a briefcase in "capture the bag" game mode) as well as the option to change the lighting and also add pre determined "bot sets", that is a group of up to ten characters to regularly appear on the map. The same goes for weapon sets.

This form of Mapmaker limits the player to a selected amount of tiles. It also allows basic features such as the addition of gun turrets, weaponry spawns and health and armour locations. It also features numerous backdrop items which vary on the maps "tile-sets", such as a sarcophagus in the "Ancient Egyptian" tile-set, and a remote control robotic cat, named Strudel.

The advanced version allows players to create a complex map as long as space is free. It contains all the features of beginner mode, as well as extra tile shapes, and backdrop features. it also features complex story mode features allowing users to create detailed and in-depth story maps of their own creation.

Reception

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect received "favorable" reviews on all platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.

It won an "IGN Best of 2005" award for "Best First-Person Shooter"

Sequel

TimeSplitters 4 was in development for almost a year but since Free Radical was bought out by Crytek after going into administration, little information has been released since. On 17 August 2009, the project had officially been declared as on hold. In an interview, Crytek UK claimed that they would continue the project once there is a high industry demand for such a game.

A modding group has since been given Crytek's blessing to create a TimeSplitters game titled TimeSplitters Rewind.