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The year is 200X and I'm at my best friends house. He had recently purchased a game for
his Playstation 2, titled "Timesplitters 2" and we were just about to sit down and
play it.

    EU cover, so much better than the American one

Now X years later (Poor memory), I'm writing this blog post to reminisce on the great
times we've had with this series.

So it started that day, with Timesplitters 2. We had previously played Goldeneye and
had a lot of fun with it's splitscreen multiplayer. We might even have played Perfect
Dark and had a blast with it's co-op. But Timesplitters 2 took all the things that made
these games so fantastic and turned it up to 11.

We watched the intro cinematic. It told us of the war between the Timesplitters and
mankind, how they appeared from nowhere with but one intent; To destroy us. And we
are losing, because they're travelling back in time to sabotage our past.

We are shown the splitters, alien beast with scythe like claws and featureless faces
bar a mouth with an overabundance of teeth and a long dangling tongue. They are on a
space station, seen operating the time machine they have used to invade our past.

In a space ship, Sergeant Cortez and Corporal Hart enter the space station and fight
their way to the controls of the time machine. The splitter there take the most crucial
components of the machine, it's time crystals, and escape with them through the time
portal. This leaves Corporal Cortez with no choice but to pursue them, to retrieve
the crystals and undo the damage they've done to our history.

After watching this introductory cinematic, we entered the first level of the game.
Together, of course, in co-operative splitscreen.

                                                      Not shown: Splitscreen

Right away we were blown away by the visuals, the music and the atmosphere.
This first level, the year 1990, a snow covered dam in Siberia, which we had been
tasked to infiltrate. From the snow covered exterior, through the dam's inner works,
into the secret labs on the other side of the river, we battled Russian soldiers,
zombies and mutants. Our objective, to retrieve a time crystal and stop the nefarious
plot put in place by the Timesplitters to sabotage our past. And that we did,
destroying a canister containing a deceased Splitter, evidently the cause of
this zombie outbreak.

After doing so, we proceeded with clearing out the remaining undead and surviving the
attack of black ops operatives sent in to "clean" up. Once we were past that, we proceeded
to the top of the dam, where we battled a helicopter gunship, using the stationary
turrets on the dam.

One of the most memorable experiences of my entire life.

The rest of the game was not a slouch and offered many more memorable experiences.
A quick run down:

*Deep breath*

Fighting mobsters in 1932s Chicago, exploring the tombs and cathedral of 1895's
Notre Dame, fighting bug eyed aliens and flying saucers in the pulp sci-fi year 2280's
Return to Planet X, sneaking after a gang member to infiltrate their hideout while
evading the police searching for you in 2019's Neotokyo, bringing down a war criminal
in 1853's Wild West, foiling the plot of a classic bond villain in the spy pastiche
1972's Atom Smasher, evading traps, natives and golems while raiding the jungle
temple of 1920s Aztec Ruins, dismantling the robot uprising in 2315's Robot Factory
and finally, bringing the gathered time crystals back and destroying the time machine
in 2401's Space Station.

*Gasp*

                             Screenshot to distract you while I catch my breath

We finished the game in only a day or two. Since then, we've finished it several times, on all
difficulties. We also spent countless hours on it's competitive multiplayer,
primarily players against bots. In all, we spent weeks if not months of time on playing
this game and we had fun the entire time. Few games manage to captivate in this way,
even fewer so with co-op.

For a first person shooter, it's variety is perhaps unsurpassed to this day. Each time
period has something new to offer in terms of armament and opposition, not to mention
visuals and audio. The art style was fantastic, stylized rather than realistic and
the music is classic. It is without a doubt one of the most well made and well realized
games ever.

In retrospect, the only thing that doesn't hold up is it's controls. A non-fixed
crosshair for precision aiming, similar to that of Goldeneye. While it worked for
Goldeneye, with it's single stick controller, this kind of control scheme really has
no business being on a controller with two sticks. Besides that though, this is as
close to perfect as any game can be.

If you have a PS2 (Or Gamecube or Xbox) and a co-op partner within arms reach (Splitscreen, remember), you owe it to yourselves to play this game.

Get it. Now!

                The monkey demands it

 

Image sources:

Image 1 (Cover): Gamefaqs

Image 2: Timesplitters Wikia

Image 3: Gamespot

Image 4: Timesplitters Wikia