TimeSplitters: Future Perfect is a pretty darn enjoyable game. The AI is pretty average, the story a little hokey, and the gameplay is pretty straight forward basic – none of which would make Future Perfect a great game, right? However, what the game does really right is provide gameplay that is unabashedly fun. There’s a lot of imagination in the game, plenty of tongue in cheek humor, and interesting levels set at various points in time. The designers obviously had fun creating this game, and that fun translates into some thoroughly enjoyable gameplay even though the game is not a cutting edge shooter.

In Future Perfect you play a super soldier from the future named Sergeant Cortez. Humanity is locked in a struggle with the monstrous TimeSplitters, nasty creatures that can appear out of thin air, and things are not going well at all. In a last-ditch effort to turn the tide of the war, Cortez is charged with acquiring the special crystals needed to power a time machine. When he returns with the crystals he learns that the human leaders intend to send someone back in time to prevent the TimeSplitter war from ever occurring in the first place. He then finds out that that “someone” is him, and this is where your time-hopping adventures begin.

The game is played as a serious of episodic levels each set during a different year in the past – “past” being a relative term since in the game’s timeline our future is in the past. Completing your objectives for a level unlocks the next in turn, and you can return at any time to replay a level if you’d like. Since each mission is a distinct and independent level on its own and each one is heavily scripted, you probably won’t feel the need to revisit completed levels unless you found a certain sequence to be particularly exciting or memorable. Each mission opens in a similar manner – you drop out of thin air into the place and time of your next mission and invariably run into a “local” busily pursuing his or her own set of goals. Not surprisingly these goals are intertwined with your own and by working together you’ll both accomplish your missions. These allies of yours form a very colorful cast of characters and provide the game with a lot of humor and personality. Of course it’s always nice to have an extra gun on your side, although in practice the majority of the killing will fall on your own broad shoulders.

Time travel is fraught with paradoxes and Future Perfect deals with these in a humorous and enjoyable manner. “If you want something done right then you have to do it yourself,” the saying goes, and that applies in Future Perfect as you’ll find your best ally in many cases to be yourself. Those paradoxes often take the shape of you running into yourself and lending yourself a hand. Later in the mission you’ll take on the role of your future self and provide the same help to the next version of you to show up that was provided to you earlier. Got that? Don’t strain your brain too hard thinking about it; just sit back and enjoy the novelty (and cleverness) of it all.

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