COMING SOON:
COMICULTURE
VOL.2, BOOK ONE FIRST LOOK updated 3/4/04
COMICULTURE
IN THE NEWS
Here's what people said about Issue #2 of Comiculture ...
"(Comiculture is) a gorgeous production that fills a niche no one else is tackling in comics...."
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TAKING AIM AT GOLDENEYE: TIMESPLITTERS 2
N64 • Eidos & Free Radical by Kevin Tang
Can this be it? Has an heir apparent been discovered, will the crown worn so long by Nintendo 64'sGoldenEye be handed over to a new sovereign? The contender for the throne is TimeSplitters 2, a high-octane, first-person shooter. TS2, from Eidos and Free Radical, utilizes some of the same dynamic energy that made GoldenEye such a rare pleasure. In TS2, players are engaged in levels that vary from 19th Century Paris to the mechanized future of the 24th Century, meeting enemies of all shapes and sizes, and blasting opponents using intuitive, customizable controls. An impressive achievement by far, but is it enough to possibly dethrone GoldenEye, clearly one of the most dominant, successful video games to date? Let’s look more closely:
Our history is changing before us. An alien race called the TimeSplitters has come to take over Earth in the year 2401. Their goal: destroy humanity by re-writing our past, present, and future. The evil these foes have done must be stopped and history set back on its proper course. Your mission: use the era's current weapons and retrieve the time crystals ere our doom.
Intrigued?
Click on the image above
to purchase TimeSplitters2
There you have it, the backstory behind one of the most acclaimed games of 2002. It has an interesting enough concept and, beyond the time paradox, you'll find a very fun, sometimes frustrating game that will stop you from getting anything done around the house.
Is TimeSplitters better than GoldenEye though? Nintendo hit the mark when they released GoldenEye, the legendary game from Rare, the company that also brought you Perfect Dark (the follow-up to GoldenEye) and other noteworthy games like Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo-Kazooie, and Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Notice anything yet? Yes, I am a big Nintendo advocate. Why? Well, there will be time enough for that article further down the road but, for now, let's just say that I find their consoles to be very well thought out (with the minor exception of Virtual Boy), their games and properties mega-fun, and they have been around a good long time.
There you have it, the backstory behind one of the most acclaimed games of 2002. It has an interesting enough concept and, beyond the time paradox, you'll find a very fun, sometimes frustrating game that will stop you from getting anything done around the house.
Is TimeSplitters better than GoldenEye though? Nintendo hit the mark when they released GoldenEye, the legendary game from Rare, the company that also brought you Perfect Dark (the follow-up to GoldenEye) and other noteworthy games like Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo-Kazooie, and Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Notice anything yet? Yes, I am a big Nintendo advocate. Why? Well, there will be time enough for that article further down the road but, for now, let's just say that I find their consoles to be very well thought out (with the minor exception of Virtual Boy), their games and properties mega-fun, and they have been around a good long time.
GoldenEye was and still is one of the best games ever to come on the market. Its story closely follows that of the movie (one of the better Bond films, I might add), making its single-player scenario tight. The objectives, based on the level of difficulty, continue with more possible missions that Bond might have faced in the film. There is the thrill of escaping from the train by cutting through the floor with the laser watch just like the movie, or hunting down Trevelyn, 006, through the twisted jungle that is the radio antenna's superstructure (which challenged me for hours and, to this day, still fills me with utter anguish.) That still wasn't the best part of GoldenEye; multiplayer is where it reigned supreme. Players were in for a treat when they sat down with friends, colleagues and shot the hell out of one another. Like I said, hours wasted. That, my friend, is the mark of excellence.
Perfect Dark, a great follow-up to GoldenEye, gave us even more bang for the buck. Falling short of a gripping story like GoldenEye, it made up for with more advanced weaponry and a unique mode of game play called “Challenges.” It even added in bots so, unlike the maximum of four multiplayers, all human in GoldenEye, you can team up with three friends and take on up to 8 bots! You could even assign bots to be your allies. It was a damn good game too, however, it lacked the simplicity of GoldenEye's setup and overwhelmed most players with too many options.
Turok, in all its variations, I won't even get into. I found the controls awkward, thus it never quite found its niche in my gaming library.
One of the best ways to judge a game is its replay value. TS2 has that wrapped. Its three single-player difficulty levels will make the game more exasperating every time, but knowing you passed through yet another stage is quite rewarding. Of course, you could be completely nuts like I am and try to beat the game on “Hard,” figuring that, if you're going to play a game, you might as well get it over with. Needless to say, one of the other reasons to do so is to unlock different levels and characters to play with in multiplayer. However, TS2 not only involves your standard single-player and multiplayer stages, but also a 2-player co-op stage where you and a friend can go through all the single player stages (with three levels of difficulty) as a team.
Perfect Dark also includes the co-op feature, probably due to the fact that PD, GoldenEye and TS2 all have some programmers in common. However, TS2 has added even more challenges and arcade tournaments that will further unlock characters, levels and game scenarios. The arcade league has three levels of difficulty: Amateur, Honorary and Elite. There are scenarios in this area of gameplay that will push you to scream and yell and curse like a mofo. You can see where an extra pair of guns will help you ace the baddies here.
TS2 is by far one of the most expansive games ever. You can customize your controls if you don't like the four built-in options available to you (“Radical B” resembles GoldenEye's the closest, and will suit most players well) and there's even a mapmaker that allows you to build your own level to play with. How about that?
Don’t think I’m handing over the crown just yet, though -- I do have some negative comments as well:
Despite the custom control options, I can't say I like the way weapons are exchanged. Selecting the left and right buttons on the D-pad is how to cycle through the weapons but, now and then, it seems to get in the way (especially when you have "zoom"-capable weapons like the sniper rifle.) The different stages the player goes through are a little short and the challenges and arcade league are not multiplayer capable like Perfect Dark.
One last quibble: statistics. Why couldn't TS2 use the same statistics screen that GoldenEye and Perfect Dark utilized? After the game is over, I like to be able to glance at stats that simply state who I killed, how many I killed and who killed me. Is that too much to ask?
All in all, TS2 is a huge multi-level nested game that will engulf you with many hours of high-tech frenzied firing. It is innovative and, most of all, fun. Free Radical did an amazing job on TimeSplitters2 yet, despite all its wonders, GoldenEye remains, in my heart, the king of console shooters.
It’s important to note that, even if TS2 is not the monarch of mayhem in my game room, it’s definitely a worthy heir to that throne. I can’t recommend strongly enough that you try TimeSplitters 2. Rent it, buy it, borrow it, play it, love it. Just watch out for the monkey. You'll see.
