update: the copy of timesplitters 2 that I bought immediately after posting this has now arrived

I have not played timesplitters 1 but to honest... look at this cover art. does this look like a game where you need to know the Lore

really fond of this weird tech protrusion that looks like a third flexing bicep attached to his shoulder

lmao yeah here's the entire opening cutscene

THERE ARE ALIENS
THEY HAVE TIME TRAVEL
THE DEFAULT SKINS FROM UNREAL TOURNAMENT WILL SHOOT THEM

uhhhhhhhhh

lmao...?

absolutely love that he's programmed to react to gunshots but NOT to turn around

oh okay, in fairness:

the glass is unbreakable because they needed you to see the guard standing in front of the gun turret on the ceiling, so that you could take over the turret and shoot him with it

which is rad. Gotta prevent the player from killing him in the boring way in order to make sure they get to kill him in the cool way haha

I forget what this font is named but I *definitely* used it for gamemaker games in like 2004

This is pretty cool. Not a post-process bloom; those lights each just have a big glow sprite, and it's doing some kind of occlusion test to scale the glow up and down

IIRC this wasn't uncommon for the era (I think Halo did it too?) but it's been ages since I've seen it anywhere

if the pitch for Perfect Dark was "what if Goldeneye but insanely polished and complicated" the pitch for Timesplitters 2 appears to be "what if Goldeneye but you can see where you're going"

man I love the early period where the ESRB just did not give a shit

*trailer voice* Rated T for You Can Shoot Zombies' Limbs and Heads Off

See Also: Ocarina of Time with Barinade exploding, Ganondorf puking blood, everything about Dead Hand, etc etc

E! for EVERYONE!

GAME OVER

SUCCESS

Menu music goes impressively hard

i take it back you can't see where you're going in this game either

there's an NPC in this screenshot and you'll fail an objective if you accidentally shoot him

lmao this game is hard

I've been playing one level for like an hour, I killed the boss, which is ONE of the objectives, but I hadn't finished all the OTHER objectives yet, so then it just started spawning infinite teleporting aliens until I died

It's really weird going back to the pre-themepark FPS era. Like, this is NOT designed to be a series of fun encounters to just blast your way through; the designers EXPECT you to die constantly to unexpected bullshit, and just restart levels over and over until you can clear them

I got set on fire, and apparently being set on fire does very little damage but you just... burn? forever?

several minutes later I tried to Rescue a Maiden but apparently being on fire is contagious so instead she just got incinerated and I failed the mission

I respect this game but I don't think I'm enjoying playing it very much lol