A Eulogy For TimeSplitters

By Drifting

I imagine most of you who still play TS have felt this sentiment throughout the ashes of a once vibrant online TS community. ts3.net has been gone for years now, the GameFAQs boards are kept alive by a few devout fans, The Rec Room has been abandoned once and is now a plentiful source for spam, Planet TimeSplitters basically died, and the TimeSplitters Musicbox has grown on its own merits, though its days are numbered as well, due to an MIA webmaster. Alas, it seems, the majority of the TimeSplitters community long ago abandoned their "favorite" FPS when they jumped on the Halo bandwagon, discovered Half-Life 2, and rediscovered the Doom franchise with the long-delayed release of Doom 3. Many of these old fans remember TS as "that lame-ass game without a jump button."

Like GoldenEye and Perfect Dark before it, TimeSplitters appears to be slowing sinking into the "influential but outdated" abyss all great games eventually do. I'm betting you're thinking, "With the debut of the new consoles, a new TimeSplitters will undoubtedly get released, right? FRD wouldn't just abandon its baby!" Maybe so. But let's take a look at FP compared with the first two games. Most long-time fans agree that FP was a bit of a letdown, if not a disappointment, when compared to the first 2 games. Some say it was due to FRD switching publishers, from Eidos to EA. Others say it was just them trying a new direction. In any event, TS changed. Though the deeper story and addition of new guns, characters, etc. were generally welcome changes, something had changed. The arcade league missions had become absurdly easy to beat. Even attaining the fabled plat posed little challenge to most seasoned players. The Story mode, too, seemed ridiculously easy on all difficulties, with no level getting anywhere close to the sheer frustration of Atomsmasher and Robot Factory Hard. In fact, the entire game seemed to have becomed "n00bified." The arcade custom was still as fun as ever, but that makes me think that the game was geared more toward being a multiplayer extravaganza aimed at casual players. Most casual gamers could probably beat the game and unlock everything within a few weeks or so.

Was this FRD's attempt at widening the TS market past their cult fanbase? Perhaps. But one wonders if another TS that was geared toward casual gamers would be worth the hardcore FPS player's time. The series' legendary sense of humor and zaniness could only go so far if the difficulty wasn't there. Of course, some might wonder if we even have to fret about another "n00bish" TS. There are no current plans for a new TimeSplitters, and the small game company seems fully consumed with their new game Haze and a recently confirmed project with LucasArts. These new franchises will likely keep FRD busy for the next few years. Whether or not their sketchy promise of "TS in 2009" will come true remains to be seen. But my question is, if it does come out in 2009, who's going to care? Even the few TS fanboys like us reading this will be on to the next new thing by then, and a new TS will appear as trying to revive an old relic. The aforementioned Doom 3, among other games could be cited as an exception to this, but TS never had the large following Doom had. TimeSplitters, or at least the TimeSplitters we knew and loved it, is most likely gone forever.

TimeSplitters is dead, long live TimeSplitters.