The one thing that Free Radical seems to have focused on when developing TimeSplitters is speed. This game is fast; this game is furious; and it will willingly knock your socks off and burn them to a bitter crisp. During a single player game (story mode, deathmatch, or otherwise), TimeSplitters runs at a rock solid 60 frames per second, with absolutely hints of any annoying slowdown or frame rate dipping (ala Perfect Dark). Add this in addition to amazing amounts of sprawling architecture based upon four distinct time periods, over seven enemies reigning bullets down on you at once, deathmatch that has kills racking up so quickly that it needs to be set to at least 50 kills to last a decent amount of time and TimeSplitters has players on the edge of their seats, blasting away in hopes of making the one magical bullet shoot off, knocking off the last remaining bits of life in a character.

Since there’s only one real drawback to TimeSplitters, I’ll get that out of the way first. Gamers looking for a Half-Life-esque single player experience will be severely disappointed; Free Radical seems to have spent most of the development time working on making the game run fast and look beautiful and pumping in as many multiplayer options as possible, and the single player (Story mode) segment has been left flapping alone in the wind. There is supposedly actual plot behind TimeSplitters, but it doesn’t make a real difference; it isn’t mentioned in the game at all, or even in the manual itself. The mission objectives consist of one goal each time: grab X item and return it to Y location. That’s about it. You can choose between three difficulty levels (Easy, Medium and Hard) that change the amount of enemies in the level and their intelligence (and Medium and Hard definitely do make a difference), but it seems that the story mode was primarily put in there as a mode for players to unlock more goodies for the multiplayer sections.

Once players beat the story mode once, there is also a Challenge mode that opens up, making way for more secrets to come through. Each challenge presents a set of goals that have to be completed, and when Free Radical named them “challenges”, they meant it; these are hard. I spent over an hour and a half with the first challenge alone (it puts you in the mansion level with a shotgun, and gives the goal of lobbing off 50 zombie heads in two minutes) before finally completing it, and you’ll no doubt be slamming your first on the floor many times if you attempt to give Challenge a go. I will say, however, that they are good at improving your skills in a number of areas.

Now, onto the real reason to pick up TimeSplitters: the multiplayer. The heart of the game, this is exactly where TimeSplitters excels. There are enough options readily available right from the start, and so many waiting to be unlocked through the single player modes, that players who find themselves a set of decent playing friends will be in for the fragfest of a lifetime. The most common form of fighting is, of course, normal deathmatch, which can get pretty interesting by messing with a few variables. A personal favorite of mine is to pick a random set of bots and make sure all of them are enabled. Then put the game on “Kills” (Kill-Losses, the default, makes it so each time you die, a kill point is taken off), the kill limit on around 75, create a custom set of weapons that include multiple kinds of double weapon sets and let the carnage ensue.

And the thing is, that is only deathmatch – there is much more to be explored! Bag Tag has a single bag being placed on the map, and the person to hold onto it the longest in a specified amount of time wins; Capture the Bag is the same as capture the flag, but instead with a bag; Knockout is similar to Capture the Bag, but this time it’s basically one object on the map, and everyone diving for it; Escort is a co-operative mode where players must protect themselves and another character from oncoming attacks; and finally, Last Stand gives each person a base, and they have to protect it for as long as possible from enemies. All of the modes can get pretty insane, but the great part is that they’re constantly fun, and the creativity in the game’s maps, characters (which there are around 55 of) makes sure that they don’t get old quick.

One slight quirk with the multiplayer in TimeSplitters, however, is that when things do happen to get a little out of hand, it performs damage control to keep the frame rate up by running the game into a heavy dose of pixelation for a short while. It puts a severe hamper on being able to aim and control movement, and it feels like I'm playing a first person shooter on the PlayStation again. Fortunately, the pixelation episodes don’t happen often enough to be a serious problem, and when they do, they aren’t for more than a few seconds.

If you happen to bore of the maps that Free Radical has created for the game, there’s always option B: create your own. Don’t be afraid that this is one of the ultra complicated map editors included with popular PC first person shooters (which are fantastic for those who take the time to learn them, but they aren’t very user friendly, to say the least), but rather, a map editor that a person who has never even thought of designing a level can pick up and use in a few seconds. Place the cursor down on a square, hit X to pick a tile and what weapons and lighting you want to appear in it, and then simply tap X to place it down. You can create multiple levels of play (up to seven, including both up and down), choose what sort of theme you want for the level (you cannot pick out textures to be placed everywhere, you can only pick the theme), and there are options for choose a type of lighting for a given area. There are unfortunately limits on how big levels can be made (a blue bar at the top indicated how much space you have left), but there is plenty to create levels big enough to satisfy.

One cool little aspect about the game is that you can definitely see that the time at Rare influenced their development of TimeSplitters. For example, after completing a multiplayer match, there are little rewards given to each player, describing what type of player they were during that particular match.

There are quite a few great games already available for the PlayStation 2, but Eidos Interactive and Free Radical have brought to the table what can easily be considered the best multiplayer title for the machine, and one of the best first person shooters released for a console so far. Fingers are crossed that Free Radical will have the chance to work on a sequel, and improve upon a few of the lagging aspects of the game.