TimeSplitters 2 (PlayStation 2)

TimeSplitters 2, the sequel to Free Radical Design’s PlayStation 2 launch title, once again sends players hurtling through time, as they battle the malevolent TimeSplitters in ten unique time periods, from the Wild West to a futuristic space station, and everything in between.

The game’s story finds Cortez, the series’ hero, on a quest to discover the origins of the TimeSplitters, an enigmatic group that travels through time causing trouble for the good people of Earth. Using the paradoxes of time travel to his advantage, the hero can regularly join up with past and future versions of himself, to fight the enemy as a team. A wide selection of historical, modern, and futuristic weapons is available, and environments feature destructible elements.

Depending on the difficulty level chosen, players will find themselves with rudimentary objectives to complete or, on the harder settings, new areas and substantially more involved objectives to fulfill. Two players can also play the Story mode cooperatively and simultaneously.

Like its predecessor, TimeSplitters 2 features a Challenge mode, which presents the player with a selection of time- and skill-based events. Completing these within the predetermined constraints awards the player with bronze, silver, or gold medals, which in turn aid in unlocking additional game options, levels, and playable characters (of which there are more than 120).

The Arcade mode offers League, Custom, and Network sub-modes. League events feature pre-configured maps, game types, and objectives for the player to compete in, while the other Arcade modes make up the bulk of the multiplayer portion of the title. In the Custom mode, up to four players and numerous AI “bots” can compete in 16 different customizable disciplines including Deathmatch, Regeneration, Virus, Thief, Shrink, Monkey Assistant, and Flame Tag — each offering an altered form of gameplay. Thief, for example, tasks players with collecting tokens left behind by fallen combatants. Here, the tokens determine the winner, not the number of kills.