Not to beat a dead horse, but if you are a regular reader of my reviews you know how I feel about demos. A demo can be a developer’s best friend, but in the case of Time Shift it can also be your worst enemy. I was originally very interested in Time Shift. I closely followed the games development right up until the demo released on Xbox Live, but this is where the proverbial wheels fell off for me.

TimeShift is the story of a scientist (Dr. Krone) who steals a prototype time machine (the Alpha Suit) and travels back through time, altering history to make himself leader of the world. You take on the roll of another doctor (who oddly enough does not have a name) who steals the beta suit (a more advanced model than the alpha suit) and follows him. When your character arrives the changes have already taken place so he must find Dr. Krone and stop him in order to correct the discrepancies in the timeline. As interesting a premise as TimeShift is, the story is pretty forgettable. Without a name, you can imagine how involved the character and story development is.

In TimeShift your character is in possession of a suit that can manipulate time in multiple ways which is easily the games best feature. I never got tired of stopping time and moving behind my enemies and watching them become completely confused as to where I was. In TimeShift you possess the ability to fast forward, rewind, slow and stop time. Each ability inevitable comes in to use and is implemented into the gameplay well. I was especially impressed by the way in which you could prevent death by rewinding time if you were quick enough on the trigger. Actually, as a whole the gameplay is pretty solid. Environments are designed pretty well and the enemy AI is solid. I never saw any characters looking the wrong way or not shooting at me when I was in plain sight.

TimeShift probably has some of the worst graphics I have seen on the 360 to date. I know it was originally supposed to be released in the last console generation and it appears that the developers stuck with that philosophy when they were designing the game. Everything in the game is just straight ugly. The environments, although diverse, are as bland as they get; character models are poorly rendered and even the weather effects look terrible. Also the game just isn't very much fun. The weapons are pretty boring and as much fun as time shifting abilities are, the mapped controls for using them are horrible. The game defaults a specific ability given the situation but trying to manually select a different ability is horribly designed given the games pacing. It's a shame that the games best feature and biggest selling point is so poorly designed.

There is a lot of potential for TimeShift. Unfortunately the game suffers from some avoidable flaws that diminish the overall product. If you are a fan of shooters then you should at least try TimeShift but I can not recommend it for everyone, and you will most likely want to pick up a used copy or make this one a rental.