A long, long time ago on this very website, we once previewed TimeShift when it seemed as if the game was about to go gold and ship. Of course, if we're previewing the game again now, that means it slipped and fell back…way back. Usually when a game falls off the radar like that you write it off for good and never look back, but based on what we've seen they managed to take what was an average shooter and fixed it up to make it really something and stand apart from the crowd. So just how far has TimeShift came?

The stories of both games still seem relatively the same based on what we've heard and seen: some crazed lunatic with dreams of world domination on his mind decides to go back to the past, take control and make changes so he thrives and rules in the future…and it works. As the main character, you play a TimeCop of sorts (yes, imagine the movie) who uses a time suit to go back and right the wrongs. Things go a little wrong for you, your suit gets fried, and suddenly everything is wrong and you failed at your job. With powers in hand can you change history so that the future is back to normal and how it should be?

The story, much like that in Half-Life 2, seems to take place completely in the game world with in-game events happening to drive the narrative forward, while you get to keep moving, manually looking around, and not having to just sit back and watch a pretty CG cutscene detail the events. As we started off the preview, we found ourselves in an alley, the rain pouring down, and some soldiers beating up some homeless resistance fighters. With new weapon in hand, it's but a couple of trigger squeezes and the fighters are saved. The story continues to unfold like this with the evil dictator spouting his mantras on speakers and video boards and fellow fighters throwing out info as you come across them in the game.

The preview we played weaved us in and out of environments, going from the grungy and tight corners of an alley to a resistance fighter blockade battle to making our way through crumbled buildings and through trenches that cut through the dirt and under structures. Much like the Nazis in a World War II fighter, the only enemies we ran across were of the soldier variety (their look might've changed from one to the next, but they were still in essence men shooting). Now that's not to say there is anything wrong with that, because these soldiers certainly were able to put up a good fight, killing us occasionally on the Casual setting and absolutely laying the hurt down on the Skilled difficulty. The AI of the soldiers looked pretty good too as they liked to duck behind cover and make skillful advances on my position, trying to blitzkrieg me in one swoop.

The weaponry was solid, giving a futuristic slant on the more traditional standbys of first person shooters; we managed to pickup an assault rifle, shotgun, and crossbow (there were also the ever-ready grenades as well). The weapons felt good using them, as they felt like they performed as they should and deal the amount of damage that we thought they should. The thing that impressed us most about the weapons were their alternate fire – our favorite was the assault rifle's sort of grenade shooter (so wicked and deadly when shooting into a group of enemies within close proximity of each other). The real star of the game, and a weapon in its own way, is your ability to control time in three various forms. The first way to control time is slow it down, so if you needed to make a quick escape or perhaps get through a rapidly closing door, you could slow things to a crawl as you did whatever you had to do. The ability to slow time also works well for combat, where you get to continue moving as quick as usual, laying down plenty of fire before the enemy can even fire a shot. The second way to control time is by stopping it, where everything just freezes on the screen in the place it is. We're sure the ability will be used with puzzles as well, but we only used it for combat (namely disarming guys and killing them with their own weapons, or pumping them so full of lead that when time starts going again they explode into a bloody mist – yeah!). You're also able to rewind time, which helped in one puzzle where a building pathway had collapsed due to an explosion, and by rewinding time and moving through the passage before it explodes again, you're able to safely get to the other side safe and sound before the obstruction occurs.

Graphically the game was gorgeous, featuring some smoothly animated characters, great detail with all the destruction happening everywhere, and we also loved the way in which the world looked when time was affected, such as things rebuilding themselves or the rain pausing in mid-flight as it drops from the clouds in the sky. It's only a preview version of the game, but it already looks mighty fine indeed.

We're thrilled that TimeShift wasn't ever canned and only put on the backburner for a much-needed retooling period. We had frankly wrote the game off a long time ago, but after seeing the almost finished version of the game we'd be highly disappointed and letdown if this version of the game suffered from the same fate as the previous one.