I expected so much more from TimeShift, I pretty much got what I wanted, but expected an excellent game.
The Time Mechanics are alot of fun to use you can slow, pause, and rewind time without having to suffer from the effects of any of those. So you can slow time as you run through a crowd of guys blowing them to bits as they all unload their weapons on where they thought you were. You can pause time, walk up to a guy and blow him to pieces as he stand there frozen and helpless to stop you. Pause sounds like the best to use, but it is a real drain on your time power meter so you never get much time to use it, maybe one or two kills. And rewind allows you to rewind everything around you in case you need to rewind the throw of a grenade and move yourself out of the area or rewind the collapse of a bridge as you run through it while it rebuilds itself. Although rewind sounds like alot of fun, you will hardly ever use this power and the game only lets you do the cool bridge rewind once. Bummer.
I would say TimeShift has a lame story but theres one problem. It practically has NO story. There are a few useless cut scenes with flash backs to you and some random girls romantic relationship and theres a guy you don't really know ordering you around. Fun. The game could have been so much better if only it had a coherent story that 1.) Made sense. 2.) Actually developed its characters and 3.) Existed. All you know is theres a bad guy and you have to kill him and the only reason you know where you are going is because of your mini map. TimeShift's story was a real disappointment because when you have a story that involves time travel the options are limitless. Instead a guy uses his power to go back in time and take over the world. Original.
The gun play in TimeShift is pretty good, the guns are fun to shoot especially since you get to watch their devastating effects in slo-mo, and freeze-time.
I had a few other problems with TimeShift. The first one applies also to alot of games on the 360. The text and HUD is TOO SMALL TO SEE. It is very annoying that I have to sit right on the coffee table to play this game because I can't read the text or see how much ammo I have left. Sorry Microsoft, but not everyone is as rich as you and can afford an HDTV. TimeShift also features a nameless character who doesn't speak. In this day and age it is getting a little ridiculous when you have a bunch of guys speaking to your character and giving orders, he doesn't utter a word of conformation and the characters seem fine with that. That was okay back in the duck hunt days, but these days I need to know that I'm actually playing a video game with a living character and not a corpse. Except in Zelda games. Don't ever give Link a voice Nintendo.
The multiplayer I can't give an opinion on because NOONE plays it!
Overall, TimeShift was a huge disappointment. It was a game I was actually looking forward to, but even with the first level I knew I wasn't going to get what I wanted. If you are looking for a shooter with an interesting twist, you've got it; but thats all you are getting. No multiplayer, no story, no character development, just fun time shifting mechanics and satisfying guns. Buy it used.