Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

If you even bother asking why i have two completely different games up out of nowhere, I'll give you three words to think about. "Time and Space." People will KNOW right off the bat that that counts for the space-time continuum. Few people, however, will think of it as time and MATTER also. Meaning LAND. or OBJECTS. or PLANETS. Time and space can be just about anything. In this case; rivals. One game you control the flow of time, and the other you control the ground.. er- naturally formed ground. ... Plus the only two ways they're alike are they are shooters for the xbox360... feh. Okay those and they both have the Havok engine... whatever.

TimeShift- Xbox 360
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay so first off, multiplayer is in your fricken DREAMS with this game if you don't have Live or a friend with another copy and a cable to connect their consoles. The latter of that sentence is the largest reason for the longevity difference. The others would be that this game can have downloadable content and it has spectator mode. ... For the Gears of War nuts who don't know what a spectator is because they don't pay attention in English [or whatever language this is translated to], it's pretty much "Ghost mode", where you control an invisible camera and can go anywhere on the map and just watch the chaos ensue. Aside from that, the game is pretty much F.E.A.R. multiplayer except the "time-slowing" effect is a grenade type that has an AOE. Much more fun! Anything that is in or enters the AOE slows down by five times. It's not really fair for the people in the AOE, though. It means they can be offed easy by a wide spray of bullets from people shooting outside.
Okay, enough about the multiplayer. The graphics in the game are surprisingly good. Not great, but good. Although they're the generic "Grey-and-Brown face paint" style. Even the brighter outdoor areas aren't anywhere near natural-realistic. All of it looks like it was... covered in old sawdust and a light shade of dust then badly sweeped clean. The actual time-shift modes give you the feeling like you're in a 3-D black-and-white picture. There's no color at all besides gray. The cutscenes are basically the same, except they look about Mass-Effect good in quality. That's good and bad at the same time, since the games run about the same time and there's less in Timeshift.
The sound... Pretty much generic. If you've played half life, then you'll probably hear a faint voice in every game. This one does the same thing in some ways, but the voice isn't a breathy whisper. It's actually a digital voice. There's nothing special about much else.
Okay, my biggest nit-pick about the story is that I couldn't figure out the rebel story parts. In the beginning you're lead to their local leader within maybe three minutes. There's no trust test, there's no weapon in your hand, and you actually look more like the enemy soldiers than you do them. For all they could know, you dropped in where you did on purpose. Aside from little things like that, you're basically a one-man army out to bring the big baddie down by yourself given the choice of a small arsenal of weak weapons with powerhouse secondaries or maybe three true god-be-gone weapons with a decent amount of ammo as well as ammo crates.
The gameplay is smooth, although in a few instances you can be confused as hell. One great example would be in an airship turret. The suit itself is supposed to be smart enough to shut down any time-altering effects when in reverse if you even touch something besides the ground. Along with that, it knows what's best for certain situations. Its default is "slow" since it boosts your running speed up to 1.5x by the player's eye when in single player. Stop is even better, though. In many cases, you'll use it to do a quick "teardrop" movement out of cover to a frozen enemy to beat the hell out of the poor sap before ducking under cover to either leave him scared as hell that he lost his weapon or dead. Reverse... You can guess. Its niftiest feature is that it can unstick sticky grenades. The damage-effects in some areas are quite surprising. When in normal or slow, if you get shocked by something in the environment you're down instantly. In stop, there's no damage and you can pass right through. In reverse, there's different effects. With fire, you get hurt quickly but don't die off the bat, in water, it stops itself and you drop in to either your doom or it's just a puddle. I've never tried swimming.
The AI is between F.E.A.R. good and Halo 3 bad. Where, I don't know. It literally does a massive loop in difficulty multiple times. Mainly by numbers and those forsaken turrets. They can sometimes be just complete morons and hide behind cover when there's a turret on THEIR side shooting at you, normally from a vehicle, or they're berserkers who dodge all cover altogether and either swarm or line-up for a whoopin'. The harder parts are normally when they swarm, because they can own you in seconds if you're not smart enough to scramble to another piece of cover, even with slow or stop or reverse on your side. Speaking of, do NOT use reverse when it happens. any bullets that hit you before you start within those ten seconds immediately does it again.. soo that's an extra equal bit of damage with the bit you just took. One more thing, some of them have jetpacks, so when those pop up, try to pick them off while they reload and dodge their bullets before going for the ground people.

Fracture - Xbox 360
----------------------------------------------------------
The counterpart to Timeshift. Where that one is grey, brown, and musty, this one is colorful and shiny [in most cases]. Where that one has a difficulty curve like a fruit-loop, this one is more like a spaghetti noodle. Where that one has a confusing story, this one has one where you barely pay attention to anything but the most massive bits. Where that one is first person, this one is third... And most of all, where that one controls time, this one controls space.

Like i stated just in the last paragraph, this one is shiny and colorful... the destructive ADHD-ridden kid's dream by looks. The sound, I have no real opinion of... This is also for people who like sandbox additions to their games. Especially for those who like to kill or shoot random stuff out of a cannon. The game itself can get boring very quickly when by yourself, seeing as the third person aspect is... bland and the two standard terraforming grenades are useless as anything but fraggies. The only time it is truly fun to throw a grenade is in the sandbox map and you use the ever-epic vortex grenade... Think of an exploding blue tornado. It drags any objects within its faintest points in its AOE as close to the middle as it can, including enemies... and you... and then explodes. The effect is truly brick-shitting worthy. I'm not being nice, either. it's pretty much a supernova that sucks itself in just as it explodes, sending all objects flying. Other than that and the sheer numbers of enemies you have the option of adding to the sandbox map itself [i think up to maybe twenty-five] to toy with, the only thing the game is useful as a GAME is for getting the tokens in the story to get all the stuff in the sandbox. [[there's 100 total]] Otherwise... Well I hope you have an AR to unlock everything in the game, because even getting all the tokens [or even maybe 70 to get the vortex grenade in the sandbox] is barely worth it. If you ask me, the game should be at most about fifteen dollars. At MOST.