Finally, it's worth going into the multiplayer modes, since they're pretty inventive. Instead of individually being able to alter time in a multiplayer environment (which, according to the developers at Saber, brought up a whole host of gameplay problems), each combatant gets a small number of "time grenades." These grenades explode into large shimmering spheres, inside which time is either slowed, stopped or reversed. So, if you're backing away from someone shooting at you, you can hit them with a "Stop" grenade, run around behind them and shoot them in the back.
There's also a variant called King of Time, which is a lot like tag- you can only score by killing the player who is currently the King, and whoever kills the King becomes the King- with the wrinkle that the King is unaffected by time grenades, while he or she is equipped with a lot of them. The result is a rather bizarre free-for-all, especially since every map has about 60 different modifiers you can tweak- direction and force of gravity, just to pick one example- which means nearly endless customization.
The single player mode, however, seems to be what most of the production value has gone into, and that's just fine. Like we said, TimeShift is well-designed and challenging as a game, with a nicely involving storyline. There's always something happening, and we certainly weren't bored. We'll just have to wait until we get our hands on a reviewable version and can really spend some (forgive us, gods of vocabulary) time with it to see if the all that slowing and reversing is more than just a gimmick.
