TimeSplitters

TimeSplitters is the debut game of Free Radical Design, a studio founded by former Rare developers who worked on GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. The game transfers their take on the console action shooter into its own series: the player goes through short, action-focused missions scattered across history and the future, from the 1920s to a distant sci-fi future, facing the titular TimeSplitters - an alien race that disrupts the flow of time and changes the shape of the eras it visits. The individual missions are more loosely connected short challenges than one continuous story, matching the arcade-style, action-packed approach the creators had already developed in their previous games.

TimeSplitters was released exclusively for the PlayStation 2 as one of the first titles for the console and was built primarily around multiplayer - up to four players could play dozens of split-screen modes with a varied roster of characters from different time periods, from cavemen through secret agents to robots from the future. The game also included its own character and map editor, which in 2000 was by no means standard on consoles, giving players the ability to build their own arenas exactly to their taste, and even record their own voices for characters and adjust their behavior as computer-controlled opponents. Thanks to its PlayStation 2 exclusivity, the game could fully focus on the performance and capabilities of that specific console without having to make compromises for porting elsewhere.

Why play it: TimeSplitters is a must for fans of turn-of-the-millennium console shooters and multiplayer couch sessions - it offers a variety of modes, characters, and custom creation that few competing games on PS2 offered at the time, while also showing how the studio Free Radical Design managed to put its founders' experience from GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark to good use right in its very first standalone project.