Ah, time. Who hasn't at some point wished they could have a little more control over it? The ability to slow it down, or stop it altogether, or even go back in time and correct a mistake we've made. Who hasn't wanted that ability at least once in life? And of course if you add the ability to manipulate time to an arsenal of awe-inspiring weaponry, well, then you'd pretty much be unstoppable. Welcome to Timeshift.

You are a scientist working on two suits capable of altering time; the Alpha Suit with basic time travel abilities and the Beta Suit with military and combat upgrades. The project supervisor, Dr. Aiden Krone, takes the Alpha Suit back in time to 1939 where he uses his advanced technology to form an alternate timeline, creating a dystopian world where he is the ultimate authority. Despite Krone's sabotage of the lab you manage to take the Beta Suit and follow him into the past. Now it's up to you fix the problems Krone has created and set the timeline right.

Timeshift is a first person shooter, and as such features an ample selection of guns, although it seems to take quite a while before you get anything more than the basics you start with. To make this arsenal more impressive Timeshift adds in one of my favorite first person shooter functions of all time: an easily accessible secondary fire mode. In addition to the primary mode of fire each weapon also comes with a secondary mode of fire that either increases the strength of the primary fire mode or adds an entirely new function. The shotgun for example, becomes twice as lethal in secondary fire mode by unleashing both barrels on your enemies, at the expense of eating up ammo twice as quickly. The assault rifle however finds a completely new use in secondary fire mode with its under-slung grenade launcher. Using the two fire modes is incredibly simple, the right trigger is primary fire and the left trigger is secondary fire. It doesn't take long before using weapons in both fire modes becomes second nature.

The time control powers provided by the suit make you even more effective. There are three different options for time control powers: slow time, stop time, and reverse time. Slow time will slow down time for your enemies, making it harder to hit you and easier to hit them. Stop time lets you freeze time completely, although it uses up the suits energy much faster than slow time does. Finally, reverse time lets you travel back in time by a few seconds, saving you from a bad decision you've made. Your time powers also provide you with all sorts of interesting options, like the ability to take weapons out of your enemies' hands, walk on water, or remove clutch grenades that your enemies have attached to you. To make things easy the suit's AI will automatically select what it believes to be the best option for the current situation. You can always override this though by pulling up a quick menu and selecting the one you want to use.

At first, I thought having time control powers would make the game too easy. After all, I've played plenty of first person shooters without being able to control time and I've done okay; being able to control time would just make life easier. That's not really the case in Timeshift. If anything they've ramped up the difficulty in order to offset the benefits of the time powers. If you charge in with guns blazing you'll find yourself looking at the load screen an awful lot. (Fortunately, the game loads pretty quickly.) But the better option is to think about the most effective way to use your time powers, formulate a plan of attack, and follow through on it carefully.

As much fun as the gameplay of Timeshift is, the story left me kind of lost. It really takes a while before you start getting information about how you ended up where you are. The events leading up to your trip back in time are slowly revealed to you in cut scenes. These cut scenes are fairly far apart though, and that left me feeling a little unmotivated. In an interesting story telling twist though, some of the storyline information is delivered through your suit's artificial intelligence system. Your suit will inform you of incoming threats, update you on the current situation, and warn you of possible temporal disturbances.

Timeshift is first and foremost a solid first person shooter, with a well thought out and well executed set of special features. Give it a chance, and you'll find it's definitely worth your time.