Free Radical Design probably doesn't need an introduction anymore, but they're getting one anyway. British software house Rare released GoldenEye 007 on the N64 in 1997, and just about everybody loved it. It was the first really successful attempt at a first person shooter on a console, even though nobody thought it would be possible to play games that were made for mouse precision on a controller. Rare hasn't been able to make a Bond game or even another first person shooter that lived up to GoldenEye's reputation since. That's not because the guys that made GoldenEye lost their touch though, it's because most of them left Rare. A group of Rare members left the company to try their luck on their own. They formed Free Radical Design and came up with another console only first person shooter: TimeSplitters. They had an instant hit on their hands; it was filled with everything that made people crazy about GoldenEye, but added lots and lots of weapons, humor and threw in a time travel storyline just for kicks. TimeSplitters 2 was released on the GameCube amongst others and is arguably still its best FPS title. There's a new game coming up to challenge TimeSplitters 2 for that title, and it looks like it will beat it in every way possible. And no, it's not the sequel to GoldenEye, it's TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, the third title in the series.

Protect your aider and blow up 'copters.

Let's see what made TimeSplitters 2 an excellent game: It had a great comic inspired look and feel, it had a nice variety of levels (the time travel saw to that) it had loads and loads of weapons, also courtesy of the time travel, it was filled to the brim with statistics, it had a huge multiplayer mode and you could spend hours just trying to complete arcade challenges if you'd already played through the single player campaign. We've played a preview version of the third TimeSplitters outing, and it certainly looks like it tops the previous one in every category. Let's start with the visuals. Free Radical has been known for their slightly cartoony characters for a while now, and they haven't abandoned that idea yet. They have upgraded it quite a bit though, all the models seem much more detailed and the game looks a lot sharper overall. Like in the previous TimeSplitters, the designers didn't stop modeling until they had a cast that could populate a small town; Future Perfect has over a hundred different models which you encounter in both single player and multiplayer modes.

Time travel is used much better than in the previous games. In the first two TimeSplitters the story felt a lot like an excuse to put you in different time periods and to let you play with lots of different guns. It wasn't a big problem; because the game was so much fun to play, but it could use improvement nonetheless. Future Perfect offers a much more involved story. It's still about stopping the TimeSplitters from destroying humanity, but the execution is far more interesting. Every level gives you a sidekick from that time period, all of them are very different and most of them are very funny. Time travel is also used for more than just a way to get you from one level to another; you bump into a future version of yourself on more than one occasion for instance. There's also a lot more speech and cutscenes during the levels, which makes it feel more involved than just the standard watch cutscene – play level – watch cutscene setup. Oh and don't worry, the story may be more structured and involving, it's still filled with jokes and funny characters. You don't hear guards argue that the female guard outfits seem far more comfortable in a game often.

Classic engine. Sharper character models. Perfect.

But most importantly, the action in Future Perfect is top-notch in both the single player and the multiplayer modes. The single player mode puts you into a lot of different situations, ranging from fighting tanks and choppers to protecting girls from hordes of zombies. There are a few stealth sections but they're completely voluntary, you just have to shoot a lot more guards if you're noisy. The multiplayer mode is sure to keep you and a few friends happy for quite a long time. Future Perfect is the first TimeSplitters to go online on the X-Box and PS2, and while we may not be able to go online with the Cube, we do get loads of new multiplayer modes to play with because of the online move. All the standard modes are there, Deatchmatch, Capture the Flag, but Free Radical have gone out of their way to think up lots and lots of fun new ways to shoot your friends. There's Shrink, where you grow in size every time you shoot someone, making you an easier target for the rest. There's the brilliant Monkey Assistant, which gives the player in last place a pack of bloodthirsty monkeys to help him out. All those modes are completely customizable, everything from the weapons, the powerups to the time limit and computer-controlled bots are yours to tinker with. Add to that a huge number of playable levels and more playable characters than you can fit into a subway train and you know you won't be bored the next few months.

You can probably see we like TimeSplitters: Future Perfect a lot. The version we got wasn't final yet, there were crashes and lots of stutters, but it already showed lots of potential. If you've enjoyed a console FPS before you can be sure you'll like Future Perfect; it controls great and there's enough replayability to keep you occupied for e very long time. We'll give you a full review when we get a copy, so look out for that in the future.