By Jim Rossignol on September 5th, 2007 at 12:32 pm.
Okay. Am I the only person to find this advert for Timeshift rather peculiar?
Thanks, Game Trailers. Thanks.
They’ve chosen to make an advert for a videogame mostly in live action. Sure there’s some CGI in there but… whatwhat? Exactly how can that be said to advertise a videogame in any way? Isn’t it just a little creepy? Perhaps it’s not an advert at all, and they’ve accidentally broadcast an ultra-violent power-rangers fan movie.
In other news: we’re actually looking forward to Timeshift. Y’know: the game. We should have some more news on it soonish. (Probably – I mean it’s a safe bet, but not certain.)
05/09/2007 at 12:50 John says:
I just totally lied about my age, even though I’m easily old enough to watch it! I showed the system just then.
05/09/2007 at 13:04 Willem says:
I had to lie about my age, probably.
Also, I had never heard of Timeshift before that, but now, I never want to hear about it. How shit.
05/09/2007 at 13:11 CrashT says:
Taken on it’s own merits it was actually pretty entertaining… As an advert for a Videogame it really didn’t make much sense.
Didn’t one of the GTA’s do something similar?
05/09/2007 at 14:39 Schadenfreude says:
I suppose it’s no worse than all of those adverts that show nothing but a pre-rendered video with a “Not Actual Game Footage” disclaimer (Call of Duty springs to mind).
Did look kinda lame though.
05/09/2007 at 14:50 Jon says:
Eh?
Doesn’t even look that good for a game whose main premise has been done to death already.
05/09/2007 at 15:24 Masked Dave says:
Why did he kill them? They were only robbers, he clearly could have just disabled them and left them for the cops to pick up.
05/09/2007 at 15:27 Jim Rossignol says:
As we all know, robbers are not real people.
05/09/2007 at 15:33 John says:
How many games have there been where you can stop or rewind time?
Um, that game about a cat no one played, and Prince of Persia. Not really done to death I’d have thought.
05/09/2007 at 16:09 Martin Coxall says:
It’s like the mature (i.e. childish) version of all those Wii adverts with happy grannies flapping their wands, only with emotionally stunted berks with guns.
05/09/2007 at 16:47 Jim Rossignol says:
I think there is another time rewind action game, but I forget the name. On PS2 I think. Also Evolution GT, a racing game that came out last year.
05/09/2007 at 17:05 Martin Coxall says:
I want a game where you can fast-forward time. Right through all the unfair difficulty spikes, lame bosses, poor voice acting, ill-advised driving sequences, seemingly unending arena battles, twitchy platforming bits rendered unspeakably frustrating by a mentally ill camera, anticlimactic ending, and the hours and hours that are just tedious beyond belief.
05/09/2007 at 17:23 Bob Arctor says:
Meh looked pretty cool. Like Robocop vs Doctor Who. I’m a sucker for messing with time, if it’s done well. I.e. FEAR and Max Payne 1 and 2. But mostly it’s done in a boring fashion, or it’s just a boring game.
05/09/2007 at 17:46 Martin says:
Looks ace! Both the ad and the game.
05/09/2007 at 20:12 Matthew Craig says:
It’s Automan! Yay! Or possibly Street Hawk! Go Tangerine Dream Go!
(Street Hawk was an eighties motorcycle superhero who was in love with George Clooney*)
Yeah, that was kind of screwy. But I guess they were making some kind of point, re: verismilitude. I dunno. TimeShift’s the sort of game I’ve only ever played in seaside arcades (two gun Woo style’e, natch).
//\Oo/\\
* – okay, an character played by George Clooney. He had a mullet: he deserved to die.
06/09/2007 at 02:36 Confused in Cornwall says:
That ad show more ‘in game footage’ and gave me more of a sense of what gameplay is like than most other video game ads I’ve seen in the past few years ever have. At least it was one (roughly) continous scene, rather than the current trend of a video game ads which contain big flashy words saying how great the game is, intercut with what-would-be-considered-screenshots-if-not-for-the-fact-that-they-last-a-second all of which show an entirely different area/perspective of the game, and after watching the damn I’m left with the impression that it’s a good game, because I’m TOLD it’s good, rather than actually seeing it in flow and thinking “yeah, that’s good!”.
Then again, that’s what demos are for? Right?
In which case, why are some demos still released after game publication, and why do some games still, in this day and age, have no sodding demos?
06/09/2007 at 05:04 Alan Au says:
Um, what? Having never heard of Timeshift before this, I must come to the inevitable conclusion that this is a Full-Motion-Video story game based on a crappy live-action fan-made movie of some sort. I assume the player is represented by the fellow in the goofy-looking future-armor-suit… thing. Either that, or you’re the robber guy and just got pwn3d by the robo-boss. Or perhaps you’re supposed to be the blonde lady, and you just failed the cell-phone stealth mission, except that in a deus-ex-machina moment you trigger the future-armor-boy FMV cutscene and advance to the next gameplay stage.
06/09/2007 at 19:11 ShaunCG says:
Well, that was all quite violent and stupid.
One of the things I quite liked about the demo was disarming the enemy and letting them live when they surrendered. A nice touch, I reckon.