The newly formed design team named Free Radical Design is developing a 1st person shooter. So whats the big deal? Well, the team is comprised of some of the best veteran talent the industry has seen. You may have heard of some of their past work in making Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark. Now with the mighty PS2 at their masterful fingertips, they are making a game on PS2 that fans will not soon forget.

There is not a whole lot of information available for Timesplitters yet but here is whats known so far. It's a 1st person shooter and the team is focusing the gameplay around more action than stealth which goes in a bit of a different path than say Perfect Dark. But there will still be times when stealth will be an asset to completing some objectives. The team also hinted that Goldeneye and PD were more narrative based games and said that Timesplitters will play at a different pace than those games and will be less linear.

Both analog sticks will be used for the game although there will be several other configurations to choose from. Players could use one stick for moving forward, backward and strafing while using the other to look with. Personally I dont like the sound of that control layout because it would be very awkward and you wouldnt have easy access to firing and weapon switching buttons. This is just another reason why I think having two sticks is a waste of space on the already tiny and cluttered Dual Shock 2 controller. Upon game start-up there will be a sign-on screen so multiple users can enroll and play with their individual settings.

This will be one of the first PS2 titles to use the four players split screen mode. Free Radical admits that running any game split into four screens is demanding on the system and the same is true for PS2. You would probably see why when considering the level of detail in the graphics. But establishing a good framerate is their top priority for the multiplayer mode so I dont think we have too much to worry about. However I cant help but worry if the graphics of the single player mode will be compromised because it also has to run in four player mode as well. They may have to dumb them down if they want a high framerate four-split screenplay. The team is also dealing with the dreaded anti-aliasing issue, very well actually. They are ignoring it completely. During their first showing of the game to the press they had no complaints over the fact that the feature was not being used and judging from the screenshots there really doesnt seem to be any difference. Another reason why they chose to stay away from anti-aliasing is because the hardware method puts a heavy load on the processor which would haul framerates down and that we dont want. As the game is now, the graphics look a little better than for example Turok 2 running in hi-res but only with far better framerates. Let me tell you that that is not too shabby at all. The characters look more fictional than ones in Goldeneye and PD but the environment seems real enough and the game looks very colorful although we dont know anything about what graphical features are being used yet.

Keep a close eye on this game. The fact that some of the best 1st person shooter guys in the business are working on it is enough reason to expect it to be a hit. Stay tuned for more info soon.