On Time Travel

[Knifewounds]

Edit: Also, Final Fantasy 8 deserves a mention for being so bat-shit insanely stupid.

Did you play through that game? or did you watch Spoony's review? Cause after watching his review I did some looking around and found out that it every bit as stupid as Noah made it sound.

OT:Chris is too cool to debate properly. That or he's a moron who just was begging to get ridiculed. Other than that, my favorite game involving time travel is the Prince Of Persia trilogy I mean, did you see his plan in the second game?

I gained a love hate relationship with FF8 after seeing the spoony review. I mean as a kid playing FF8 I enjoyed it, but coming to term with its flaws kinda killed a small part of my childhood, but still. FF8 wasn't that good, and I'm still going through therapy trying to cope with that fact *sniff*

OT: Who is Chris!?

 

[Little Duck]

Lovely. How's fun space game the game coming along?

 

[Premonition]

Edit: Also, Final Fantasy 8 deserves a mention for being so bat-shit insanely stupid.

Did you play through that game? or did you watch Spoony's review? Cause after watching his review I did some looking around and found out that it every bit as stupid as Noah made it sound.

OT:Chris is too cool to debate properly. That or he's a moron who just was begging to get ridiculed. Other than that, my favorite game involving time travel is the Prince Of Persia trilogy I mean, did you see his plan in the second game?

I played through it until half an hour after the space thing ended. After that I just gave up, smashed my head on the controller and got drunk. (mind you, this was my second attempt at this game. First time I didn't get past the space part)

Did you really get drunk? Yeah I understand you, must be awful going through that space part. I mean when I was watching the review I though 'what the hell were they thinking'? And what's more, the plot got a lot worse after that!

Do you know of Spoony? I'd advise you to go watch his very, very long episodic review in case you haven't seen it yet. It's epic and hilarious beyond words XD

ATTN MODS: last offtopic, I swear xD

I honestly don't get drunk. I can feel the booze's effects making me lightheaded and all. But ... beyond that, nothing xD I did try my very, very best though after I played it on my second attempt. (I was like 17 or something ...)

And yes, I have seen almost everything that the man has to offer. Besides his Wrestling stuff. The man is an internet god.

 

[RelexCryo]

In pretty much every game you use time travel, in a non-canonical manner- you use do-overs. You die/fail and then try again. For you, the payer, this is time travel, ala Prince of Persia. But for the your character, they are actually doing this for the first time when you finally succeed. Looking at this from the perspective of canon/roleplaying this creates a wierd disconnect between gameplay and storyline, where you the player know everything that is about to happen and always happen to be in the right place at the right time, despite the fact there is no way your character could canonically know this.

You character *acts* like he is a time traveler from the near future, knowing everything before it happens, but canonically he didn't die and then reverse time 7 times in a row while you, the player, figured things out.

 

[ultimateownage]

Uh, Yahtzee? Where the fuck's Timesplitters? So, you, you didn't include it? Well you have obviously never played the game, because any one who has would praise it for the best time travel game, and one of the best games, that has ever existed.

It doesn't use Time Travel as a gameplay mechanic, merely a plot device....damn fine games though, the most fun I've had with multiplayer ever.

What about Time Splitters 3? Where you would have to travel forward in time slightly to help your future self complete a task?

 

[The Noble Shade]

Why can't people simply acknowledge the opinions of others without using crass insults to berate them?

Good article though. I have an idea for a game I want to make, and this article convinced me not to use time-travel mechanics. I just don't think I could implement them properly.

 

[Matt Witte]

Well, as far as time travel games it appears he was going for time travel as more of a central theme of the game rather then just a part of it (as for why chrono trigger was ignored, well its a JRPG). As not to copy the post of time shift, I'd say another game I found entertaining was the legacy of Kain series, whether or not this qualifies is up to each person to judge, since only really in soul reaver 2 and in legacy of kain defiance was time travel really a central theme.

 

[sheah1]

Yeah I'd have to go with Timesplitters 3 too, the final couple levels and the way they all come together is beautiful.

 

[mexicola]

My personal favourite would be Legacy of Kain series. It doesn't include time travelling as a gameplay mechanic but the story is chock full of time travelling mindfuckery.

 

[Kapol]

Well, I liked Majora's Mask myself, though it could get a bit annoying. The Timesplitters series was one of the best shooter series I can remember (hurry playing as tiny monkey of doom in space!). Sam and Max episode 204 used time travel effectively for an adventure game, and was interesting to see. And then that's Braid, which had fun time mechanics for a puzzle game.

 

[OceanRunner]

What about Okami when...

Spoiler

you went back in time to re-enact the first defeat of Orochi 100 years ago.

 

[WanderingFool]

Personally, I loved the Time splitters series, specially 3. Was also funny to see the constant anomalies with Cortez.

 

[awatkins]

Oh, well, Chrissy is my personal hero at this point. Such style and grace. I have not seen such great debating since, well, ever.
My personal favorite game involving time traveling has to be the very splendid TimeSplitter franchise. Most notably: TimeSplitters 3. There's time traveling in it so it's allowed xD

Edit: Also, Final Fantasy 8 deserves a mention for being so bat-shit insanely stupid.

Hee Hee. I loved the silly wittiness of TimeSplitter. IMO it was superbly done and other FPS should really take notes, especially on the gameplay feature where you and your buddy (or sibling) can do a FULL story Co-0p mode. It really annoys me when FPS these day only integrate on-line co-0p modes and completely forget about how much fun a split screen full co-0p mode can be. There really is no exscuse either, what with TVs being all huge, flat and high resolution. Does anyone remember what it was like playing 4 player death matches of Golden Eye on a 26" CRT TV? I do.

Anyway, my favorite Time Travel game. Race Driver: Grid. Yes, I know, Time Travel in a Racer! whoa man!
In each race you have the ability (5 chances) to travel back in time up to 10second so you can correct little mistakes like driving into walls, into the sand, launching yourself into the air and doing a barrel roll, or just to take the perfect apex as a means to pass your rival. Kind of like Sands of Time, but in a car.

 

[The Youth Counselor]

The Escapist should give Chris E. his own feature.

He has such unique views and shares takes his time to write share to us all in his own eloquent way.

 

[ExileNZ]

We need to send fan-mail to this Chris E!

Quickly, someone start a fanclub!

i think cris e is eh pretty cool guy. eh fights Yahtzee and doesn't afraid of anything.

Ah well, fail troll is fail, so I will simply hoist my 2 cents on top of this pile of loose change.

Time travel is always a confusing subject for me; the only game I really understood it with was TimeSPlitters and-after a year- Second Sight. Which, during the first playthrough, skull-fucked my sense of knowing.

I'm a big fan of Chrono Trigger, but I'm also definitely stepping up for Second Sight. Major brain-fuck and so worth it. The one thing that sucked was (spoiler) the hero's magical ability to stand around in cutscenes while imoportant people get killed (/spoiler).

 

[Queen Michael]

Last good time travel game I played was Majora's Mask.

 

[songnar]

No mention of The Journeyman Project series at all? Shame, I rather liked The Legacy of Time.

 

[Thedayrecker]

*sigh* I just wish Darkest of Days (which has time travel, so it isn't off topic) didn't suck balls....

 

[SFR]

One thing that bothered me in all of these games is how the characters stay on the same planet. If the planet,sun, and galaxy are in orbit, wouldn't traveling through time involve getting stuck in space?

That is an extremely good point. Steven Hawking asked "Where's all the time travelers?" The answer? Dead in space.

 

[sdfasdfhfgfgjtyisdgdfdfj]

I loved the use of time travel, or rather, time distortion, in Outcast (Appeal, 1999), where you and another group of scientists enter a foreign world because they want to fix a homemade portal ticking like a time bomb, but enter at different times. Anyone familiar with that game?