Timesplitters was always the king of split-screen multiplayer in my opinion. It practically invented half of the features found in popular multiplayer FPS today. The mapmaker that was so popular in games like Halo were basically ripped right from Timesplitters, and even game modes such as Virus have been copied by countless other games.
The games (excluding number 1) were never half-assed. The controls were good, the campaign was hilarious, and the whole quirky vibe of the games were totally unique. Deadwina, The handyman... The Injector anyone?
"Do you see what your cunning daughter has done? My mother sucks lollipops in hell!"
"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"
^ just like CoD, right?
Where the games shone most, however was the split-screen multiplayer facet. For some reason both bots and split-screen have died out in recent years. I have no idea why...it's utterly infuriating. The only good split screen FPS I can think of from this generation is Halo 3, and not even that had bots.
Timesplitters was never meant to be a game you played online like CoD. If you only had one friend over, you played with bots instead of having to play 1v1 repeatedly in an extremely boring fashion, or play online with lag, strangers, trolls, and people who just don't understand the concept of 'fun'.
Timesplitters games are not grungy, competitive e-peen games, they are the epitome of social split-screen FPS. You did stupid things with friends against the bots, like making a game with only mines as weapons, holing up in a room with a friend, surrounding yourselves with mines and seeing how long you could survive against the bots. There was so much choice in what you could do in multiplayer it wasn't about being competitive, it was about dicking around. You could choose to make your own map or play a pre-made one, you could choose which weapons you wanted to load into the map, you could choose the game mode, you could choose the number of bots, which bots you wanted, and choose the bot difficulty. Hell, you could even choose whether you wanted the characters to have super huge heads, or shrink every time they died.
Timesplitter would hit a whole market that is completely empty at the moment. It's a tongue-in-cheek, light hearted FPS that never takes itself seriously and is geared toward split screen multiplayer...with bots. There is nothing filling that niche at the moment, and I swear on my life, it's a niche that not only I'm wishing was filled.
But yeah, since CoD and Timesplitters are both geared toward the same demographic, and are both so similar, I guess Timesplitters would inevitably fail.
/shrug
*cough* CoD is the worst thing to happen to FPS since ever *cough* Timesplitters 2 and 3 were the best FPS games ever made. *cough*
