Timesplitters Future Perfect: Best FPS Ever

It's a sort of hubris to name one title in this crowded genre as the best of them all. But I will anyway -- no first-person shooter surpasses, or even equals Timesplitters: Future Perfect. No, not even Halo.

Timesplitters succeeds on every level. The single-player mode, notorious in the first-person shooter genre for being thin or shoddy, is tightly woven and shines with humor. It's not the cheesy, forced humor of Taco Bell commercials; the comedic timing and punchlines are superb and easily the most memorable part of the single-player experience.

The time-traveling plot is well-crafted, with my only complaint being that every time period is treated too shallowly -- I would've loved to see more of the Machine Wars. To add to the fun and replayability of the Story mode, a second player can join in Cooperative mode. Halo does have a more engaging, riveting plot, but the Timesplitters series has always been about its multiplayer side, which Halo could not hope to compete with.

Fourteen game modes greet you in Arcade mode, with the usual deathmatch, team deathmatch, and Capture the Flag -- Capture the Bag here -- augmented with games like Assault, where the blue team must defend their base while Red team attacks it. There are many variations on the deathmatch, such as Shrink, where the player in last place is tiny and quick, and Campire, in which the players must kill every few seconds or lose a life.

Most of those modes would grow boring with two, or even four players, so Free Radical added bots. Up to ten customizable bots can join the players, turning any Arcade game into a frenzied battle. Maps vary widely in size and style, from the tiny Chinese restaurant to the enormous base in Siberia. Playable characters are all memorable -- more than in other first-person shooters -- and include a gingerbread man, a teenage girl in a miniskirt and shirt that reads "slut" and a man in cardboard pretending to be a robot.

The bots contribute to the fun and mayhem of Timesplitters, but they're not too bright. Free-for-alls are fine but team games feel as if something is missing. Even on the highest difficulty level they never manage to work as a team.

An Arcade League mode consisting of pre-made Arcade games give Timesplitters even more playability. If certain requirements are met in an Arcade League match,the player is rewarded with a trophy. More and better trophies unlock new playable characters. Challenge mode uses the Timesplitters engine to, well, challenge the player in various ways. One has you smashing glass with a brick while another has you shooting melons off the heads of monkeys. They can be frustrating at times but also very rewarding -- what will you unlock next?

What holds these elements together are all the little things -- counters for miles you have traveled, bullets you've fired, and other statistics. The menus are clean and easy to navigate. Timesplitters' soundtrack is top-notch as well.

Timesplitters doesn't have the brightest AI, or the most cerebral plot, but it provides players with countless hours of mayhem and fun, and this it accomplishes better than any other first-person shooter, ever.