Timesplitters 2

IT’S GETTING OUT OF HAND

Drew has a moment of shame that he wishes to share with you all

» GAMECUBE » 2002 » FREE RADICAL

Are you haunted by a specific moment in a game which you just couldn’t beat, no matter how hard you tried?

Of course you are, we all are. And if you’re not, you’re not human, you’re a game‑completing Terminator robot – sorry if that’s come as a shock to you. My personal moment of shame is a weird one, and as you can tell from this screenshot, involves harrowing hand‑people that evoke the same amount of terror as Mr Blobby did when I was a toddler.

Anyway, let’s get to it. Timesplitters 2 has an ocean of game modes and characters locked behind certain challenges in the Arcade League mode. These matches give you scenarios to overcome, and they’re pretty tongue‑in‑cheek and funny – like keeping away from a bunch of on‑fire characters in the nightclub level: a literal disco inferno. I’d cut through these challenges like a hot knife through butter back in the day, and returning to the game almost two decades later, nothing has changed. In many ways, I’ve gotten better with age – Modern Drew has difficult nonsense like Dark Souls and the final bullet hell bit of Nier: Automata under his belt.

Then I get to ‘Can’t Handle This’, a level where you play as Hatchet Sal against a horde of Handymen hungry for your blood. In the early Noughties, I found this level so hard it brought me to tears. But now I’m Modern Drew: I have a LISA, I do HIIT workouts in the morning, I do the hoovering every other day – surely I now have all the right faculties required to finally polish off this level?

The short answer is no, and my excuse is that I think it’s literally impossible. There are about ten of the buggers, and they’re all constantly chasing you. If by some miracle you pick up a good weapon, like the dual Tommy Guns, you’ll still get turned into colander by ten Luger‑wielding Handymen. And then one of them pries those super sweet bullet‑hoses from your cold, dead corpse and it all becomes even more difficult.

I think this level was made by some Lovecraftian creature from beyond the pale to sow madness. Back in 2002, a level designer at Free Radical entered a fugue state as it possessed his brain. When the developer came to, this monstrosity of a level was sat in front of them, and they thought, ‘Sweet! That’ll work.’

For now, I concede defeat. Perhaps I’ll give it another attempt in 20 years and write another ranty column for Retro Gamer VR, where my rage and disbelief gets beamed directly into your eyeballs.