This game is one where you'll find yourself swapping back and forth in time, even stopping it completely when the need arises. This, on the surface, sounds like it could be really cool.

I mean, who doesn't want to manipulate time occasionally. Drop back a few seconds before you said that regrettable thing, or erase that time you punched an elderly person for giving you 'that look'. We all have moments like these.

You'll use the Beta suit to take control of time, although manipulating time seems to be a trial and error process. Due to its time manipulation factor, this game has a much steeper learning curve than games like Half Life 2 or Call of Duty 4.

Save often, because things don't always work out like you want, and you'll become good friends with the quick load button. Often times you'll think an enemy is dead after taking several direct bullets to the face, but this isn't the case. Time will speed back up and he'll kill you.

After struggling with the time shifting system for a few hours, however, you'll start to get the hang of it. It will become something you'll end up using nearly all the time, however, giving the game a gimmicky feel. You'll be unable to complete almost every area you come across unless you spend most of the time in slow mode.

Imagine if you were playing F.E.A.R. and you absolutely had to slow down things to kill every single enemy. It would get to feel repetitive and dull, wouldn't it? I know I would find it that way. This is how Timeshift comes across, at first it's pretty cool, but then you just want to do a normal gunfight here and there.

Once you get past the steep learning curve and the gimmicks, things are pretty standard as far as this type of game goes. When taking damage, there's a standard bleed out system, though it shows a health bar instead of sending you blind.

For Logitech G15 owners, a secondary health display will be on your LCD screen, making Timeshift one of a handful of games to natively support the G15 right out of the box. Sadly, this isn't something you see done as much in many larger release titles.

One thing that seems really cool at first, though I did tire of doing, is stopping time and stealing a weapon. You can stop time, run up to an enemy and take the gun right out of his hand, then just start time again and watch a very confused enemy either run for the nearest weapon, or just duck and plead for help.

Something you'll want to remember when reversing time, don't expect to get ammo and grenades back from this. You'll still have the same amount of ammo you had, the time change affects those around you, but not you directly. You'll behave as normal during time manipulation, be it stopped, forwards, or backwards.

Also, what happens when time is frozen will stay still until time resumes. What this means basically is even if you hit an enemy with a grenade their body will stay still and appear alive and well until time resumes.

Unfortunately you can only hold 3 weapons at any given time. I would have expected to be able to hold a bit more than that, but shooters are allowing less and less weapons to be held at a time recently. You'll get used to this, as the weapons seem like reskinned versions of those in Half Life 2, sans gravity gun, right down to the crossbow.