Hi folks! Just wanted to update you on upcoming plans for the site. I'm making reasonable progress through all the Sonic games I wanted to cover this month, but I've still managed to underestimate the amount of time I needed to cover all of them to my satisfaction — I still have quite a few I haven't started playing yet, and I doubt I'm going to squeeze them all into a single week, even with August being five weeks long! This has been a research-heavy month — particularly pieces like the Sonic X-Treme retrospective — and so things have taken a little longer than I anticipated.

Rather than leaving this little project unfinished — and rather than interrupting the usual flow of content, too — what I'm going to do is kick off a new Cover Game in the first full week of September as planned (it'll be Evenicle by AliceSoft/MangaGamer) but also continue to cover the remaining Sonic games without a "deadline" as such until I've got through everything I want to do. That way I can cover all the games I wanted to discuss in my exploration of the series without having to rush the last few articles and not do them justice.

Thanks for your continued support, and I hope you continue to enjoy the articles 🙂

I saw the news today that THQ Nordic has acquired the rights to TimeSplitters and Second Sight, two properties by the ex-Rare devs at Free Radical, and I just had to get something down on "paper".

The exact details of the deal are… well, there aren't any, to be honest, though you can perhaps infer some things from the press release. Interestingly, the press release describes the deal as THQ "acquiring the video game trilogy TimeSplitters" rather than the overall TimeSplitters brand… the smart money here is on an HD remaster, perhaps of the whole trilogy in one pack, and maybe followed up by a brand new game. But, as I say, there's not a lot to say beyond what has already been announced right now.

Instead, I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about why I like TimeSplitters so much, and why it's an absolute delight to hear the possibility that we might be seeing its return.

TimeSplitters was one of the earliest PS2 games I had a chance to play, long before I had my own PS2. I was visiting my brother over in the States, and he had a wide selection of interesting-sounding launch games as a result of his work on Electronic Gaming Monthly and the Official PlayStation Magazine at the time. As has apparently always been my wont, I gravitated immediately towards the games that were somewhat less well-known or hyped, and so it was I found myself playing through both Shade's Orphen: Scion of Sorcery (which will probably get at least a bit of discussion on MoeGamer at some point in the future) and the original TimeSplitters.

I enjoyed TimeSplitters so much that my brother's neighbour actually came over to complain at the constant sound of gunfire — I forget the circumstances, but for some reason I'd been left home alone at his house, and was filling the time with the PS2 and its games. My brother had a particularly formidable sound system, and anyone who has played TimeSplitters will know that it had some wonderfully meaty-sounding weapons that reverberate right through your walls and floor with the right setup. Turns out they reverberated right through the dividing wall between my brother's house and his neighbour's property. I apologised and got back to it, a bit quieter than before.

TimeSplitters is great to me because it recaptures everything I loved about GoldenEye and Perfect Dark on the N64, without those games' poor frame rate, fuzzy visuals and dodgy character models. It was the perfect example of a game that did not take itself seriously in the slightest — a game that really knew that it was a game.

In fact, the original TimeSplitters drew a bit of flak (no pun intended) for not really having much of a plot and just focusing entirely on the gameplay. These days, I actually think that would be something of a refreshing change, though its two follow-ups had entertainingly silly and enjoyable storylines to follow, too.

For me, though, the real appeal of TimeSplitters was not in its main campaign mode; it was in the wealth of other stuff it offered. Multiplayer battles in which you could incorporate bots drawn from an enormous cast of characters. Challenge modes that had a distinctly "arcadey" feel to them, tasking you with accomplishing specific goals against tight time limits. Hidden bonus games the protagonist could play on his wrist-mounted computer. (Anaconda was always a particular favourite.) And a fully functional (albeit somewhat limited) map editor to create your own stages. There was so much to enjoy in each of these games that they were a near-constant fixture in the multiplayer gaming rotation of my friends and I back when we actually used to visit each other's houses on a semi-regular basis.

I've had a copy of the original TimeSplitters on my shelf for a while and the news has prompted me to immediately order copies of 2 and Future Perfect, which I've been meaning to do for a while. And you can bet your ass if an HD collection — or perhaps even a new game — gets announced, I'll be there day one!

In the meantime, turns out composer Graeme Norgate has all the official soundtracks for the series up on his BandCamp, so I know what I'm listening to this afternoon…

Those of you who have known me for a while will know that I deal with a few mental health issues — specifically, a delightful cocktail of Aspergers, depression and anxiety.

This lovely combination of things means that I am particularly susceptible to negativity, and an overwhelmingly negative atmosphere can leave me in a seriously deep funk for quite some time, even going so far as to leave me barely functional for hours at a time. It sucks, but I've learned to "cope" with it over the years — and video games have certainly helped with that.

I mention this because I feel like I'm seeing a particularly large amount of negativity across social media and even blogs of late. Ashley fans claiming they want to "murder" Sakurai for not including her as a playable character in Smash Bros. The never-ending arguments over what GamerGate "is". Ridiculous hot takes over a bad joke in the new Doom trailer. And, of course, the ever-present "unpopular opinion" threads and "Top 5 Worst X of Y" articles that always seem to be doing the rounds.

(Unsure of the original source of this image, sorry; it just drifted across my Twitter feed this morning!)

It's sometimes helpful to express negative emotions, and hell, I've been known to do so on more than one occasion. But it's also good to have a "haven" away from that sort of thing — a place where you can go if you just want to enjoy stuff for a change.

I've always attempted to make MoeGamer that kind of place. My key mission for the site is to "find the good" in even games that were poorly received by press and/or public — and while it's important to acknowledge flaws where they exist, it's even more important to judge something on its own merits. If someone derives some enjoyment, satisfaction or even emotional resonance from something there is value there, even if it's popularly regarded as "bad".

That's why I can promise you there will never be "Worst X of Y" articles on MoeGamer, nor will there be articles berating you for your tastes in games, your political opinions or anything completely arbitrary that isn't any of my business. The most negative thing I've written is "13 Reasons Why the Games Industry Needs to Stop Idolising Anita Sarkeesian", which I feel was important to write, but which unfortunately no-one who really needed to listen to… listened to. (In fact, it got me landed on a "GG Trash" Twitter list from one particularly obnoxious individual, despite me never actively participating in anything GamerGate-related. Said individual got promptly blocked, removing me from his stupid list in the process.)

I don't want to see these things, so I don't wish to inflict them on you either. Consider this a "pledge for positivity" of sorts if you like… and if any of the feelings I describe here are familiar, I encourage you to extract yourself from environments like Twitter and Reddit that just encourage this whole cynical cycle of negativity.

Let's make our little corner of the Internet an actually nice place to hang out.