After the disappointment that was Haze, it’s great to know that Free Radical are getting back on track and working on a new version of Timesplitters. Although many people hark all the way back to Rare’s Goldeneye 007 on the N64 as the pinnacle of console shooters, for me it has always been Free Radical’s Timesplitters 2. The fact that it was essentially the same people working on these titles is no coincidence, after the success of Goldeneye, lead designer Dave Doak left with a bunch of his colleagues and formed Free Radical.

For those of you that haven’t played TS2 (kids these days eh?) I recommend that you seek it out on eBay, it’s there for about £2 and is just as sharp and wickedly funny as it ever was! For the rest of us it’s time to start looking forward to what should be a cracking, hardcore shooting experience.

Free Radical are at their best when they develop their games with their tongue in their cheek and a twinkle in their eye and, although details are supermodel thin at the moment, the cheeky little teaser video on their website shows how the sense of humour is back in place. It’s a piss take, or is that an homage, of the old Star Wars Phantom Menace trailers from 1999 (Remember those? See below) and features a monkey in a suit of armour re-enacting the classic “Do not want” scene from Episode 3.

Apart from a slightly StarWarsian/monkey/medieval theme, what else can we expect? Well there are also three images available, but to summarise, they feature a pimped out cat with wheels, a chainsaw weilding nun and a dismembered, fishnet wearing Frankenmonkey robot. So, all run of the mill stuff for a Timesplitters game then.

I can’t wait. Does that make me weird?