Time Commando

Tempus Fugitive?

If you don’t conquer this game, you’re history.

That’s the basis of Activision’s Time Commando (DOS/Windows 95), which pits you against enemies from past to future.

The premise is simple: a computer virus has invaded the military’s "super cyberbrain" and the time warping effects it causes threaten to take over all the world’s computer systems. You have to restore the core memory scattered all through time and space, punching, chopping and shooting your way past a variety of enemies charged with preventing you from accomplishing your mission.

It’s a pretty standard scenario for a computer game, but where Time Commando leaps to the forefront is in its graphics. Each time period, and there are nine, is rendered with beautiful 3D graphics and uses roving camera angles that follow your character (it isn’t first person - more like a window onto a movie), while panning, tilting and zooming in the best Hollywood tradition.

You arrive in each time period weaponless, with only your hands and feet between yourself and various kinds of unpleasantness. Fortunately, the first people you encounter are reasonably easy to subdue - and once you’ve done that you gain whatever weapon they were trying to use on you.

You progress from clubs and spears to swords and six guns, dynamite, hand grenades, machine guns, lasers, etc.

There’s also a selection of hidden rooms and bonus areas you can find along the way, and as you collect the computer chips you can also replenish your strength which, considering the number and variety of enemies you’ll face, is both helpful and necessary.

Unfortunately, if you let something slip past you on the screen, whether chips, life energy, or secret rooms, they’re gone forever - or at least until you reload the game. This is too bad; it would be nice to go back and fix your mistakes without having to exit the game and begin again from the last "save point."

We’ve never liked fighting games, like "Street Fighter," in which your only raison d’être seems to be bloodlust, and that’s what we expected with Time Commando. But we were dead wrong: it’s more like Dark Forces, except it isn’t in the first person perspective. Like Dark Forces, however, there’s no gore. Time Commando is definitely violent, but it isn’t merely mindless mayhem. As the name implies, you’ve been sent on an important mission and all these bad dudes and dudettes are trying to keep you from accomplishing it. It’s kill or be killed.

Be careful not to have any other programs running when Time Commando’s loaded or the game might hang up, usually when there’s a camera move or scene change. If this happens you’ll have to press "escape" and then re-enter the game repeatedly before it’ll continue, or reload it from scratch. This is really annoying.

Otherwise, Time Commando’s a terrific game…

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