It was written off as dead years ago, yet thanks to a small but stubborn community of fans one of the greatest FPS games ever made is now back from the grave, and it will not cost you a cent. After thirteen long years in limbo, the fan project TimeSplitters Rewind has finally been brought back to life.

Do you remember TimeSplitters? Back in the early 2000s, this FPS saga was a cult favorite for a sizeable niche of shooter fans. Many players considered it the spiritual successor to GoldenEye 64, and its universe grew with two additional entries.

Unfortunately, when Embracer Group shut down Free Radical Design, any realistic hope of seeing a modern remake of these classics seemed to vanish overnight. That was around thirteen years ago, but the story did not end there. A dedicated group of fans has now managed to revive and relaunch TimeSplitters Rewind, a remake that bundles the three original games, which kept genre and series fans entertained between 2000 and 2005.

The Story Of A Resurrection

Back in 2013, Crytek acquired the rights from the original creators at Free Radical Design, along with their other IPs, and after Embracer Group later swept away any remaining projects, it looked like the dream was gone for good. Even so, a fan team, working with Crytek’s blessing, kept the flame alive to put the game out in Early Access, and the company even supplied them with original assets to help make it happen.

Between that initial vision and the current release, however, the project had to overcome several major obstacles, including the departure of its lead programmers. In 2015, the team was forced to throw away everything they had built so far and restart from scratch in Unreal Engine 4, after discovering that using the Unreal Tournament engine breached the terms of service set by its owner, Epic Games. Against all odds, and despite multiple setbacks that nearly killed the project outright, players can finally enjoy the remake that was promised so many times but never seemed to materialize.

The First Multiplayer Campaign, For Free

Today, wanting to play this fan-made remake is no longer a pipe dream. The game already includes the updated first campaign from the original TimeSplitters, which can be experienced both offline and in online co-op. It packs all 28 remastered maps, 91 characters, and more than 40 weapons, plus 20 arcade modes, and it supports up to 10 players in multiplayer.

As the technology site Techspot points out, the most striking part is that you can grab this Early Access remake completely free of charge, and you can also dive into the tangled history of its development on the project’s official website. System requirements are not especially demanding either; they are almost “democratic”: you only need a GPU on the level of a GTX 760, 8 GB of RAM, an Atom C2750 CPU running at 2.4 GHz and 35 GB of free storage space.

Source: 3djuegos