The TimeSplitters franchise has quickly become one of the best FPS franchises for consoles over the last few years. With the latest iteration, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect hitting shelves this week we thought it might be cool to send ten questions to the development team. Thankfully they took the time to answer them. Check them out.

GamingNexus :What factors do you credit for the success of the TimeSplitters franchise in such a competitive FPS market?
TSFP Team : The incredibly smooth and fast gameplay has always elevated the series and made it one of the best multiplayer experiences available on any system. The humor and character designs are also distinctive factors. We have a core group of fans, but the gameplay is also very accessible so anyone can pick up the controls and start fragging people.

GamingNexus :Can you explain how Time Splitters: Future Perfect has changed (if any) since Electronic Arts signed the project? Were there things you were able to do that you might not have been able to do without the backing of EA?
TSFP Team :EA asked us some important questions in the early part of development, which made us, consider our approach to some of the things we wanted to do with TS:FP. It was really useful to have someone come in from the outside with a fresh approach which encouraged us to focus on specific issues. Every publisher will always have different ideas about what they think would be good in a game and it is always good to get that input.

GamingNexus :Certainly one of the best aspects of the original TimeSplitters games was the fact that you could pick from dozens of truly unique characters from all different eras. Have you gone through and upgraded these characters, and most importantly, are we able to create our own and use them online?
TSFP Team :All of the characters have been brought up to date and look better than ever. There are almost 150 to chose from when you play on-line so we hope you will never get bored of looking at them all, and seeing/hearing what they do and say when you pick them.

GamingNexus :What lessons have you learned from other successful online first person shooters?
TSFP Team :The Map Share feature of online will allow players to rate maps out of 5. You can then see the highest rated maps, the most downloaded maps, the newest maps today/this week etc. We hope to run many competitions for budding map designers....