I fired up TimeSplitters 2 for the first time in like two decades and immediately went 
at the aiming controls
Firing from the hip, there's no crosshair on the screen, which would be fine, but instead of a zoomed-in aiming mode or iron sights, aiming your gun roots you in place and gives you this light gun game-like pointer crosshair. Usually, aiming in an FPS game decreases your sensitivity to make it easier to make finer adjustments but this is the opposite. The crosshair is essentially a super sensitive mouse cursor that you control with a stubby little thumbstick, and it feels terrible to use.
Halo had been out for almost a year by the time TimeSplitters 2 came out so why didn't they just crib Bungie's homework 
I quickly went back and checked TimeSplitters: Future Perfect and sure enough, it just had a regular Halo-style crosshair as the default, called "fixed crosshair" in the options, with the old control style called "moving crosshair." I guess by 2005 Halo had established its control scheme as the de facto standard for console FPS controls
Wait until you play Goldeneye64
That game was considered revolutionary at the time and is credited for bringing FPS to consoles.
The N64 has a single joystick. You can imagine how it plays by today's standards.
Honestly I'm surprised I didn't become a massive anti-communist after growing up with a game where you spend the whole first level shooting Soviets
GoldenEye let's you plug in two controllers and play with two analog sticks. Controller mode 2.2 is pretty close to how FPSs on controllers play now.
I never knew that. That sounds rad as fuck
Star Wars Episode 1: Racer had a similar thing, but you could adjust the sticks like the little twin throttle setup they had in the movie.
ge64 has a lot of cool little details like that.
Now I want to rewind time and try it out! I also remember the Star Wars Podracer let you use two controllers too.
If kids can shoot Nazis in wolfenstein and still grow up to become swastika and wolfsangel bearing pinatas, then no reason they can't shoot Soviets and still grow up to become Stalinist-Bidenists
Goldeneye split screen multiplayer, my beloved.
::: spoiler spoiler
1v1 me no oddjob
I am inveeencible!
all grenade launchers all stacks all day
I'm sad that there's only a very narrow window of ages where people had the brain plasticity to master the controls and could really appreciate that game. If you're too young or too old, it's actually unplayable. For those lucky few, it was absolutely incredible. Split Screen GoldenEye in 1999 was just off the wall crazy fun.
Pfff I don't believe that for a second. I'm way better at video games than I used to be