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
Timesplitters 2 was the absolute peak of me playing shooters and still my undisputed multiplayer GOAT. I remember coming back from raves and spending an entire day and/or night playing it with mates as a student. God only knows how many hours I put into it, more than any other game ever for sure. I probably put more hours into the level editor than most games I've played since. High camp, perfect multiplayer, and just a crazy amount of content all wrapped up in a single game.
I made horror maps in the level editor and would permanently zoom in with the p90 scope for a film grain and spawn zombies. Flickering lights everywhere.
It really was so good. A genuinely wildly cool and intuitive thing to have on a console game.