Well, it really comes down to two main reasons. Firstly, when playing non-Steam games your playtime does not track at all, which may not be essential to your experience but it is nice to have.

And second, Homefront: The Revolution has cards that you can earn, which you wouldn't get if you were playing TimeSplitters 2 as a non-Steam game, so you might as well, right?

Plus, the whole thing really isn't that hard to set up either, so there really isn't much reason not to do this unless you plan on actually playing both games, but let's be honest, you probably only bought this game for TimeSplitters 2.

1. This game on Steam (obviously)
   
2. TimeSplitters 2 Redux mod found here[github.com]

That's it!

Once you have both the things listed above, you're going to want to run the TimeSplitters 2 Redux installation exe once your Homefront: The Revolution is done installing.

TimeSplitters 2 Redux does give you an option to instead bypass the whole 45gb Homefront: The Revolution install and just download the stuff you need, however doing it that way kind of messes up the rest of this guide, so I'd advise you to just download the full game, run the TimeSplitters 2 Redux installer and then just have that delete all the unnecessary stuff you don't need.

If your game is already fully installed from Steam, the installer should automatically find where it's installed. However, if it doesn't, simply point it toward your Steam\steamapps\common\Homefront_The_Revolution folder typically found in C:\Program Files (x86).

Once you have your directory selected, you're going to go on to the part of the installer where you select all the things you want to install with TimeSplitters 2 Redux. Everything is up to preference, except for the Create TS2 Launcher option, you're going to need that. I would also advise you to select the Remove Homefront Game Files option as well if you're going to be doing this, as you're not going to need any of those and it saves like 42gb, but it's up to you.

Next, you're going to go on to the actual installation of TimeSplitters 2 Redux. Let it do it's thing, and then at the very end of the installation after everything has finished it's going to give you the option to again remove the Homefront: The Revolution files. Enable that, let it do it's thing again, and you're done!

Remember when you selected the option to create the TimeSplitters 2 Launcher exe? Well, now we're going to use it! All you have to do at this point is simply go into your launch options for Homefront: The Revolution and add the following command to it:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Homefront_The_Revolution\Bin64\TimeSplitters2.exe" %command%

This will make Steam launch that exe instead of the default Homefront: The Revolution one, effectively turning this game into TimeSplitters 2!

And that's all you really have to do, however I have some recommendations or tweaks that have made my personal experience with the game better, so let me show you those.

Now I'd like to go over some extra stuff you can get to make your experience that much better. These are completely non-essential, but do really make a difference when it comes to at least my enjoyment of this game.

Firstly, by default it doesn't appear as though you can change any of the control options in the game, which isn't a major issue because most of the default key bindings are pretty sensible, however I have made (or, more accurately, ChatGPT made lol) an AutoHotkey script to sort of switch around a couple things to some better spots and to just give you more options. The script is as follows:

#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0
#SingleInstance Force
SetTitleMatchMode(2) ; allow partial matches in window titles
SendMode("Input") ; use the fastest, most reliable send method
SetDefaultMouseSpeed(0) ; no built-in mouse movement delay

; Only active when the TimeSplitters2.exe window is focused
#HotIf WinActive("ahk_exe TimeSplitters2.exe")

g:: {
; -- deliberate middle-mouse click --
MouseClick("Middle", , , 1, 0, "D") ; middle button down
Sleep(50) ; hold it for 50 ms
MouseClick("Middle", , , 1, 0, "U") ; middle button up
}

2:: {
; 2 → scroll wheel up
Send("{WheelUp}")
}

1:: {
; 1 → scroll wheel down
Send("{WheelDown}")
}

#HotIf ; turn context off for other hotkeys

What this script does is make it so that 1 and 2 cycle through weapons forward and back, and it puts G as a secondary Alt. Fire button as having that only on the middle mouse button is kind of cumbersome, especially with how hit or miss it seems to be (this script does not have that issue though, it's a 100% success rate.) The script also only runs when you are actually playing TimeSplitters 2, so you can kind of just set it and forget it and it won't interfere with anything.

Next, there's Reshade. By default this game does not carry over Homefront: The Revolution's anti-aliasing option, leading to the game having lots of jaggies on edges. However, you can install Reshade to fix that issue extremely easily. Since Homefront: The Revolution is quite modern, you can just download the latest version, which at the time of writing is 6.4.1[reshade.me]. Now, during the setup process, it may list Homefront: The Revolution as an available game in the list, and I think selecting that will still actually work since both of the exes are in the exact same place, but just to be safe you're going to want to manually navigate to your Homefront_The_Revolution folder in your steamapps folder and manually select the TimeSplitters2.exe file instead. Now, once that is done, you should see a big list of addons you can install, but just the default option that is selected will be enough, you don't need anything else. Proceed on with the install until you're finished. Now, launch your game and then press the Home key on your keyboard to bring up the Reshade overlay. You can skip through the tutorial because all you really need to do is to enable both the SMAA and FXAA options by clicking on them in the list, and that's it. You can close the Reshade overlay and never worry about it ever again, and never worry about seeing jagged edges anymore either!

Next, there's custom artwork. This one is really simple, just go to SteamGridDB[www.steamgriddb.com] and look up TimeSplitters 2, then pick out whatever artwork in each category you like best. Make sure to get both a regular grid image and one of the long ones, though. Next, just go through and set your Homefront: The Revolution artwork to your newly downloaded custom ones. You can do this by clicking on the game in your library, then right clicking the banner where the logo and stuff is and then choosing Set Custom Artwork and Set Custom Logo. Now, the grid artwork is a little trickier. First, you're going to want to launch the game so that it's the first in line at your library home screen. Then, right click on it, hover over manage and there should be an option to set custom artwork. You're going to want to select the image you chose for the long grid artwork I was talking about earlier. Then, launch a different game so that Homefront: The Revolution is now the second game in line on your library's home screen, then right click it again and do the same thing you did just a second ago except instead now choose the other, regular sized artwork that you also picked out. Then, you're done! I don't believe there's a way to set a custom icon on official Steam games as far as I know, so you don't have to worry about that

And now finally, there's mouse sensitivity. For some reason, the mouse sensitivity by default is insane, and changing it in the Homefront: The Revolution options doesn't change it either. So, you're going to want to navigate to C:\Users\(YourUsername)\Saved Games\homefront2 and click on game.cfg, this is the game's config file. Before you edit this, you should probably get all your video settings and stuff set and out of the way first, because you will be making this file read only at the end to prevent the changes we're about to make from ever reverting, so make sure you do that. Once you have that all in order, add cl_sensitivity = 6 (or whatever number you want, fiddle around with it) at the very bottom of the game.cfg file to set your sensitivity. Once you've found a sensitivity you like, save the changes and then right click on the file, go to properties and then set it to Read Only. This will prevent the change from ever being reverted.

And that's it! Now you're ready to play one of the greatest shooters of all time straight from your Steam library, with your time being tracked and everything! Have fun and save history!