Far as I know, time didn't start looping until a little later on. Heh, guess it's possible I just got the same results over and over, but... never felt any kinda deja vu from it.

Time doesn't restart completely anyway. It doesn't go back to, I dunno, the beginning of the universe or something. There's certain points it kept looping back to. Cause... time wasn't just resetting by itself. It was all caused by some kinda anomaly. Time was being deliberately looped by something.

[...]

Or rather... someone.